During this 4 day workshop students will discover clay’s potential for direct expression. Creating slabs of clay to manipulate and draw on, using your hands and bodies, there is the possibility for something intangible to arise. Through gesture, mark making and metaphor a new language arises that allows the clay to let one’s body speak.
You will be able to book tickets from 9:30am on Wednesday 29 January.
Lecturers: Louise Boscacci and Stephen Bird
Location: NAS Building 5 (2nd Year Ceramics Studio)
Clay and drawing have been interchangeable since humans began to draw on cave walls 40,000 years ago. Clay has been the carrier of pigments that have conveyed expression, ideas and symbols from Palaeolithic times to the present day.
Clay is an incredibly responsive material. It has a unique ability to respond to the touch of our hands. Tools are often not necessary in manipulating it into objects. When we work with clay it responds directly and intimately and sometimes suggests what the next move might be. It can speak of movement and stillness and the passage of time.
This program will allow students to explore the materiality of clay and what it means to draw directly with clay and on clay.
Artists: Andy Goldsworthy, Richard Long, Robert Smithson, Lucio Fontana, Asger Jorn, Alexandra Engelfriet, Miquel Barceló
Students need to bring:
- Sketch pads
- Large sheets of paper
- A variety of brushes, both large and small
- Drawing ink
- Empty containers and buckets for water and mixing in
- Towel, sponge or kitchen roll
- Unusual things to draw with like sticks and other natural objects
DAYS ONE AND TWO:
Drawing with clay in various states – wet, plastic and dry
Exercises on paper and then slabs of clay
DAYS THREE AND FOUR:
Developing ideas and intuitive thought through divergent thinking drawing exercises
Formulating inks and making crayons to draw on ceramic surfaces
Selection of other works fired in electric kiln over weekend
Lecturers:
Stephen Bird is a lecturer in the Ceramics Department at NAS. He has an extensive exhibiting career.
Louise Boscacci is an artist, biologist and process thinker who has worked with the materiality of clay and the possibilities of ceramics for the past two decades.
