June 8-11, I was back for the fourth year in a row in Roanoke, Virginia for the Women Working with Clay symposium at Hollins University.
I compare this 4-day event to the enormous annual NCECA (National Conference for Education in the Ceramic Arts) gathering, which this year had around 5,000 attendees in Rhode Island. My second time at NCECA (after 14 years), I found it overwhelming, though fascinating. By contrast, the also-fascinating, small Hollins symposium has an intimacy in which people can connect, both in the symposium environs and at meals in the university cafeteria. Donna Polseno, who created WWWC and has kept it going in for four days in early June for the last five years, intends to maintain the cap number at 50 attendees, at least for the two more years she intends to run it. Fifty suits the size of the studio rooms to be used at Hollins and, I'm sure, keeps costs manageable. The presenters at the symposium (four presenters this year) can see and interact with everyone attending if they want to, without it getting overwhelming.
One note: The scope of this article does not cover an impressive opening lecture by Leila Philip, concerning her yearlong apprenticeship in a pottery workshop in Japan as a woman of 21 some years ago. With apologies to Leila for giving her short shrift, because she comes from both an artist's and a writer's perspective (and I relate to that,) I recommend her book about this engrossing experience, The Road Through Miyama (Random House). Her second book is coming out shortly, Apprenticeship in Two Cultures: Writing and Ceramics. (I will be getting them both for summer reading.)
Linda Christianson was the only wheel thrower, making the type of wood-fired functional wares she is known for.
(LInda Christianson; http://christiansonpottery.com)
A lot of the current ceramics I see have a great deal of surface decoration, sometimes quite slick and perfect looking, now that laser decals can be fairly easily made, or commercially pre-made decal patterns bought, and all sorts of glaze colors and enamels easily acquired. This sort of work can be really beautiful, or border on slick shtick. Some of it is pre-cast, repeat ware that is decorated with decal sayings or sometimes-kitschy images, and it is quite popular to judge by Etsy sites.
Well, Linda is the living embodiment of the anti-slick-shtick. She works on a treadle wheel, not an electric one, and fires her work in a labor-intensive wood kiln. She uses clay slips as decoration, and a little glaze, for the most part letting the ash in the wood kiln paint the exterior surfaces of her pottery as it fires very, very hot- perhaps cone 12 or 13 {something like 2400 degrees Fahrenheit, around 1325 C).
(Linda Christianson, Large Oval Baker, ca. 2015)
(Some good handlemaking discussion ensued...)
(More work on the handle, which will be a bit further blended into the body of the "mango chutney dish")
Linda also formed a loaf of clay into a shape she found pleasing (I did, too), then sliced it with a textured wire into these plates. A discussion of these simple, perfectly suited feet followed.
(Linda Christianson, Plates, ca. 2015)
Linda talked about seeing inspiration in all sort of forms, as in a striped paper fast food container, for example, that when pulled open into its basic template made her think of other vessel possibilities; or a sculptural bit of wire attached to a clump of leaves and grass, like the one above on the wall behind Linda at her wheel (scroll up to the first photo), which she foraged early on the morning that she began her first demo for us. Her perspective is uniquely personal, fresh and funny, and so outside the box that I found it hard to step away. It's very freeing to listen to someone who makes and revels in a bit of art from a clod and a cord. (It took me back to a picture I made on a pane of glass found in an empty lot, in my childhood, and painted with nearby mud "glue" and wildflower petals.)
I did step away often, though, to see all four presenters over the three days they worked. They have in common that they think all the time about their work, and have developed very strong ideas. The artists demonstrating in this symposium every years so far are all about ideas, and ways of working.
(Shoko Teruyama; http://www.shokoteruyama.com/Shoko/Shoko_Teruyama.html)
(Shoko Teruyama, flower-shaped vessel in progress, June 2015. You can see where Shoko removed clay to refine the interior of the "petals", and also where she pinched the edges thinner and left undulating pinch marks. Complex surface decoration will come next.)
(Bird shaped vessel and flower shaped vessel, complete with raised feet and added, pinched rims.)
I was very interested in watching Shoko Teruyama construct vessels from slabs of clay. She shapes the basic origins of some of her forms using bisqued hump molds she and her husband make themselves. (Others she build free-hand.)
We passed around one of those bisqued hump molds. It had been formed as a solid shape then hollowed out, and the surface both inside and out had been finished carefully and beautifully. Of these molds, Shoko said, "This is also our work." Imagine that: the infrastructure (the mold) should be beautiful as well. It is part of the building of the pieces.
