Ceramic Arts Commons^™

Substrato Para Devaneios, Louise Deroualle

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

Clay is my substrato para devaneios, my foundation for daydreams. Clay is earth, a humble, common material that represents the possibility of growth and thus, life. As my substrato, clay gives me stability and nourishes me, allowing me to communicate with and relate to the world. It has the ability to register touch and gesture; it records a moment in time.

My work is an abstracted representation of me: my identity, the way in which I relate to others and understand the environment I am in. I use ceramic materials to create formal abstractions that reveal different facets—physical, experiential, emotional—of …

Domestic Curiosities, Larry D. Buller

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

My art at first glance suggests the domestic, ornamental nature of ceramic objects, but upon closer inspection one discovers a showy, transgressive content that is conceptualized around issues of gay sexuality, the phallus and fetish objects. I create decorative sculptures that resonate with my varied experiences as a gay man. Clay with its endless possibilities for form and surface, is the ideal medium for my subversive intentions. It allows me to blend the rich historical language of ceramic art with the low-brow, and in my case, kitsch nature of craft that one might find in second hand stores. I invite …

Deconstructing Ideas Of Utility Through The Making Of Ceramic Vessels, Iren Tete

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

My work is a translation of memories, experiences, and languages into shapes, colors, and symbols. The fragmented relationship with my cultural identity is easier to deconstruct when paired down to an exploration of process, form, and color. Ideas of containment, strength, and beauty are translated into line, form, and color. A color palette that is predominantly white and black represents my cultural dichotomy. Addressing a perpetual, yet elusive, quest for balance, these colors coexist within forms but are never seamlessly integrated.

I address dichotomies directly through process. Through pinching, coiling, slab-building, and wheelthrowing I vacillate between the need for structure …

Object Landscape, Stuart B. Gair

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

The ceramic objects I create possess a particular buoyant volume and subtle organic surface variation that enable each piece to stand-alone and yet to allure the viewer in for closer examination. A particular articulation of each form creates an aesthetic that allows the object to occupy a space in such a way that evokes a sense of balance and harmony with a minimal domestic setting. Interests in historical forms that possess a full sense of volume provide a framework me to explore proportion, line, edge, silhouette, and transitions. I pare down these qualities to their true essence while still evoking …

When The Wind Stops, Qwist Joseph

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

The sculpture I make exemplifies my interest in objects, their creation and our tendency to covet them. Humans have developed elaborate and diverse systems to categorize and dictate the value of things. As a culture we elevate and protect Art and its display is a platform in which this object obsession is exaggerated. Through the podium of art exhibition, I explore the idea of object-ness. I question the parameters around what defines something as an object, and more specifically what’s necessary to transform that thing into Art. Further, I wonder where the line is drawn between Art and the ordinary; …

Tangled Knot Tied, Shalya Marsh

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

I make formal studies in layering that use abstraction and visual symbols as a metaphor for the complex relationship we as individuals have with language, interpretation, and human interaction. My current work explores ideas of connection through representations of knots and tangles. While knots can signify protection and strength, tangles allude to anxiety.

I rely heavily on format and structure as a means of conveying content. Repetition, contrast, and layering of elements suggest the complexity of relationships. The work is composed of a series of tied knots or tangles, single knot forms in multiple variations, or a combination of multiple …

Land Of Enchantment: New Mexico As Cultural Crossroads, Jonathan Frederick Walz

Sheldon Museum of Art: Catalogs and Publications

This exhibition foregrounds Sheldon Museum of Art’s collecting strength in fine and decorative arts with connections to New Mexico, and, more broadly, to the desert Southwest. For thousands of years this corner of the United States, situated on the north-south trade route between Colorado and Mexico and at the western edge of the Great Plains, has hosted human habitations, each with its own distinctive material culture. The area’s diverse topography and population have inspired countless visual responses, from petroglyphs to photographs. The state’s relative isolation—at least before the mid-twentieth century—provided a backdrop upon which the movement of goods, practices, ideas, …