School of Art and Design
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Item Ceramics in a Liberal Arts Curriculum(Alfred University, 1960-12) Leach, Richard, B.The philosophy of education has under gone little change since the founding of the college at Harvard in 1636. The aims of the educators have shifted from the general ends proposed, to "…advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity…”, to educate youth in good manners and to emphasize instruction in the arts and sciences so that the student may “…be fitted for publick employment both in Church and in Civil state."* to a more elaborate means to the same end. The persuit of the Liberal Arts has been an attempt by men to discover by free use of intellectual faculties something of the nature and meaning of the universe and man' s place in it as well as the highest values to which human life can aspire. These eternal truths were to be revealed by the study of Rhetoric, which included Latin and Greek grammar and syntax, Logic; and Philosophy or Metaphysics which was, in effect, a course in psychology, sociology, history as well as philosophy. Entrance to college was based on the ability to read Latin verse and prose, and to decline perfectly nouns and verbs in Greek. The chief emphasis of the education was the acquisition of the tools and discipline of logic to the sages past. The two languages were the media for transmitting of the inherited cultural tradition to posterity. Knowledge of Latin and Greek was the key to the understanding and appreciation of a body of History, Science and Philosophy as well as of literary forms which made up the substance of Western Civilization. This Renaissance ideal, coupled with the concepts of duty and discipline of Puritanism, was the ideal of the leaders of American higher education in the seventeenth century.Item Shoji Hamada, Japanese Potter(1967-06) Weltner, George H.Now 73 years old, Hamada is considered by many American potters, particularly those of the so-called "California School," to be out of date. Whether he is out of date or not, he was certainly an important influence on pottery as an art form in this country as well as in England. He and his friend and senior, Bernard Leach, the English potter, are still considered by many people to be the two foremost artist-potters in the world. The material available on Hamada-or by Hamada--in English is meager. But such material as there is is scattered and I believe it serves a useful purpose to bring it together. This is not the kind of job that calls for originality. Hamada’s own writing I have quoted exactly as written, though often in a different topical sequence. The material of other writers, Bernard and Janet Leach, Soetsu Yanagi, Hugo Munsterberg and a few others I have paraphrased as well as quoted, but my sources are always acknowledged. My own opinions crop up here and there, particularly at the end. Where they appear, they are clearly identified as mine. Mr. Daniel Rhodes has made invaluable contributions out of his personal experience and knowledge. I would not have dared to tackle this subject if he had not offered to help.Item Sodium carbonate vapor firing(1974) Zamek, JeffAnyone who has observed a salt firing knows the white cloud which covers the immediate area with sodium chloride and hydrochloric acid. These pollutants directly and quite dramatically affect the refractories and metals associated with the salt kiln in an adverse way, and in a more subtle fashion affect the ecology of the locale. For these reasons many salt kilns have had to be shut down in urban areas or areas which have stringent pollution laws, expensive anti-pollution devices can be installed, but they are generally not practicable for the studio potter.Item My Human Nature(2016) Gazsi, Ben Roland; Hunter, BrettAs an artist I aspire to explore the true substance of my life. I want a ‘realness’ or authenticity in my work and I want the viewer to feel it. But how do I define art? Why do I make it? Memories like this have helped me in the search for answers. They are mostly from early life and many involve nature of some sort. Some of the details are faded, which leaves me only with how I felt and how I was affected. These thoughts and feelings from childhood, the ones that stick with me, string together to form an inherent sense of self. A personal mythology that pushes and pulls me through life. This sense of self, the inner voice or consciousness we all experience, I call the human spirit. And I believe art is its reflection in the form of expression. My work represents my connection to this spirit and reflects a reawakening to it. Presented through both my physical and intangible relationships with my environment, my work takes the viewer on a personal journey of the self. Investigating what it truly means to be a human as part of, not separate from, the natural world.Item Wheat from Chaff A Messy Intersection of Desires and Fears(2016) Barker, JamieI am a product of my environment, but the act of making gives me the opportunity to make my environment a product of me: to realize a vision, to manicure a landscape, to plant a garden, and mount my own Arcadian fixtures. The goal is to probe at the liminal state between physical experience and utopian sentimentality.Item Penumbra(2016) Hershman, Joshua A.; Powers, AngusThe original meaning of penumbra is a space of partial illumination between full shadow and full light. Astronomer Johannes Kepler introduced the term in 1604 to describe the shadows that occur during eclipses. The contrasting and opposite nature of light and dark are combined during this phase, creating a gray area that exists on the fringes between two opposite forces as they combine. My work also seems to exist in a penumbra - a sort of in-between space - which blurs the lines between concepts such as big and small, near and far, push and pull, or light and dark.Item Deft Perception Action and Recording with the Body(2016) Arend, BaileyMy works are records of