Tile Garden

While I have made a lot of tiles, tile commissions are another level of stress and commitment entirely. The fixed dimensions of a room and the changing nature of clay through its making and firing process require a mastery of the materials and process that can feel a bit daunting So when a friend and …

Judy Onofrio

This piece titled “Flux” by Judy Onofrio is featured in a review of her work in Ceramics Art and Perception issue 92.  The work is composed of ceramic forms and found objects, primarily bone, that the artist collects and cleans for this purpose.  The assemblages are then unified by paint surfaces that accentuate the feeling …

Inventing the Modern World

Rozenburg Haagsche Plateelbakkerij, The Netherlands (The Hague), 1883-1914. Milk Jug, 1900. Glazed porcelain with enamel. 108 x 40.6 x 33.7 cm. Designmuseum, Danmark, Copenhagen, 793.   One of the best things about the Ceramics Art and Perception assignment this semester is catching up on events in the ceramic community that I missed.  One of these …

Wall-Paper: An Installation by Aurora Hughes Villa

Wall-paper has a pretty bad reputation among contemporary house proud decorators, yet it has so much appeal for artists.  Being passé and completely decorative is just one of the reason to use it for inspiration.  Another wonderful feature is that its broken symmetry and patterning work so well in backgrounds.  Additionally,  wall-paper is loaded with …

International Top 10: Pamela Mei Yee Leung

Early in the semester I did a lot of research for this project.  Power points, web research and books.  All that research went into a gray covered Moleskine note-book that i have used for my ceramic classes for a couple of semesters.  Today, as I ran out of the last artists that I remembered from …

International Top 10: Grayson Perry

It is difficult to know where to begin in writing about Grayson Perry.  He is such a complex and multi faceted artist, for one, ceramic is only a part of what he does, though it does seems to be his primary medium. But also that his work can not be discussed with out discussing him …

International Top 10: Keith Harrison

I have been thinking over which artist I wanted to add to my International Top 10 for a few days now.  Then today I was included in a conversation that helped make up my mind.  The discussion was about the intentional  breaking of a work by Ai Weiwei , whom I featured in my last …

International Top 10: Monika Patuszynska

This semester my MFA program is focused on internationalism.  One of the projects we are working on is selecting a top 10 category based on our interests and then discovering the artists to fill that number.  My personal top 10 centers around artists working with narrative in their work, but not only this.  For an …

Beatrice Wood

  “We are here on account of sex, though we do not understand its force.   There is glory when the sexual force is used creatively, when it is open to the magic of the universe” The above quote and photo were taken from Playing Chess with the Heart, a book of photographs by Marlene Wood taken …