Studio artist Gwendolyn Yoppolo will present a workshop and lecture Feb. 15 at Appalachian State University. Her campus visit is part of the Department of Art’s Spring Lecture Series. The lecture series is sponsored by Bob Meier and Doe Ridge Pottery, the Department of Art and Turchin Center for the Visual Arts. Yoppolo will conduct a workshop and demonstration from 1-5 p.m. in the clay studio in Wey Hall. A reception for the artist will be held at 6:30 p.m. in the lecture hall lobby of the Turchin Center. Yoppolo’s lecture will follow at 7 p.m. in the lecture hall. All events are free and open to the public. Yoppolo is a studio artist in residence at the Penland School of Crafts. She also has been a resident artist at the Archie Bray Foundation, a studio technician at Alfred University and an assistant professor at Juniata College in Pennsylvania. Yoppolo creates kitchen and tablewares from clay – intimate objects designed to be held or touched to the lips. “The forms I make engage the threshold of subjectivity by offering a conduit for nourishment into the body or between bodies,” according to Yoppolo’s artist statement. “The experience is more than visceral, as the body’s pursuit of sensual experience is tied into the process of making existence meaningful on all levels. How we choose to feed ourselves and others is connected not only to our sensations of hunger and gratification, but also to our deeper perceptions of ourselves, and of the larger stories we live by.” Yoppolo received an MFA from Penn State University in 2006. While at Penn State she received two fellowship awards for her research using the scanning electron microscope. She continues to work with this instrument to photograph the tiny landscapes of beach rubble, sugar cereals, plant seeds and insect parts.link
