Attention All Ceramics Artists!

SCC is now accepting applications for our Raphael Prize Exhibition. All finalists to be included in exhibition at SCC. Winner receives $5,000, video profile and feature exhibition.

In 1997, in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Society for Contemporary Craft, a $5,000 prize for excellence in the field of contemporary craft was established.  The biennial award is given in conjunction with a catalogue, juried exhibition at SCC, and video profile. This opportunity is funded by the daughters of Elizabeth R. Raphael, the founder of SCC and a nationally known figure in the contemporary art scene for many decades.

Each year a different craft material is chosen to define the exhibition. This year (2013) explores clay. The overall theme for each iteration is “Transformation.” 

Applications can be downloaded on SCC's Website. 

APPLICATIONS ARE DUE JUNE 14, 2013

Past winners and video profiles can be seen on SCC's website. 

Frequently Asked Questions

SunKoo Yuh

Memory of Pikesville 

34 x 29 x 26 in.   

2003 Raphael Prize Winner in Ceramics

Poly Poly Polymer!

In January and February SCC is offering a couple of Polymer clay classes. This is a first on a series of posts to show the variety of work created with the material.

Polymer clay is an incredibly versatile material. It is a synthetic modeling compound that comes in a variety of colors and ranges from translucent to opaque to metallic and liquid. It hardens at a low temperature (between 250°F and 300°F) allowing it to be cured in a regular oven. During this process the material doesn’t shift colors or size. Once cured it is strong, durable, flexible and lightweight.

Using accessible tools It can be rolled, sheeted, molded, sculpted, textured, stamped, extruded, it accepts inclusions, holds inks and paints, is conducive to image transfers and silkscreen; once cured it can be carved, sanded and polished. It also lends itself to imitative techniques: glass (millefiori), jade, coral, turquoise, ivory, wood, opal, and really anything people can imagine.

Polymer began being used by artists in the 1970s. Now a day it is used in jewelry, sculpture, wall art, furniture, installations, mosaic art, books, just to name a few of its uses.

But there is nothing like images to show the possibilities…

Elsie Winters

Maggie Maggio

Loretta Lam

Janna Lehman

Donna Kato

Celine Charuau/Grisbleu

Ronna Sarvas Witman

Tory Hughes

Wendy Malinow

Ford/Forlano

Cynthia Toops

Julie Eaks

Sarah Shriver

Carol Simmons

Melanie West

Rachel Carren

Dan Cormier

Kathleen Dustin

Katrin Neumaier

If you’d like to try your hand at Polymer clay Laura Tabakman will be teaching two workshops at SCC:

Try it: Polymer Clay T013012 Wednesday, January 30th  @ 6-9

Polymer Necklace MM020913b on Saturday February 9 @ 10-4 

Laura Tabakman

For more information or to register, call Sherrard Bostwick at 412.261.7003 x25, email thestudio@contemporarycraft.org or use our new online registration by clicking here.

Ceramic Artist of the Year!

Ayumi Horie is. Awesome.


I first got turned onto her work at NCECA, I can't remember which one, but I want to say Baltimore. Her work is unselfconscious and delicate. It draws on imagery that is both historic and contemporary. In addition to her ceramic work, Ayumi is a pioneer in utilizing the web for marketing her work, something that the ceramics world has been very resistant to. For these reasons and more, Ayumi was named Ceramic Artist of the Year by Ceramics Monthly!

Ayumi is a studio potter in upstate New York. She creates well-crafted, simplistic functional pottery that comes alive with curious illustrations featuring animals and letters. Her subject matter is sweet and her execution is very well developed. 

I am fascinated by the "Dry" throwing technique she uses and can not wait to try it! Check out this video she made which demonstrates the technique.

And, perhaps most impressive, is her commitment to humanitarianism. The day after the earthquake and tsunami hit Japan in 2011, Ayumi co-founded Handmade for Japan. This amazing project has raised almost $100,000  GlobalGiving’s Japan Earthquake and Tsunami Relief Fund.

  

Read all about Ayumi and her Ceramic Artist of the Year award here.

The Thin Line of Embodiment

The Captain's Congress,  an installation by artist Anne Drew Potter, is currently on view at the Society for Contemporary Craft. This 25 foot installation consists of 16 distorted figures. All but one of the figures are placed in a circle, each wearing a jaunty sailor-style hat made from newspaper. The 15 “Captains” are depicted talking at once, in an animated manner, and the lone figure seated outside of the circle—ironically larger, more naturally rendered—is at the mercy of these shorter and more distorted figures. Her face betrays a hidden voice, a desire to share and an interest in being included in the group. The installation explores concepts of self-appointed authority, ineffective communication, bullying and victimization.

With an interest in the complex and contradictory nature of the human experience, Potter creates “performative” clay figures and unsettling installations that address the ways in which social meaning is projected onto forms of the body. By creating a tension between physical forms and exaggerated expressions Potter highlights signifiers of gender, race, and age and encourages viewers to confront their feelings about normalcy and difference. The artist explains, “I am interested in the moment when the self-evidence of our own experiences is challenged by confrontation with the other, the infinity of realities that exist outside of our own.” 

