Friday, October 3, 2008

Influences





I have been trying to process all of the things my brain absorbed at Arrowmont during the Clay Conference and thinking about the demos and the generous information all of the presenters shared. I think many of us walk that fine line of seeing something another artist has done and seeing how some element of that work could fit in our work, without just blatantly duplicating it. I thought it would be a fun exercise to take elements from some of the demos I liked and see what would happen. The first plate was made a la Kari Radasch's demo on hand building a plate, trimmed a la Michael Kline and slips were added a la Victoria Christen (on my new shimpo banding wheel!). This was really fun to make and I made several other pieces in the same vein including a hand built casserole and some square dishes. This is quite a departure from the shinos I love, but it was fun to try something new. We have been studying abstract expressionism in my class this week and I told my kids about doing this exercise yesterday. I told them about the artist Joaquin Torres Garcia and how he combined pre-columbian images with Mondrian's style in his work and how Jacob Lawrence borrowed the bright color style of Matisse, but their work was their own in the end. As Pete Pinnell said at the conference "It isn't copying, it's learning". Another great quote from Pete- "Change comes in times of turmoil." How appropriate for the times right now although he was talking about the change in art along the Silk Road many years ago. Have a good weekend everyone, I'm heading to Charlotte for Gerry's brother's third wedding. Ha! There's a story..................

2 comments:

Laura Farrow said...

Hiya,
Nice work! You wood firing those? Thanks for thinking of me for the December opening. Hope you are swell, and see you soon.
Laura

klineola said...

Hi! I'm catching up on my blogs. I slipped behind in the last couple of weeks. I like your influences! ;-)