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2012 Ceramics Commencement Exhibition
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CERAMICS COMMENCEMENT EXHIBITION
2012
CERAMICS COMMENCEMENT EXHIBITION
2012
Elbow to elbow, through endless critiques, perceived failures and
successes, a voice emerges. A simple hope for a teacher in the studio
(but one that is trickier than you might think) is to always manage to
challenge, while in many ways trying to simultaneously stay out of the
way. It is the regular engagement with this push and pull that is learning
and teaching. As students take full advantage of the social and artistic
laboratory of education they learn how curiosity, discipline and criticality
combine. Through this process students become teachers as well. They
collaborate, within the context of the studio environment and within the
context of their communities.
These five artists have finished negotiating one of the first bumps in the
anything but straight road that is the journey of being an artist. Not a
“bump” as an impediment, but “bump” in the moment that the falling
child is caught in the act of learning. This catalogue is, in a sense, a
small souvenir of the residue of four years of falling; the more falling, the
better.
and one last directive… Make good art / Art!!
The writer Polly Berrien Berends noted that:
“The child does not begin to fall until she becomes seriously interested in walking, until she actually begins learning. Falling is thus more an indication of learning than a sign of failure.”
Art making is a lot like learning to walk. It is a trek into hitherto
uncharted territory, over unfamiliar and often illogically precarious
terrain. For those who make (as distinct from those who simply
conceptualize) there is also an enormous learning curve involving fine
motor skills, appropriate (or wonderfully inappropriate but nevertheless
effective) tool usage and language. There is the history of art/Art to
consider as well; the history of materials, of ideas, of ways of seeing
interwoven with the larger history of the problematic species Homo
sapiens.
A culture is formed around these issues, a community formed around
a willingness to engage in these complicated questions of making.
Ceramics as a field is both an axis and a magnet. The work rotates
around its traditions and new directions and the impulses of forming
both literal and metaphoric. A community is formed partially out of this
attraction and the collaboration necessary to make it all work. It is in this
place of trust in oneself and those around you that one’s best work can
be made.
It has been a pleasure,
David S. East
Chair: Ceramics Department
Maryland Institute College of Art
Adelaide Paul
Faculty: Ceramics Department
Maryland Institute College of Art
Focus and Riff: The MICA Senior Ceramics Exhibition
Commencement and Clay. Beginnings in ceramics. What an amazing
time to be entering a field that is so rich with possibilities, that the
most difficult part about it for these graduates may be deciding how
to focus their work and forge ahead. But focus is essential, and the
launch into continued studio practice requires improvisation, play
and exploration - what jazz musicians call “riff”.
Throughout the exhibition, in the work of these five artists, both
focus and riff are evident. Caitlin Dean’s focus, for me, is her
almost timelessly elegant use of a material, which on its own has
little elegance. Who could imagine that a series of glass containers
of liquid, each containing a lump of raw, unfired clay slowly
disintegrating into the water, could represent at once landscape,
impermanence, the existential nature of humanity, and more. The
riff is a powerful, simple one that is echoed visually by some of her
more static wall works. The possibilities are endless. Let the play
continue.
Play, and the notion of exuberance are so evident in Rafael Corzo’s
work that I was happy to see it displayed outdoors in the courtyard. I
could both view it at a distance, and still touch it and see its colorful
iconography and surface detail up close. Mass, form, volume and
visual (and actual) weight are among the more formal elements of
sculpture that an artist must consider, and Corzo certainly takes all
kinds of liberties with that formality. He literally plays with balance;
he riffs on material, color, and decoration.
His focus is cultural, and it reads as an authentic and specific
homage to Mexican folk art without appropriating it. Lush and
overblown, this work is a very BIG conversation for Corzo. It has
heart, love, passion and boundless energy and LOTS of clay in it.
As a counterpoint to Corzo’s enthusiastic, material-centered work,
Caitlin Kambic makes and assembles tightly rendered, design-based
constructions of fiber and clay. The material is subservient to her
ideas of balance and spatial organization; the pieces are weblike and
want to hold time, light, air, and thought. Like others in this group
of BFA graduates, Kambic demonstrates mastery of her material,
and she has not made it a facile or easy mastery. Technically, she is
able to carry off the making in service to the concept. The pieces on
view convey mystery and dilemma. They are fragile – the tracery of
ceramic line, the suspension of ceramic elements on fiber –but the
idea is strong. Her riff and her focus play a duet, and the resultant
melody is haunting. This is work that begs the question not only of
“how”, but also of “why.”
Material continues to be explored, but with an understanding of
context for the work of Nellie Sorenson, exhibited alone in the
Gateway Building. Sorenson’s work, like Corzos’, needs a big
environment to demonstrate what it wants to do. Porcelain, that
most precious and responsive of clays, is folded and manipulated
and floats through a field of aquamarine.