engaging actions, and what I find engaging is the kinesthetic experience of landscape. The experience of vast landscape defines the structure of the work: feeling strength while being dwarfed by the forces and matter of the world. Records of action are made through the body, but attest to the power of larger things.Item Untitled(2016) Hamilton, GustavI make work that reflects its position as an art object as well as my location psychologically, socially, and geographically as an artist. These reflections and references vary. In some cases a work may have a direct relationship with another object: a piece is propped up with a book that features an image of itself, or a ceramic tile may depict the work that it shares the space with. At other times the reference may be more vague: a stack of buckets becomes a “stand-in” for one of Brancusi’s Endless Columns, or a tile covered with saturated globs of glaze represents the overwhelming feelings I have in the studio. The content I work with comes as I alternate from actor to viewer and from past, present, and projected future relationships to the art world and my position within it. This makes room for both autobiographical and fictional information and areas where the two blur together.Item If Collections Could Speak, What Would They Say?(2016) Stoddard, Emily; Jones, MeghenCeramic objects from around the globe develop distinctive patterns and characteristics that are born out of specific sets of cultural values, and serve countless functions ranging from the decorative to the utilitarian, and the ceremonial to the political. The materials and techniques involved in making these objects are as diverse as the regions they originate from, and determine the aesthetic value, style, and desirability of each piece. I have selected and studied ten ceramic objects from the much more extensive collection of artists John and Andrea Gill, American ceramicists and professors at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. The Gill collection includes ceramic works from fellow artists, historical pieces from numerous cultures, student works, and ceramic works by both John and his wife Andrea. The Gills have acquired the objects in their collection throughout their travels and interactions with others working in the field, and the collection harbors influences and inspiration to John's work as an artist, as well as his appreciation for and celebration of the ceramic medium. This research aims to analyze a sliver of the history of global ceramics. I will first reflect on the theoretical aspects of collections and collecting, and then examine a small selection of pre-modern, modern, and contemporary ceramic objects. Finally, I will argue that the roots of the Gill collection include an intangible accumulation of historical references and cultural influences that fuse 3 together to become the backbone of the postmodern aesthetic—a collection in and of itself—that defines John Gill's personal style as an artist.Item Untitled(2016) Taylor, AustynThe contemporary /civilized way of life exalts a dead materialist universe over an alive one. This sediment has a devastating effect on the collective psyche. 2016: our popular mythology does not regard life as the bottom line. Raising our families in cultural traditions which punish divergent thinking and emotional honesty creates a pervasive “contempt for life.” Take the common ritual greeting, “How are you?” The acceptable response is always “good.” One should always make an emotional denial to affirm one’s alienation. Maintaining a culture that lacks empathy for self and others permits greater tragedies to be ignored and thereby made acceptable. The results accumulate as the world’s human population in bondage; mental and/or physical slavery and for the rest mere survival in some variety of earthly hellscape.Item Sensing Time(2016) Chavez, Yasmina; Bode, Peer; Lattanzi, Barbara; Scheer, JosephThe casino environment furnishes the experience of timelessness, which is activated through an infinitely looping hand action. Pushing buttons or pulling levers (slot machine), holding, flicking or arranging cards (table games), and rolling or throwing dice (roulette table) are some examples of this looping hand action. The action holds the gambler in place until they run out of money, win, or something from 24-hour calendar day society pulls them away. Both the casino environment and the 24-hour calendar day society weave in and out of each other like soap bubbles in the wind. These two bubbles of time exist inside a larger bubble – the desert, which visibly surrounds the city a full 360 degrees. It is not only visible everywhere, but it is also felt through the tremendous heat and dry air that it breathes. On some of the hottest days everything seems to pause, even the air. Time in the desert is experienced on a massive scale, as if the land, which exudes a sense of finality, an end of calendar-time and eternality of both, had swallowed time.Item De.creation(2016) Foley, Colleen MarieI choose not to name myself a particular kind of artist. My title is not Video Artist, Performance Artist, Musician, or Writer. I have tried to characterize myself in that way before (as a painter) and it was a mistake. Moment to moment, project to project, I am some combination of names or none of them at all. I am a collection of fragments which are constantly rearranged and altered. I welcome this change, striving to embody the kind of fluidity I contemplate within my work.Item Deft Perception Allusions of Reality(2016) Thompsett, HannahEach of our senses plays a role in understanding space and objects. We learn to anticipate spatial and temporal relationships through the interaction of visual, auditory, and vestibular processes. Representation is an attempt to emulate reality, and when encountering a representation of a space or an object, we use the same experiential knowledge from our perceived realities to make sense of the depiction. Through projection of our