youtube channel with clay videos
One of my favorite earthenware artists is Nancy Selvin. Her works are witty, intelligent and thought provoking. Somehow, she makes her bottles look like drawings, and her drawings look like bottles. Great surfaces too.
rothshank
Pots for potters? (I do like the proportions of the wheel image, and how the wedge shape of it ties in with the handle joins…)
(via brentpafford)
Ōtagaki Rengetsu (太田垣 蓮月, February 10, 1791 – December 10, 1875) was a Buddhist nun who is widely regarded to have been one of the greatest Japanese poets of the 19th century. She was also a skilled potter and painter and expert calligrapher.
Born into a samurai family with the surname Tōdō, she was adopted at a young age by the Ōtagaki family. She was a lady in waiting at Kameoka Castle from age 7 to 16, when she was married. However, her husband died in 1823. Ōtagaki joined the temple Chion-in and became a nun, taking Rengetsu (“Lotus Moon”) as her Buddhist name. She remained at Chion-in for nearly ten years, and lived in a number of other temples for the following three decades, until 1865, when she settled at the Jinkō-in where she lived out the rest of her life.
Though best known as a waka poet, Rengetsu was also accomplished at dance, sewing, some of the martial arts, and Japanese tea ceremony. She admired and studied under a number of great poets including Ozawa Roan and Ueda Akinari, and later in her life became a close friend and mentor to the artist Tomioka Tessai. A number of Tessai’s works, though painted by him, feature calligraphy by Rengetsu. (Wikipedia)
(via snowonredearth)
From my earliest memories I never wanted to do anything else. —Michael Lipsey
“…when Schoenberg asked me whether I would devote my life to music, I said, “Of course.” After I had been studying with him for two years, Schoenberg said, “In order to write music, you must have a feeling for harmony.” I explained to him that I had no feeling for harmony. He then said that I would always encounter an obstacle, that it would be as though I came to a wall through which I could not pass. I said, “In that case I will devote my life to beating my head against that wall.”
—John Cage
(via apoetreflects)
I’m working on my new artist statement for a gallery show in August. I’d welcome input on this. It’s not so hard for me to write about the creative process in general. It’s more challenging to actually address exactly what it is I do. Please let me know your thoughts!
In large part my approach involves inviting in imperfections. I have a high standard of craftsmanship and functionality that could be readily met if I first ironed out imperfections and then mass-produced the resulting design.
Instead I seek the spark of animation that comes from the loose gestural surface, the surprising juxtaposition of volumes, the pervasive evidence of the hand coaxing the clay. I follow my curiosity instead of my know-how.
Each new form must fill its lungs and look up at you. Then I ask it to pass muster as a working object: it balances in the hand. It doesn’t drip. It pours like a dream. It will stand up well to domestic life.
I lack the virtuosity to make my materials effortlessly jump through hoops. Instead I go looking for groundedness in my work by stubbornly incorporating improvisation in the process. A high loss rate comes with this dual approach of craftsmanship and imperfection.
The divine lives next to the profane, not in the greys elsewhere; the universal lies next to the personal. In my work I seek a world where the most mundane objects breathe life, where originality is what we have in common.
A tongue of lava oozes out from beneath the recently cooled crust of a flow. The silica contained within, reflects the early morning sunlight, giving its surface a glassy sheen.
Photo and caption credit: Bruce Omori
For the uninitiated, silica is the abundant element that provides the structure to fired clay and the glass of our glazes: a human invention that can last thousands of years.
(via fired-earth)
“There remains this belief that the work itself can have an identity that can speak, whether it’s through beauty, or through ugliness, or whatever quality you put into the work. The work doesn’t have to be a transparent vehicle for you to say things about life today.”
—Martin PuryearWATCH: Martin Puryear in Time [available in the U.S. only] | Additional videos
(via brentpafford)
“Aestivation or æstivation (from Latin aestas, summer, but also spelled “estivation” in American English) is a state of animal dormancy, similar to hibernation, characterized by inactivity and a lowered metabolic rate, that is entered in response to high temperatures and arid conditions.[1] It takes place during times of heat and dryness, the hot dry season, which are often the summer months.”
Dear divers - this blog is inspired both by my love of clay and my students’ enthusiasms and interests. Now we’re between sessions and the time has come to lay low. The occasional post may come through over the next few months, and then we’ll be back to the usual hum come September.
I’ll tide you over with this detail of the sun’s surface.
Rolling a foot ring onto a bowl. Here’s a good clear demo of an alternative technique. Three notes:
1. The bottle lid is used like a snowshoe to distribute the downward pressure over a larger area without pushing through.
2. He’s using a bat that has a sticky rubber surface that grabs the pot without having to secure it with water or clay wads. It’s not a perfect hold - you can lose pieces if you’re not careful - but it can be a real time saver.
3. He uses a technique I’ve stumbled on but was not taught that I call finger burnishing. It can border on dry throwing - reshaping the soft leather hard clay and smoothing the surface.
Last minute call to Nashville ceramic students and aficionados: we’ll walk through the Art of the Ancient Americas exhibit at the Frist tonight (May 9). Meet us in the hall outside the exhibit on the second floor at 6. Bring your school photo ID and get in free. And bring a sketch pad - the Frist doesn’t allow cameras!
Helen Frankenthaler, 1969
This is what I like: someone is clearly standing in front of Frankenthaler with a camera, and yet I don’t see her caught up in that. What I see is the depth of how occupied she is. This is one of the chief gifts of artistic pursuits, that delicious grave quality of engagement that lifts us up out of ourselves and into the work.
New vase form: the shoulder vase. In a shoot out between memorized Chaucer and stylized sunflowers, the sunflowers won out. What do you think?
francesc burgos / three-legged vessel, stoneware with slips
reminds me of Chinese Neolithic tripods