Exploiting the whiteness, plasticity and preciousness of porcelain
through its nearly impossible thinness on the field of pale turquoise
– and having it “writ large” is evocative of Caribbean marine plant
life, tissue paper dropped into a pond, or airborne ash. Suggestion,
movement and placement are Sorenson’s focus while she riffs on the
material –scrunching, pinching, letting it fall, moving it around and
freezing it onto its background.
Frozen in place while narrating relationships is how I view the
assembled still-life vignettes of Emery Wach. Wach’s construction of
simple slab-built vessels, juxtaposed with glass bottles and objects
is less about clay and glass than it is about one being’s proximity to
another. Colors, shapes and sizes are carefully positioned. What can
stand alone? What is part of a group? Can clay and glass translate
to a social condition? Can inanimate containers imitate life? Is
Wach’s work about who is accepted and who fits in, versus who is in
opposition? Wach’s focus is in placement of containers, rather than
the containers themselves. Is this metaphor or is the metaphor in
the eyes and mind of the viewer?
All of the works of these recent ceramics graduates demonstrate
competencies that will enable each of them to “riff while artmaking”
and to carry that making on into the future. There is the obvious
control of clay, ceramic materials and technical processes. There is
a remarkable originality and freshness of concept in each person’s
work, and
enough content to pique the curiosity of the viewer. I don’t see
much borrowing from each other, either technically or conceptually,
an admirable quality in work from a shared academic studio
environment. But what is most evident to me is the celebration and
resolution that the exhibition as a whole embodies. These qualities
reflect observation, investigation, critical thinking, and a measure of
focus, all adding up to potential.
It was a joy to view this work and to be asked to write about it. I
thank professor David East and his colleagues at Maryland Institute
College of Art for teaching well; and I thank the student committee
for inviting me to provide this catalog essay. Above all, I express
appreciation to the five BFA graduates who chose clay for serious
pursuit in their academic careers. The broader field of ceramics
welcomes you with joyful anticipation.
Deborah BedwellFounding Director, Baltimore Clayworks
President–elect, National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts
(NCECA)
RAFAEL CORZO • 11
CAITLIN DEANE • 13
JESSICA HANS • 15
CAITLIN KAMBIC • 17
ELEANOR ANNE SORENSON • 18
EMERY WACH • 21
FEATURED ARTISTS
RAFAEL CORZO
Clay is earth, earth is nature, and nature in my hands is art. Art is
energy, an inherent force in my blood, the strength of my culture,
relentlessly working with the desire to express, give, and share the
adventure of creation. In consciousness and materiality where all
possibilities already exist, clay is visceral audacity, innocent and
savage in conception and evolution. There in every moment where
you are, there will always be a place for continuity. Ceramics is a
rational structure in a naughty skin. In an act of love, the grotesque
is a sensibility anew, a synergy between the tumultuous and the
well-behaved. Opened areas allow you to enter the intimate space
where process and theory are captured and give birth to eclectic
forms escaping gravity, expressing motion. Ceramics is aspiration
and wild euphoria where harmony and rhythm can never have
enough embellishments. And I am, seduced by density in ecstasy
- a constellation of colors in a unifying palette celebrating life.
In a constant state of creation and in a virtuous cycle, I dream of
universality transcending ages. These are the genuine feelings and
expansive energy vibrating inside the artist, a true essence. It is the
frenzied pursuit of a vision, estoy aquí con fuerza. It is not a fantasy, I
give myself with devotion looking for all beauty: compressed, unreal,
ideal, ethereal. With this premise in the heart, and clarity in my
mind, art will always be. Like birds looking for the stars on a journey
so far the distance, I keep hope for and faith in a bright tomorrow: so
in love with art, so in love with life, creating destiny.
IMG. 1
IMG. 1, 2, 3 — Tip’ ix k’áak’ [ 11’ X 11’ X 11’ - Ceramics - 2012 ]
RAFAEL CORZO • 11IMG. 3
IMG. 2
CAITLIN DEANE
With the changing state of the world, I feel a greater necessity
to remember and express how we are all connected, how we are
all reliant on the same resources. Themes of the body as one’s
own home are discussed through the use of adobe and local clay
deposits in multiple forms within my sculptures and installations.
Nestled beneath our feet, clay hides within a history underground.
Clay inherently shows the mark of its maker, and to unveil such a
material through the act of digging is to reveal more than a lifetime
of the earth as maker. I seek to resurrect an archaic reverence
towards local and natural materials through the use of adobe and
local clay deposits within my work. By foraging local clay I embrace
self-sufficiency towards process and product. This material
continually teaches me a new language of working, whereas
industrially produced clays lack location and harness conventional
movements. My processes utilize the history of clay and its uses, but
the resultant objects ask questions of the allocation of value within
contemporary society.