The slab for each basic vessel form is very thick, just under 1/2". Shoko adds coils to the essential form to enlarge it. The handmade mold has been a starting point, but each piece will become different as Shoko works it, somehow different from its predecessors formed in that same mold. Set-up time for the clay, in which it firms up somewhat, is necessary at every juncture. Timing is extremely important because it determines moisture content (and therefore workability) of the clay vessel. Shoko removes material from the thick form with a Surform scraper, and this must wait to be done on the second day when the clay is not too malleable. It's a very meditative process, much slower than my own, although what she does is, considering that it is hand-building, fairly rapid. At a certain point Shoko pinches the clay from the bottom of the piece out to the rim line. Pinching gives her work a gently complex texture.
(Shoko Teruyama, ca. 2014-2015. Hand built, pinched, sgraffito through slip, glaze and glaze runs)
Ms. Teruyama was born and raised in Japan, but received her higher education in the United States. She does not relate very well to what she sees in contemporary Japanese ceramics, although she admits not knowing enough about it. She considers what she has seen as too finished, too interested in perfection, so it loses its human connectivity. She is, however, interested in learning more about it.
Of the slow forming process, she said, "some people call it disease." She added, "Whatever I do, I overwork. ...I just have to learn to accept that." Although it was not possible for Shoko to complete all the pieces in the three working days of the symposium, we were able to see her form the clay a good part of the way through to completion in the raw stage, at least. Here is partial sgraffito through white slip, on a plate in the cat series she is working on currently.
(Shoko Teruyama. A view into the creative process. Red earthenware and white slip, June 2015)
(Shoko Teruyama. Sheep plate, earthenware, slip and glazes, ca. 2014- 2015)
(Flower shaped vessel with hollow petal-like handles, decorated with slip, sgraffito and glazes, ca. 2014-2015)
Donna Polseno, who is the heart of this symposium, built hollow vessels as well as sculptural female figures. She pointed out that the female form in art is often made to represent beauty, or sex; but she wants her figures to say something else.
(Donna Polseno; http://www.donnapolseno.com. The beginning of a female figure, with the beginning of two more sculptural figures beside it.)
(Base of Donna Polseno figure that is like the patchwork decorated figure several images below.)
(Donna Polseno figure on its armature; it gets a skirt and the very rough beginning of an arm.)
Sometimes a figure may represent a journey, as in this figure below on its boat, with energetic, pushing-up stance indicating balance;
(Donna Polseno, figure, ca. 2015)
or her own version of a caryatid, with the figure more self-enclosed or self-sustaining, and the vessel she holds more about the thing itself than what it contains; ("I present not just the water inside but the vessel itself"), and her figure is generous yet contained;
(Donna Polseno, sculptural form ca. 2015-2015)
or (below) wearing a patchwork that seems to hint at full and complex life of many parts. (If you look at the photo four images above this, you can see the beginning of the construction of a base of another sculpture like the base of this patchwork woman.)
(Donna Polseno, sculptural work ca. 2015)
Two of Donna's vessels at the museum show accompanying the symposium were hollow, volumetric sculptural forms, using similar surface glaze and textural designs to that on her sculptures.
(Donna Polseno; one hollow vessel begins like this one, with slip-molded squared bowl shape, attached to a slab, and built up with large coils.)
(Donna Polseno, red earthenware, glazes, ca. 2014-2015)
When her sculpture and vessel forms merge, they are more mysterious yet, like sky constellations with their own order.
(Donna Polseno, red earthenware, glazes, ca. 2014-2015)
The most monumental sculpture of the symposium, a head and torso, was built over three days of the symposium by Cristina Cordova:
(Cristina Cordova; http://cristinacordova.com)
We were able to watch Cristina build this sculpture, a bust perhaps two-thirds or more as tall as herself, from the drawing idea to the partly finished form.
She builds from the bottom up, using paper clay, and fires the pieces in an electric kiln. She makes multiple drawings first to make sure the 3-D is accurate. She just "goes for it", knowing she has plenty of information to work with, and usually with lifting help from an assistant in her studio. The pieces, Cristina says, are made in "little cumulative steps that bring a piece to where it needs to be." Timing of drying is what clay is all about, she adds.
Influenced by memories of the shape and flavor of a disappearing neighborhood and life she once knew in Puerto Rico, where she grew up, her figures have an emotional richness partly about connection, partly celebration, and partly loss. Over time, her working life involved some intensive years of 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. plus evenings and additional hours where necessary to complete her works, but eventually she created a shift in her work habits to make room and balance for family life.
This was not a hands-on workshop for attendees, in that we did not touch clay as we would in our own studio practices, or might in a typical one-person demo over two days. But the volume and quality of first-person demonstration and powerful trains of thought, especially if attended over consecutive years, makes this a great happening that is all about the diversity and accomplishment of contemporary women working in clay.