3 Comments

1. 

   shaneshane on December 30, 2007 at 7:03 pm

   Hi,

   shana here – from the Canadian Ceramics group. I’ve been offline for a bit – I probably lost the thread of our conversation, sorry. Sometimes I think the internet/email/facebook is like a part-time job- quite a time-sucker!

   THe conference looks interesting. Did you go to neocraft? The whole sustainability question is huge – whether it is our field in general, or our environment. I’m about to teach my first ceramics class in the spring and am torn between the necessity of the students making and firing a lot of work in order to learn, and the environmental impact of all that fired junk hanging around for millennia – not to mention the gas used for firing!

   Hope you’re having a great holiday season,
   shana

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2. 

   shaneshane on December 30, 2007 at 7:29 pm

   Oops – you said you were at Neocraft in your post about the China on my mind lecture which is what got me started writing to you in the first place- my brain is all over the place right now – sorry!

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3. 

   Carole Epp on January 3, 2008 at 1:21 am

   Hey Shana!

   Good to hear from you! Hope you had a great holiday, i’m finally trying to get back in the swing of things after too much eating, visiting and ignoring my email/blog/facebook…
   I think you’re raising an important consideration for instructors, one that i’ve thought about as well in my teaching and i have yet to come up with a solution to the problem that is particularly satisfying. I think it’s both important to let students have a proper play and experimentation with the material in order to learn, yet a balance must also be struck with teaching the responsibility of an artist, an artist in any medium, not just ceramics, to be aware of the impact of their practice not only to an audience of their work, but also to the greater environment and concern for sustainability. Teaching a value for refinement of skills and the importance of aesthetic choice/editing/and awareness will help push students towards a personal awareness of what is important to keep as precious and what is simply a sketch made in clay rather than pencil and paper. Depending on the students/class/facilities you could incorporate teaching clay recycling so that they are learning how to do that from the word go and see it as part of the learning process.
   I don;t know though, it’s definitely hard to convince some students that they don’t need to keep everything as they want stuff to give away to family and friends and that is a good thing too. I often try to hold regular small critiques as well to help students to learn to see their own progress and to learn to edit themselves.

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