Two weeks until The 35th California Conference for the Advancement of Ceramic Arts!
35th California Conference for the Advancement of Ceramic Arts
Adrian Arleo // Carol Gouthro // Chris Riccardo // Jason Walker // Anne Drew Potter // Kevin Snipes
April 29th – 30th, 2022
After 35 years of tradition the John Natsoulas Center for the Arts is proud to continue the largest sculptural ceramics conference in the world. Conceived by the need for dialogue and direct interaction between artists and students, CCACA 2022 brings the ultimate ceramic sculpture event to Davis, CA. In an intimate setting, you can interact with top artists in a way not possible at other venues. UC Davis, home to the late sculptor Robert Arneson, was instrumental in defining a new direction for ceramic art. Enjoy delightful downtown Davis and be inspired by nationally recognized ceramic art talents.
Demonstrations, lectures, shows—no other event delivers more inspired knowledge of ceramic sculpture for a better price. Meet face-to-face with distinguished ceramic sculptors you might only read about; see and hear from the artists what makes them top in their field.
40+ Major Shows
Local gallery exhibitions and over 30 college shows bring the best work of the year within easy reach. These shows run concurrent with CCACA 2022. See all this and over 40 amazing student shows within a short walk. This is a chance to surround yourself with the top ceramic art of today and the ideas of the artists of tomorrow.
Online Talk: Canadian Ceramics
About this event
Canadian ceramic artist Greg Payce joins Professor Paul Greenhalgh and Dr Claudia Milburn.
Greg Payce lives in Calgary, Alberta, and was Professor of ceramic at ACAD for decades, before stepping back to concentrate purely on his work. Through the decades he has developed a superb form of trompe l’oeil that is entirely his own, in which thrown vessels, sometimes in pairs, sometimes in rows, appear to have standing figures between them. In his work, people fill the voids. Greg’s work is currently on show in the Long Gallery at Messums Wiltshire.
Paul Greenhalgh is Director of the Zaha Hadid Foundation, and Professor Emeritus of Art History at UEA (UK). Previous roles include Director of the Sainsbury Centre (UK), President and Director Corcoran Gallery of Art (Washington DC), Head of Research, V&A Museum. He is academically a specialist in Modern art, design and architecture, and he has always maintained an interest in the ceramic arts, and on the history and theory of museums and exhibitions. He has curated many exhibitions and lectured all over the world.
Claudia joined the team at Messums Wiltshire in 2021, having previously worked in museums and galleries for over a decade. Claudia was Head of Exhibitions and Collections at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester and Curator at the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich. She holds a Masters in Drawing from Norwich University of the Arts and a Bachelors in English and American Literature from the University of East Anglia, where she also completed her doctorate in Art History.
CLAY Voices 3rd Edition – Building Community April 8-10, 2022 IG Live
CLAY Voices 3rd Edition is a real gathering on Instagram connecting ceramic artists across Canada since 2020. Through informal live presentations, this April 8-10 some of the most talented contemporary Canadian makers will connect with other artists and with the community in general during a weekend on IG LIVE. From their personal IG accounts, up-and-coming and established potters and sculptors will be live-streaming during 55 mins. sharing their ideas and work with colleagues and friends. Using a mobile phone, tablet or pc, audience will follow each artist’s IG account, tuning in right on time for each presentation.
This edition, internationally renowned ceramic artist and Professor Walter Ostrom will participate as the Guest of Honour. Janna Hiemstra, executive Director of Craft Ontario, Jenna Stanton Executive Director of the Alberta Crafts Council and Sequoia Miller, Chief Curator of the Gardiner Museum in Toronto will participate in a special Panel Discussion moderated by Julie Hollenbach, assistant Professor of Craft History and Material Cultures at NSCAD University.
Presenters:
Andrea Vuletin, Ontario, Annika Hoefs, Ontario, Amelia N. Butcher, British Columbia, Grace W. Boyd, Nova Scotia, Gracia Isabel Gómez, Ontario, Jim Marshall, Alberta, Jordan McDonald, Pennsylvania, Joan Bruneau, Nova Scotia, Leandra Brandson, Manitoba, Matthew O’Reilly, Alberta, Paula Murray, Quebec, Rob Froese, Saskatchewan
Panel Discussion: Janna Hiemstra, Craft Ontario, Jenna Stanton, Alberta Crafts Council, Sequoia Miller, Gardiner Museum. Moderator: Julie Hollenbach, NSCAD University
Guest of Honour: Walter Ostrom, Nova Scotia
CLAY Voices 3 Is an initiative 100% free for the ceramics community. Gifts through Interac e-Transfer: [email protected] or paypal.me/clayvoices will support the production of this initiative and will be greatly appreciated.