experiential knowledge, we can understand a range of likeness beginning at a mere suggestion of form or space. In the case of pictorial representation, we interpret a depiction in relation to our experienced reality using vision alone. So, if we understand both reality and representation through vision and experiential knowledge, how does our encounter with actuality compare to our encounter with representation?Item The Aesthetics of Forgetting(2016) Torrence, Virginia RoseThere are certain symbols, types of touch, and a personal aesthetic that emerge from this process of searching. Some reoccurring symbols within my work are hair, fabric, holes, eyes, impressions, fruit, jewelry, and flesh. All of these objects reference the body, but they are devoid of the presence which once employed them, so now point to an absence. I portray the presence of absence. The objects I use act as a metaphor for an intense desire for something lost. The way in which the imagery is rendered, from intangible abstraction, to carefully sculpted elements, to a piece that is a cast of an object itself, mirrors the way in which a memory recedes into darkness and ambiguity or how it may come into a tight and stunning focus. The process of remembering and forgetting is always in flux. Even when a presence does come close, it will skirt around the perimeter of clarity within the mind’s eye. I objectify the obscurity of fleeting memory images, creating a monument to unattainable desire for the past.Item Habitat, Body, Story: Picturing the shifting nature of home & Decreation: Thorn Collaboration(2016) Ethridge, Erin Elizabeth; Hunter, BrettAt its core, my work grapples with the nature of things as constantly in a state of flux. I focus a study of home in pursuit of the eye of the storm, but the endeavor reveals all but tranquility. In the process, stories, bodies, and ecologies emerge as complex relational structures that shed light on home’s complexity, interrelationships, and mutability. The labyrinthine journey of the work teases out synchronicities across narrative, corporeal, and environmental modes of being that articulate our experience of home as a living locus of change.Item Wild/Garden(2016) Johnson, Lydia AnnDirt records civilization. We build our homes on it, grow our food from it and bury our dead beneath it. It is our domain, our sustainer, our sanctuary. Engaging with this bodily earth reminds us of our presence. To it, we are grounded, connected and mortal. Wheel-thrown, earthenware pottery is the foundation of my work. Gritty, rich, robust terra cotta impresses raw, primitive, necessity. Coarse grog rips and tears through soft clay, leaving a rough, worn surface, suggesting unrefined wild earth.Item Honoring the Ordinary(2016) Isaak, Joel; Lambert, Coral; Cox, DianeMy grandma could make amazing cookies and as soon as I was big enough to sit on the counter she let me help her make cookies. She would often stay with my sisters and me while my parents were out of town. In the first grade she was taking care of us for a week and I pretended to be sick at school so that I could go home and make cookies with my grandma. This only worked successfully the first time, but we did keep making cookies together until she passed away while I was in college. She had taught me how to sew, how to bake, worked with me on spelling and reading, watched movies with me, came down to the beach and the river to help out with fishing, and taught me many other life skills.Item die Schliche kennen(2016) Liang, AodiIn 1991, I was born in Shunde, Guangdong, China. My past 25 years, is not too complicated but also not so simple. I progressed a little bit every day and that is my life. So far, there are three things that are bonding in my life: Languages, Programming and Art. Born and raised in Guangdong, China, Cantonese is my mother language. Later I learned and used Mandarin, since primary school. When I was 6, English walked into my life and became my first foreign language. It gave me an opportunity to make contact with books, music, and movies in English. I started to realize that languages broaden my eye view. Then I met my first foreign teacher. He is from Puerto Rico and I learned Spanish from him. It’s been a few years since I first went to Paris but I still remember the taste of Crème Brûlée. Later I met my French teacher and began my journey in French. I always had a crush on symbols and totems so I tried to learn Arabic. My purpose to learn languages is straightforward. I want to know what other people think toward different specific objects or from which perspectives they see things. Languages open a new gateway to approach objects in order to know them more. To me, art is a language as well, a point of view for observation, a method for investigation, a way for self-expression.Item The Place That Is(2016) Duke, Emily;The studio is a place for working. Working with material, motivated by questions and the rarity of answers. I feel strongly that my sculptures are unconditionally tied to the studio. It is where material is labored over and articulated with clarity. Material is cast, sewn, sheathed, cut, poured, glued, sanded and painted. Corners are sharpened and threads are trimmed.Item Alchemy Juice(2017-05) Zablocki, Alex M.; McConnel, Walter; Kelleher, Matt; Sikora, Linda; Sormin, Linda; Gill, Andrea; Gill, JohnMy work is a marathon exercise in the deconstruction and adaptation of vessel aesthetics, form, function, conventions and histories. I remain alchemically adventurous by employing a wide range of materials, processes, chance and humor. Through risk, exploration, and random experimental compositions, I push against categories. Vessels are no longer made to use and sculptures operate within a size similar to pottery. In my work, the intimacy of scale alongside carefully considered surfaces and structures invites the viewer in on a visceral and optical adventure in which I provoke the senses by incorporating a cornucopia of rich and exotic theatrics.