Finding Your Voice in Altered Porcelain
Participants in this intensive workshop will be introduced to ways of examining and putting into form their own ideas and inspirations. Various wheelthrowing, handbuilding, and creativity techniques will be shared through demonstrations and slide lectures. Because this workshop will address your ideas and challenges, there will be heaps of individual attention and exchange. While we will be using porcelain, discussing as many different issues with regard to this amazing material, there will be lots of techniques shared that can also be applied to using stoneware or earthenware claybodies.
Whether wheelthrowing, handbuilding, or a combination of both are your thing, there will also be discussions and demonstrations on surface treatments or decorating that include glazing, sgraffito, underglazes, and slips. Altering glaze to suit your own individual creative needs will be demonstrated.
The workshop will conclude with a group discussion on each participant’s work. Like a brief, but friendly, critique, we will give each artist’s work consideration, engaging with ideas about “where to go next,” and how to make work that more actively or dynamically represents its maker.
Skill Level: Advanced Beginner - Expert
$450 - Guild Members
$550 - Non-members
Bruce Dehnert
Bruce received a BA in Creative Writing from the University of Montana and his MFA in Ceramic Sculpture from Alfred University. He has taught at Hunter College and Parsons School of Art and Design [New York City], The School of Art [New Zealand], the Universiti Malaysia Sarawak [Malaysia], and the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth [New Bedford].
Dehnert is the recipient of a New Jersey Artist Fellowship Award, and other awards including three time Fletcher Challenge International Ceramics Award winner, the Settlor Prize in Sculpture, and a Carnegie Premier Award for Works on Paper. He was also a finalist in the Robert Wood Johnson International Figurative Competition. His work is held in a number of museums and collections including The Crocker Museum [California], the Yixing Museum of Ceramic Art [China], The New Dowse Museum [New Zealand], The Liling Museum of Ceramic Art [China], The New Museum [New York City], and The White House [Washington, DC].
While his pottery and sculpture have been featured in many books and magazines, Dehnert has also remained active as a writer having had articles published in numerous journals including, Studio Potter, Ceramics Monthly, and Ceramics: Art and Perception. He has written a number of forewords for exhibition catalogs and books, including “Woodfired Pottery: Susan Beecher.” His bestselling book, “Simon Leach’s Pottery Handbook,” was recently published by Abrams Publishing of New York City. He is currently writing a biography on noted Japanese artist, Takeshi Yasuda.
This year, Bruce was named a Fellow to the International Academy of Ceramics [IAC] and at present is Head of Ceramics at Peters Valley School for Crafts in Layton, New Jersey, USA.