Follow @clayvoices for details and schedule
Clay Voices organizer Gracia Isabel Gómez graduated with honours from Sheridan College Craft and Design Ceramics, Ontario. Currently, she is developing a new body of work as a year-long artist in residence at Medalta International Artists in Residence Program, Medicine Hat, AB.
Gracia Isabel started CLAY Voices in 2020 as a response to the uncertainty and isolation artists were facing when the pandemic hit. The circumstances have improved but challenges still remain and CLAY Voices has become part of her practice, hoping to contribute to the Ceramics Community.
Gracia Isabel Gómez Cantoya
Claytalks @ Ceramic Art London
CAL is proud to bring you another broad selection of talks, covering many angles of modern ceramics in theory and practice.
Friday 8th April
10.30 – 11.10
Rhiannon Ewing-James, Creative Producer, British Ceramics Biennial
Community of Practice – National Association for Ceramic Educators
The National Association for Ceramic Educators (NACE) is at a pivotal moment in practice and seeking to grow it’s community of practice. NACE is intended as a platform for ceramic education across the UK and Ireland and bringing focus to the rich and diverse learning opportunities which are shaping ceramics today. Join British Ceramics Biennial Creative Producer in talking about NACE, it’s next steps and how you can be involved in mobilising our clay community of educators.
11.30 – 12.30
Paul Greenhalgh
A Larger Vessel: Ceramic and Contemporary Civilisation
Tony Ainsworth Memorial Lecture
Ceramic – by its very nature – has always occupied a particular space in the cultural and social scheme of things. This talk will take this idea and make suggestions as to what its role could and should be now.
Professor Paul Greenhalgh is Director of the Zaha Hadid Foundation in London. His previous roles have included Director of the Sainsbury Centre and Head of Research V&A Museum. Alongside this, he has taught in a number of countries and published widely on the history of art and design.
1.00 – 2.00
Tessa Peters
Doing It Together! Public participation and performance within contemporary clay practice
Ceramic art is often thought to be the outcome of solitary endeavour by individual practitioners, but over the past decade or so many clay artists have developed more socially engaged practices. This talk considers recent examples, their political, educational and aesthetic ambitions, and the potential benefits and possible limitations.
Tessa Peters is an independent curator and educator, a Senior Lecturer at the Ceramics Research Centre-UK, University of Westminster, and an Associate Lecturer at Central Saint Martins.
2.30 – 3.30
C J O’Neill
Material Connections
C J O’Neill Works with silhouettes and stories in combination with ceramics from found objects to 3D printed clay. Course leader for BA(Hons) Product Design & Craft at Manchester School of Art, O’Neill has recently specialised in site specific, residency-based projects.
O’Neill will offer insights to her process of making with others through which objects emerge as a result of meaningful connections. Responding to material, people and context she will demonstrate the contribution of the sometimes unseen others in the work we do and the people we become.
4.00 – 5.00
Smogware in conversation with Sara Howard
Projects that focus on climate emergency
Annemarie Piscaer and Iris de Kievith started Lab AIR, a design collective based in Rotterdam, Netherlands, focused on making the abstract problems that take place in the air visible and experienceable. Their first project is Smogware, which started in Rotterdam and then expanded to other cities. In collaboration with Rosy Napper and Jo Pearl they curated the exhibition ON AIR in the hall of the Crossing @ CAL 2022 using ceramics as a medium to raise awareness of air quality.
Sara Howard is an award-winning ceramic designer and materials researcher, whose practice is focused on reducing the environmental and societal impacts of ceramic production. Sara graduated from Central St. Martins in 2020, studying BA Honours Degree in Ceramic Design. In her final year, Sara designed an industrial symbiosis around the ceramics industry, whereby waste from one industry replaces the raw materials in ceramic production. Sara’s methods and processes are shared in her book, Circular Ceramics, allowing fellow ceramicists to adopt the sustainable processes in their own practice. Currently, Sara is collaborating with ceramic producers and mass manufacturers to implement the use of industrial waste on a larger scale.
Saturday 9th April
10.30 – 11.10
Kate Malone
FiredUp4
This talk will discuss the importance and benefits of clay and introduce Kate’s project FiredUp4 which is trying to create more ceramic studios across the country for young people. Besides her studio practice, this is a lifetime commitment.
