3D printing is making headway into the ceramics studio faster than ever before. As with all new tech there is hesitation at change and there is excitement of the new. As a tool or method, 3D printed ceramics in changing our understanding of what is possible in clay. In many ways we a witnessing first hand the first major innovation to come into the ceramic studio since the introduction of electricity. Like it or not it is here, so lets consider the possibilities and the potential of new age tech and age old materials. Takuro Kuwata is a radical potter who nevertheless describes his work as firmly grounded within the traditions of ceramics. His focus is to push the potential of his materials, while referencing traditional forms and making functional objects. He is known for a number of experimental procedures, including adding stones to his clay mix so that when fired, they burst or puncture the clay structure, or using needles to catch the glaze of a vessel so that it creates a bumpy texture when fired. He thus leaves the final form of the work to chance, but is careful to ensure that each piece is still functional. Kuwata’s works are also known for their saturated and intense color combinations. The artist tends to favor red, blue, and metallic gold and silver.
artsy Kenneth Price (February 16, 1935 – February 24, 2012) was an American ceramic artist and printmaker. He studied at the Chouinard Art Institute and Otis Art Institute (now Otis College of Art and Design) in Los Angeles, before receiving his BFA degree from the University of Southern California in 1956. He continued his studies at Chouinard Art Institute in 1957 and received an MFA degree from New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 1959. Kenneth Price studied ceramics with Peter Voulkos at Otis and was awarded a Tamarind Fellowship.
kenprice.com Bodil Manz was born in Copenhagen in 1943. After graduating from the School of Arts and Craft, Copenhagen in 1965 she went on to study at the Escuela de Disneño y Artesanias in Mexico and Berkeley University in California. She established a studio with her late husband, ceramist Richard Manz, in 1967 in Horve, where she continues to live and work today.
Manz has had solo exhibitions in Copenhagen, Brussels, Amsterdamn, London and New York and in 2008 was honoured with a major retrospective exhibition at the Kunstindustrimuseet in Copenhagen. Her work is represented in public collections worldwide including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Musée de Sèvres, France and the Museum of Modern Ceramic Art, Gifu, Japan. In 2007 she was awarded the Grand Prize at the 4th World Ceramic Biennale, Korea To see more of her work visit the artists page. christaassad.comBased in the San Francisco Bay Area, mid-career artist Christa Assad is best known for her Re-objectification series -- teapot designs based on objects and buildings from American industry. Assad explains the inspiration for her pieces:
"Growing up in Pittsburgh, PA, I was strongly influenced by the Steel City’s dying industry and the grit of these oft-abandoned sites. Tagged with graffiti and other remnants of trespassers and squatters, the physical remains of these sites serve as archaeological artifacts in the study of human behavior and societal evolution.” A teacher, traveler and full time ceramicist with an MFA from Indiana University, Assad’s work is in the permanent collections of The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, The Ceramic Research Center at Arizona State University Museum, and The Penn State Fulbright Scholar Collection. She was named, “Ceramic Artist of the Year,” in 2012 by Ceramics Monthly. Assad is represented by Abmeyer + Wood Fine Art (WA), Ferrin Contemporary (MA), and Harvey Meadows Gallery (CO). from www.christaassad.com Artist Statement from Cwestsculpture.com
Insistently figurative and tightly rendered, I make objects and installations that result from merging notions of the private with the public and overlaying the serious with the playful. These figures, with their strange scale, unnatural colors, and bodies frozen mid-gesture offer a space to play with assumptions and projections we place on other people and their bodies. This work begins with questions about the relationship of the exterior to the interior, the limits of what we can know about other people given that we never have direct access to their interiority, and how our physical encounters with spaces and with representations of bodies can affect perceptions of our own bodies. |