The workshop covered how Ronan throws and builds the forms from the clay and how he builds the surface decoration.  One of the steps he stressed a lot during the forming process was to compress everything very well.  This may sound pretty elementary but it is something easily forgotten when we start working in new ways and I was glad to hear it.  It’s so sad to take pieces out of a kiln that are broken because of a lack of compression.

Surface decoration consists of lots of layers using slip, slip trailing, tera sigilata, wax & paper resists, and glaze.  The beauty of learning all of this in one workshop is that, even if you don’t use all of them on one pot, as Ronan does, you’ll have them in your bag of tricks.  He did give out the recipes for the slips, and some glazes also.

After the workshop I’ve been working in my studio thinking about the processes that Ronan showed us and trying to apply them to my work.  As expected some things I tried worked well, some need more practice.   I like that, I feel like if I practice with a new process I’ll also be inclined to work it into my style.

Check out the gallery page – Future Relics Gallery

Elisa is very energetic and exuberant, she tried to help the students in the workshop try new ways of thinking outside of our normal boxes.  Of course this is one of the reasons that one takes a workshop but she did it in ways that I have yet to see other instructors use.  The workshop was about creating pots for food and the focus really was to get us to consider shape, form, function and color for the possibilities of each pot.  But something else was involved in the workshop.  Elisa has a teaching style and a personal charisma that is infectious.  It did not take long for a bond to develop between her and the students.  Where this is nice and makes for a great workshop it also makes for a strong desire to continue growing the process and continuing the bond through our own work.

I highly recommend taking a workshop with Elisa, it’s an experience you won’t soon forget.

The short video clip that shows a little bit of Elisa’s teaching style and also her excellent English skills.

ElisaHelland-HansenShort

Tip stands in front of the classroom in something of a ballerina pose and in a very soft, sweet voice explains what the face does when we are experiencing various emotions.  If you study emotions you can see slight changes in brow and cheek as well as eyes and mouth.  It helps to really try to feel the emotion you’re trying to create in your sculpture.

Getting good flesh tones is something that many artist find difficult, I know I have.  Tip taught the class various methods she uses for creating her very real looking figures.  She uses a combination of methods including adding house paint with a toothbrush and brushing on chalk pastels.

This workshop was fun.  Tip really has a passion for her work but she also doesn’t seem to take life too seriously.  I never had the feeling that she was running through a planned script and trying to fit in appropriate jokes at an appropriate time but we all laughed a lot throughout the workshop.  It seemed that her spirit and intellect was infused in the class.  I don’t do much figurative sculpture but I still learned some things that I will use in my work (I already have some new ideas for my plates) and I met someone who I’d love to just hang out with and discuss art or politics or whatever.  I would highly recommend taking a workshop with Tip Toland.

Brinson's Race Barn by Lori_Buff

During a break in a recent workshop with Ryan McKearley I started painting on one of the Rustic Buildingplates. One of the workshop participants started watching what I was doing and admired the work. Then she asked “are you an artist or a potter?” What kind of question is that?
I threw the plate, so clearly that makes me a potter, but I’m also painting on the plate which would make me an artist. Maybe I’m a ceramic artist. I know some artists don’t include pottery as art, even though it is one of the oldest art forms. For some, it loses credibility as art because it is functional. On the other hand, we do raku, which is typically not functional.
I recently read Janet McGregor Dunn’s blog post about how she was treated by a fine artists group. They excluded her because the group does not consider pottery to be art, no matter how artistic her pottery. It doesn’t make sense to me. I think potters are artists and crafts people. However, some people reason that because potters don’t necessarily know what a piece is going to look like until it’s removed from the kiln, then they aren’t artists. Because we aren’t completely in control of the final product? Where it’s true that a potter also benefits from being a chemist, testing often lets us know fairly accurately how a piece should look when it’s complete. I could argue that thought often painters have an idea of what the painting will look like, many have expressed having issues determining when a painting is “done.” I would argue that there are many types of art where the end product is different from what the artist initially envisioned.
Ceramics are included in the definition of visual arts and visual arts are included in the humanities – that makes us all humanists. I wonder what types of questions that would raise when printed on a business card or used as the answer to the question “what do you do for a living?”
I don’t imagine I will be able to solve the debate in this article, or maybe ever in my life, so maybe we should think outside the box as my friend Gary Rosenberg suggests in his video about people grouping.

Syrup Shed Plate

Here’s another plate in this series.  This is a different view of the same syrup shed I painted a few weeks ago, this plate is a few inches larger at 11 inches.  I like painting the larger plates better as I can get more detail and show the vastness of the fields.  I’ve also been working with more low fire glazes and washes.  This plate uses a combination of colored slips (a.k.a. under glazes) and high fire glazes.  I really like this view and may do some variations.

Ryan McKerley demonstrates his technique

One of the reasons I enjoyed this workshop is because Ryan is very entertaining.  The workshop wasn’t filled with uproarious laughter but more of a genial smile and quite a few chuckles yet at the end of three days we had all discovered we had learned quite a bit.  Not just how to carve into clay using wax resist and water but different throwing techniques, some hand building and attaching processes, glazing tricks, how to design a and fire a salt/soda kiln, glaze recipes and even a little bit about the city of Austin, TX (where Ryan lives & works).

I highly recommend taking a workshop with Ryan, it’s very through, moves at a comfortable pace and is a good balance of hands on and lecture.  I also recommend picking up some of his pottery while it’s still affordable.  The Gallery at Mudfire almost sold out this weekend just from people who took the workshop.

Horse Hair Pot

I’m not trying to get all metaphysical or spiritual, with this idea, what I’m trying to say is that when we need something; we can often find it just by looking and knowing we will find it.  I think that’s a pretty good outlook to have.

Syrup Shed Plate

One of the buildings on the farm that attracts me is the old syrup shed.  It’s a few hundred years old and out of service so it’s not in pristine condition but the old bricks are still in place and the metal work, including the huge iron cauldron and gears are still there (albeit a bit rusty).  I’ve even found some of the old, empty syrup bottles in tact.  Being around the shed is a reminder of times long past; seeing it’s decline reminds me of our impermanence.  So I have created a plate with it’s image to save it for just another moment.

Teapot

hidden by plaster.  After many years the plaster stops sticking well and the brick, the foundation of the wall, starts revealing itself.  I’ve also been noticing what appears to be an increase in graffiti lately.  This has me thinking about the message people are painting on walls.  I’m not an advocate of defacing property but I have seen some graffiti that is really amazing.  The difference, in my opinion is tagging vs. urban art.  I can get into a big discussion about that but I’ll save it for another post.  It just got me thinking about what graffiti used to look like and what message I would like to present.  This teapot is just one example of the series in progress.