For conceptual and aesthetic inspiration, I’ve turned to historical
uses of unfired clay in architecture, mud wasp nests, land art,
and my strong background in drawing and painting. Since humans
discovered and foraged clay to fire and make pottery, different types
of clay have been used in ceramic work within different cultures.
Clay, one of the earth’s most primal elements, has been used as a
building material dating back to aboriginal societies.
Adobe has architectural connotations as a medium commonly
used for building bricks and slabs for large houses predominantly
in the American Southwest and South America because of its
great thermal mass. Although adobe has a very large historical
influence, it possesses the potential to discuss contemporary issues
surrounding environmental consciousness.
IMG. 1
A ceramic object never directly reveals the process it has gone
through, but rather the current state or finished product. Most
surface processes involved happen inside a kiln or outside in various
types of firings. I let nature reclaim its material in many of my time-
based pieces, as clay’s fragility and ephemerality has taught me to
accept impermanence and recognize change. In a perpetual state
of succession, I methodically recycle older pieces to create new
work. By using this material in multiple conditions, raw, wet, slip,
bone dry, bisqued, and fired, I can rejoice in clay’s transformative
properties to mimic the body’s own cyclical stages. Often times, only
the maker witnesses clay’s multiple states. My work engages with
the viewer, to let him or her witness these moments of change and
time happening, rather than be reflecting on time already passed.
According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, clay is defined as “earth,
especially regarded as the material from which the human body was
formed…the human body, esp. as distinguished from the spirit or
soul; the flesh.” The human body, the clay body, and the earth are
one as they encompass birth, growth, transformation, death, and
rebirth.
IMG. 1 — Viewlogy [ Viewlogy, Local Maryland Clay, rainwater, glass, steel - 60” x 9” x 9” - 2012 ]
IMG. 2 — Landscape II [ Local Maryland clay, wood, oil paint - 20” x 20” x 3” - 2012 ]
IMG. 3 — With Legs In [ Local Maryland Clay, straw, sawdust, sand, acrylic - 32” x 44” x 13” - 2012 ]
CAITLIN DEANE • 13
IMG. 2
IMG. 3
JESSICA HANS
Jessica Hans’ current work stems from an attraction to patterns and
textures occurring in specific plant species, rocks, and minerals.
She aims to translate these various motifs found in nature onto the
surfaces of her quasi-functional ceramic pieces. The large-scale
sculptural forms are abstractions of Puya raimondii and the Titan
arum, two extremely large and rare flowering plants.
Jessica received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Maryland Institute
College of Art in 2012 and currently lives in Baltimore, Maryland.
IMG. 1
IMG. 1 — Aquatic Stump Bucket [ Glazed Ceramic - 5” x 6” x 4” - 2011 ]
IMG. 2 — Trio [ Glazed Ceramic - Dimensions vary - 2011 ]
IMG. 3 — Cucumber Vase [ Glazed Ceramic - 4” x 4.5” x 10” - 2011 ]
JESSICA HANS • 15
IMG. 2
IMG. 3
CAITLIN KAMBIC
A tightrope walker crosses a line; the viewer holds their breath until safety is reached
As an artist, I am interested in both physical and psychological
balancing acts of the body in space. The walker is a skilled
craftsman; one who would only trusts the true risk of their practice
in their feet, as a creator would their hands. This delicate moment
between grace and peril, success and failure, is the birthplace of
longing.
Through working with ceramics I explored the notion of structures,
complex systems that are made of many parts. I believe these
systems exist in many places, from city architecture to social
systems and personal emotions. There is strength as well as frailty
in being dependent upon another force. Working in this way has
allowed me to push the clay to a point of near weightless fragility.
These complex systems reflect the heart of our past. They exist in
myths of ancient heroes, and imagery of human’s early innovations.
The first flying machines evoke wonder, just as antique tools bring
us back to a slower time. Materials with a history often help us
remember the past, by looking from the present we able to see how
challenges became possibilities.
IMG. 1
IMG. 2
Through confronting limitations, humans push the mundane in
order to bring about new possibilities that alter life. These exercises
in challenging impossible tasks are the seeds of a new kind of
creative thinking. We can gain new views of the world that allow us
to learn even more about our environment, and ourselves. Through
a poetic image or series of objects, I tell the story of those who push
boundaries and their environments. The technical challenges I
create in my studio practice and the imagery of the resulting work
are metaphors for the challenges we face in our day-to-day lives that
we all must overcome.
IMG. 1, 2, 3 — Circumvent [ ceramic, wood, mylar - 12’x 6’x 6’ - 2012 ]
CAITLIN KAMBIC • 17
IMG. 2
IMG. 3
ELEANOR ANNE SORENSON
Like a child porcelain is constantly testing me, asking and
demanding my attention. Like a lover it guides my hands with blind
persuasion. In the end I realize that I am building portraits of myself,
described by the turmoil and mock precision reflected on the
vessel’s surface. I have an intrinsic connection with clay.
