Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Surface Design Workshop

Last weekend I led a workshop at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts investigating surface design on pottery.  The course was developed by Linda Arbuckle to allow students to explore, through creating multiples, personal content through surface decisions.  We started off with color collage, used a viewfinder to hone in on composition and color proportion and then we translated that information to a series of paper plates.
paper plate compositions
We used single color decal sheets from Chinese Clay Art and cut them up to create shapes and imagery on commercial china plates.

The class was part of Arrowmont's Master Weekend Workshops, which allowed students to explore questions beyond a beginner level.  It was a great fall weekend for the surface class.  Students worked very hard and developed wonderful designs.  Many left with more questions than answers--a good thing to fuel studio research for months to come.
class photo on a perfect fall day
visitor outside clay studio
recognize any of these forms?
Chris was the lucky winner of a Linda Arbuckle dish!