The Engineering Shops by the Art and Design Buildings have been transformed into an interactive pottery barn this week.Internationally acclaimed studio potter and author Andrew Martin is teaching a three-day workshop that explores both his creative process and the technical process of pottery making.”I’m going to expose students to the process of making things and how I work,” Martin said. “It’s a subjective process. The foundation is based on what I find beautiful.”About 40 students and faculty came to the mold making part of the workshop, which began Wednesday with Martin’s method of designing pottery forms using paper cutouts and templates.”I start to visualize what the space, line and form will be [through the cut outs],” he said. “I’m hardly concerned where they are going. What started as paper will turn into a three-dimensional form.” Martin said by folding paper and cutting it in different ways, he can create shapes and patterns that haven’t been discovered or used before.He said he was inspired by the butterfly and mineral collections he saw as a child growing up in Colorado near the Natural History Museum and called his attraction to the various patterns in butterfly wings and the contrasting colors of the minerals “imprinting.””Imprinting is a mechanism that humans underestimate in themselves,” he said. “I’m a big advocate of imprinting yourself with great images of art. Finding what you’re attracted to is key to understanding you as an artist.”Martin began molding wet clay into the shape of a cutout he liked for a bowl. His thick, strong hands pounded the clay into the right position and then delicately shaped the grooves and ridges of the bowl’s design. His face, hands and clothes were covered in dried clay and dust by the end of the mold making process. He then poured plaster onto the clay shapes, which dried into the molds for today’s demonstration of slip casting, or the actual making of the pottery.Andrew Gilliatt, Ceramic Artist Student Association president and ceramics graduate student, said Martin contacted the group about teaching a workshop.”It’s nice that our reputation of a ceramics program preceded us a little,” Gilliatt said. “We had to jump at the opportunity to do this.”CASA usually prepares for visiting artists a year in advance, Gilliatt said. The group funds the visiting artists with money raised at its semi-annual pottery sales, he said.Gilliatt said CASA applied for extra funding from Student Government for Martin’s visit and received about $2,500 from the Programming, Support and Initiatives Fund.”Being an artist is an interesting thing because your livelihood comes from the things you make, and that’s a difficult thing to do,” Gilliatt said. “Andrew Martin is someone who’s been making pots for the better part of 30 years. As far as seeing the potential for the handmade object, [he] is pretty incredible.”Ceramics students benefit from visiting artist workshops because they get a chance to study the master up close and personal, he said.Adrienne Lynch, CASA secretary and ceramics graduate student, said Martin’s intuitive take on mold making and slip casting is what distinguishes him in the art world.”He doodles on paper and figures out which lines to cut out,” she said. “He uses it so fluidly for something that’s technical and precise. A lot of other people who do slip-casting are rigid, so it’s interesting to see him do it this way.”Martin’s spontaneous process makes mold making and slip casting less intimidating for students, Lynch said. Heather Weathers, a New Orleans-based art teacher, said she had a misconception that mold making was a technical art before Martin’s demonstration. She said she came to the workshop to learn how to make her own molds.He will show students his decoration process on Friday.”I glaze them in a different way to make them not look the same,” he said. “It’s one of the more enjoyable parts of the process.”He said he will give the pieces he creates during the workshop to CASA for its pottery sale in April.Martin’s demonstrations will continue today and Friday in Room 154 of the Old Engineering Building. He will also lecture tonight at 7 p.m. in Room 103 of the Design Building.–Contact Mary Walker Baus at [email protected]
Internationally acclaimed artist teaches ceramics workshop
March 17, 2010