There is inherent frustration and satisfaction that comes from
creating with the white silky material. The method I use puts me
in a position to have a direct link with the art during each step of
its existence. Though I have some union with clay, still the only
thing that I have control over is myself. The substance directs the
trajectory of the vessel shape, but I dictate my reactions.
I intuitively chose to work with porcelain because it is the one
material that forces me to compromise the most. I cannot dominate
its substance but we are both reliant on each other to create
artwork. Porcelain cannot become something other than porcelain
unless I introduce it to form. Likewise my emotion stays an abstract
idea unless I can house it in my vessels through the strain and
turmoil that comes from working with something so malleable.
I am driven to create by the feeling of family, which is vital to my very
being. It is the intimacy between beings that draws them together
through success and failure that motivates my creations. It is a
method that I share with every artist, to love what you do, to do it
because you need to. But it is my borderline incestuous union that I
have with my work that sets it apart. My vessels are individuals, my
family, and reflections of what supports me.
IMG. 1
IMG. 1 — Paul [ Porcelain - 2012 ]
IMG. 2 — All My Children ( detail ) [ Porcelain - 2012 ]
IMG. 3 — Mitchell [ Porcelain - 2012 ]
ELEANOR ANNE SORENSON • 19
IMG. 2
IMG. 3
EMERY WACH
The definition of an artist as one who draws, paints or sculpts has
trickled down into its many visual subdivisions and across the
humanities; now three-dimensional artists tend to identify instead
with the overarching but simplified noun of Maker. We Makers have
to address in ourselves that – as habitual practitioners of creative
production – we are the new mini factories of stuff. Our ‘craft’ no
longer necessarily denotes function and usefulness – sometimes
the exact opposite. When we have an irrepressible idea or theory, we
scratch our itch with innumerous objects until there’s a new itch to
scratch.
My artistic methods span mediums commonly outside of western tradition,
but always very consciously. When I approach a new project I consider
the wisdom of the Naval Officer, Grace Hopper: ask forgiveness rather
than permission – I like to ensure there will be nothing to forgive by being
confident first in my research. I can assume that she meant to trust her
instincts to follow the best course of action, and explain why later – to
not disregard intuition. I inherit my role as a Maker the same way – by
establishing the parameters of my projects with conscientiousness for
my environment and respect for others, I give myself room to experiment
creatively within boundaries.
IMG. 1
IMG. 1 — Reduction Cylinders [ Porcelain with mason stain - 2012 ]
IMG. 2, 3 — Thesis Show: After Party [ Found glass bottles; fused; luster - 2012 ]
As a ceramic and glass artist it’s often especially hard to justify to
myself the essential techniques of my medium without wondering
what missing link makes its culturally accessible for me to use
porcelain, or why it’s necessary to keep a glass furnace on at
temperature for months on end. To inherit the craft comes with
the obligations – they can be motivating, like filling an entire kiln to
get an even temperature and limit your number of firings; but the
most efficient process is still working in a communal studio sharing
natural resources.
This current body of work is an attempt to begin combining all
these things cohesively without being obtuse about my sustainable
methods.
Through using the mason stains to alter the porcelain I was ale to
create a completely different surface without overworking it – firing
a Cone 10 reduction kiln can take over a day; I eliminated the need
for a glaze by incorporating the color into the clay body. Similarly,
instead of requiring an entire furnace of molten glass, I decided to
use manufactured glass bottles and alter them with cold working
methods.
By using a tile saw to cut the bottles, or a very low kiln setting to melt
them, I used the pre-existing ergonomical bottle measurements to
redesign through subtraction. In my future work I hope to bring what
I’ve learned through these semesters further – applying the theories
of my methods into more articulated craft processes.
EMERY WACH • 21IMG. 3
IMG. 2
For more information on featured artists and programs of study please visit the Ceramics home page at:http://www.mica.edu/ceramics
Founded in 1826, Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) is the oldest continuously degree-
granting college of art and design in the nation. The College enrolls more than 2,000
undergraduate, graduate, and continuing studies students from 46 states and 53 countries
in fine arts, design, electronic media, art education, liberal arts and professional studies
degree and non-credit programs. Redefining art and design education, MICA is pioneering
interdisciplinary approaches to innovation, research, and community and social engagement.
Alumni and programming reach around the globe, even as MICA remains a cultural cornerstone
in the Baltimore/Washington region, hosting hundreds of exhibitions and events annually by
students, faculty, and other established artists.
This publication was made possible by the MICA Alumni Association.
CERAMICS DEPARTMENTMaryland Institute College of Art
1300 Mount Royal Ave.Baltimore, MD 21217Office: 410-225-2251
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