May 2, 2019 | 6:00pm
Location: Northern Clay Center, 2424 Franklin Ave E, Minneapolis, MN 55406
Learn more: https://www.northernclaycenter.org/calendar/event/mn-nice-program-info-session-0
Join us for a MN NICE program information session, where we will discuss the program’s many components before opening the floor to questions.
Is MN NICE right for you?
MN NICE supports the development of studio work and provides high-level training in ceramic materials, history and theory, and professional practices. Through instruction and individual mentorship, students build skills, knowledge, and insight necessary to create a personal and cohesive body of work. The program is led by ceramics artist and educator, Ursula Hargens, and is supported by the talents of myriad ceramic artists from around the region and from across the country.
Hargens explains, “Many individuals are eager to further their ceramic education and seek a professional credential, but family, employment, financial and time constraints limit their ability to do so within a traditional academic structure. This certificate program is designed to fill this gap, providing a flexible, yet challenging environment that responds to the needs of non-traditional students, giving them quality information, academic rigor, critical dialogue, and critique as they develop their artistic practice and strengthen their work.”
This spring, David McKenzie and Maureen Marcotte are celebrating their 40th year as studio potters in the Gatineau Hills north of Ottawa. For four decades, they have been partners in life and work and share a home, studios, kilns and materials and family life. They have much in common, especially an approach to clay that centres on creating intensely decorated surfaces on a variety of forms. While this focus is similar, the resulting bodies of work that they each create are entirely unique.
Maureen’s work is characterized by pattern either based on nature or geometric shapes. The designs are often formal and organized, respecting the constraints of the forms she makes. There is a quietness to the overall patterns based on a repetition of the design elements. Even when there is a seemingly random pattern of leaves and foliage, there is always a subtle geometric structure underneath that anchors the pattern.
David is a story teller and his work has a narrative quality based on a vocabulary of images and themes that populate his more casually made coil pots, slabwork and slip cast pieces. Passionate about formulating glazes and constant experimentation, David uses a rich palette of colours and textures. A whimsical sense of design and a lyrical drawing line infuse each unique piece with warmth and intimacy.
Although they share a work environment and most other aspects of their lives, David and Maureen manage to create work that is individual with surprisingly little cross influence. Even though they share glazes, clay bodies and sometimes even decorate the same slipcast forms, there is no mistaking one artist for the other. Perhaps it is the differences between the two styles of work that is remarkable.
Since the dawn of humanity we have been on a path of inventiveness where nature has inspired us to create. From the earliest times fire, earth and water are the elements used to create the first useful tools – pots.
The shards of pottery discovered by archaeologists through the ages have been the jigsaws that show us how ancient cultures have developed. From crude but useful pots for cooking in or carrying oil to sublime examples of the greatest Chinese porcelain, human creativity knows no bounds.
From the first, we mixed earth and water to make clay and rolled and coiled it to create a wonderful array containers of shapes and sizes. It was possible to build thicker walled and taller vessels. This technique allows greater control as they are built up and to make the vessel look bigger and bulge outward or narrow inward with less danger of collapsing.
Fast-forward to the 21st century and UK based ceramicist Jonathan Keep – who still likes to be called a potter, has created a link with our ancient past by using latest technology to make his incredible work. He uses the very latest technology to explore the relationship between nature and culture. In the same way as our forefathers, Jonathan has made a 3D printer to extrude coils of clay to build his work.. He shows how nature and inventiveness once again combine to create incredibly original, sensual and highly organic examples of the potter’s art.