At the end of 2019, she invited 30 makers to donate their own work for an auction to raise funds to equip and staff ceramic studios inside two OnSide Youth Zones. This was the birth of FiredUp4, now bringing clay into the hands of hundreds of young people in Wigan and Chorley.
Kate Malone, MBE is one of the UK’s leading ceramic artists. From studios in Kent and London; Kate works in three areas: decorative studio ceramics, public art and glaze research. A judge on seasons 1 & 2 of the BBC’s The Great Pottery Throw Down, in 2019 she was awarded an MBE for services to ceramic art.
11.30 – 12.30
Lawrence Epps
Hidden Treasure – acts of acquisition and disrupting the rules of the gallery
Lawrence Epps works with ceramics in a conceptual way. He has a track record for thoughtful, beautifully executed work involving his audience and disrupting the accepted rules of the gallery experience.
He will discuss a range of his most recent projects exploring the nature of chance, success and our relationships to objects of value. Working with ‘the low status and dirty material of clay’ in combination with industrial processes such as extrusion and casting, Epps’ installations ‘invite reflections on conformity, desire and acts of acquisition’.
1.00 – 2.00
Dr Guan Lee
Digital Manual – innovation and experimentation with sustainability of crafts and materials
Dr Guan Lee is a lecturer in architecture and co-founder of Grymsdyke Farm, set in the village of Lacey Green, Bucks, which engages in a wide range of experimental fabrication techniques. Its aim is to design between processes of making and sustainability.
Digital Manual is an ongoing research project which investigates new methods of manufacturing architectural components using different composite materials including clay, while questioning their technological context in the sphere of social sustainability. At Grymsdyke Farm context, place and human skill-based techniques are equally important in an increasingly automated design-manufacturing industry.
2.30 – 3.30
Christie Brown
Untold Forms of Life – conversations with material
Christie Brown offers an overview of her many years of figurative ceramic practice in relation to museum collections, including the Freud Museum, the Museum of Childhood, and most recently the Potteries Museum in Stoke, as part of the BCB 2019. An active member of the CRC-UK she will also reflect on their recent symposium Clay Across Cultures, in the context of the exhibition Beyond the Vessel in Istanbul.
Brown is an artist and Emerita Professor of Ceramics at the University of Westminster. Her work is featured in several private and public collections in Europe and the USA.
4.00 – 5.00
Professor Steve Dixon
Ceramics, narrative and commemoration
The presentation will outline the development of Steve Dixon’s creative process across thirty-three years of ceramic practice, as maker, curator and academic at Manchester School of Art, examining the unique potential of ceramics as a material for narrative and commemoration. Recent projects have focused on issues of conflict and explored strategies of collaboration and co-creation to ‘materialise’ the experience of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK.
Professor Dixon will be giving his talk remotely via video link
Sunday 10 April
11.30 – 12.30
Simeon Featherstone
Keeping it Local with Clay
Simeon reflects on his continued ceramic practice and role as creative facilitator of public art projects in the UK. Using clay to make connections between people and their local environment, he explores how different models of practice can support stronger and healthier communities
Simeon Featherstone develops mixed-scale ceramic artworks in a variety of local settings through his practice, Parasite Ceramics.He also supervises clay activities at MAKE, a new Central Saint Martins’ site working with the local communities of Camden.
1.00 – 2.00
Ceramic Review presents: Adam Nathaniel Furman in conversation with Corinne Julius
Adam Nathaniel Furman trained as an architect, but he now practices largely as an artist and designer with designs varying in scale from mugs and vases to ceramic colonnades and tiled pedestrian underpasses in city centres. Obsessed with ceramics from an early age, he is passionate about bringing art into the public realm in a way that is relatable, non-intimidating and practical. He discusses his wide-ranging practice taking ceramic designs to new heights and pushing the boundaries of possibilities, with journalist, broadcaster and curator, Corinne Julius.
2.30 – 3.30
Sue Pryke
Ceramics, craft and industry
Pryke has a passion for tableware; she works simultaneously across several scales of production, from her own slip-casting practice, to designing for industry giants. She delivers pared back simple forms that are about function and utility, but at the same time imbue familiarity and warmth. Her style is derived from a mix of traditional British tableware design from experience as a designer at Wedgwood to working with IKEA.
Sue Pryke has been working within the tableware industry for 25 years, collaborating with volume producers and high street retailers, as well as making small scale studio work for independent shops and galleries. She is currently a judge on The Great Pottery Throwdown.