In his essay for this exhibition, The Thin Line of Embodiment, Professor Colin R. Johnson explains, "From a conceptual perspective, of course, Potter’s intention is never to misrepresent stone cold ambiguity as a solution to the sexism, racism, ageism, and homophobia she abhors. That would be easy, but it would also be naïve. Rather, the  point of Potter’s work is to lure viewers into the position of having to be explicit and  suddenly aware of the manner in which they make sense through and around bodies and, by doing so, to force some recognition that historically loaded characteristics such as age, race and sex always define our relation to one another in advance, no matter how sincerely we might wish to disavow their significance. "

Potter was born and grew up in Berkeley, California, and her childhood and education were permeated with an activist social awareness. The artist attended Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania for her undergraduate education. Her studies in history and dance at Swarthmore both directly informed the content and form of her developing artwork and helped her contextualize her experiences and observations in terms of larger historical-social-political narratives. 

Potter went on to earn two MFA degrees, the first from the New York Academy of Art in New York, and the second from Indiana University, Bloomington.  Upon finishing her second MFA, she was awarded the Matsutani Fellowship at the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, MT, where she was a resident artist until 2009. Potter was honored in 2009 by the National Council on Education in the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) with the Emerging Artist award. She recently completed a resident artist at Pottery Northwest.  The artist currenty resides in Germany as a recipient of the German Chancellor Fellowship in order to complete a yearlong project at the Zentrum Für Keramik in Berlin. 

To see more views of this installation visit SCC's Flickr page. 

Brickpitt Ceramic Studio

I had the opportunity to meet Heather Connolly, owner and founder of Brickpitt Ceramics Studio - a new facility located in Penn Hills. I am really excited about my visit this weekend to check it out, the photos of the studio look fantastic!

Who Knew Asheville Had Such a Great Craft Scene?... Everyone But Me

Introducing Becky Berckey, Director of Development at the Society for Contemporary Craft.

Let me preface this by saying that I am one of the few non-artists on staff at SCC. When I started working at here a year and a half ago, I made it a personal mission to learn as much as I could about contemporary craft because I knew I would need a strong foundation of understanding to do my job, as the Director of Development, effectively. This has been and will continue to be a long-time learning opportunity for me - and one that I quite enjoy. 

Recently my mom invited me to go with her to Asheville, NC for an antiquing weekend. I had no idea I was going to be visiting a major craft community full of practicing artists. I had heard of Penland School of Crafts and I knew —at least peripherally— that it was in NC, but I didn't know that, with Asheville being one of the closest metropolitan areas to the school,  a lot of practicing craft artists made Asheville their home.

My mom and I got into Asheville late on a rainy Friday night and checked into our hotel. The next morning, we got up and decided to just explore the city and see what we came across. I had seen an ad for CURVE Studios on an area map at the hotel's front desk. It advertised: "bringing people to art & art to life in Asheville's River Arts District." I needed to pick up a gift and thought it sounded neat, so my we made it a destination during our first day. We followed the map and (having no sense of direction) were driving down a road that was looking pretty deserted. There were abandoned warehouses and factories and it all looked run-down and grungy. Then we crossed over the river and were all of a sudden in the middle of Asheville's blossoming River Arts District. There were a few retail stores, but mostly signs advertising open studios and artists-at-work. We pulled into CURVE Studios, which had three buildings surrounding a small but lovely garden (also filled with hand-made furniture and art). In each building were artists studios as well as small but welcoming retail spaces where you could browse and purchase the artists' work.

The first of the three buildings we went into was a ceramics studio. Three artists — Akira Satake, Kyle Carpenter, and Maria Andrade Troya — each using different clay construction, glazing and firing techniques, had functional ceramic work on display. The second building had more of a mix of artists: Constance Williams, an encaustic painter; Kelly Prestwood, a self proclaimed "artist blacksmith,” and Patty Bilbro, another functional ceramic artist. The third studio had a big open space filled with fleece quilts. When I turned the corner, I found myself face-to-face with the works of Megan Chaney, a ceramic artist who SCC represents in the Store. 

While I enjoyed all three studios and the mix of artists, it was with Patty Bilbro's charming characters that illustrate her functional ceramic pieces that I immediately fell in love with. I picked up one of her mugs for myself that has an ostrich on one side who's dreaming of a little girl on the other. I vowed to take my mug into work when I got back and beg Sharon Massey, SCC's Store Manager, to carry Patty's work (I'm happy to say Sharon has already contacted Patty, who will be sending us work for sale in the Store very soon).

My mom and I spent some time that afternoon exploring the rest of the River Arts District (which, in addition to 100+ artist studios, also has a micro-brewery and several restaurants). And as we spent the next couple days exploring downtown Asheville and the surrounding area, I was pleasantly surprised at how many artist studios and galleries we came across, all of which seemed to be busy with local foot traffic.  

While I'm slightly embarrassed about excitedly asking my colleagues on my first day back at work "Who knew Asheville had such a great craft scene?," everyone, very politely, declined to tell me, "We all did." So thank you all for that bit of kindness. And now I know, too!

-Becky  

Society for Contemporary Craft

Trio of Elements: A Collaboration in Wood, Clay and Silk

Trio of Elements is an exhibition at the Japan Information and Culture Center Gallery in Washington, DC. The opening reception is June 24th at 6:30 pm and there will be a lecture featuring all three of the artists. I happen to be friends with Tadao Arimoto and must say that his work is gorgeous. Born in Nara, Japan in 1949, Tadao's work is inspired by nature. He has some really interesting ideas about how objects record time and how he tries to make his work conducive to that process. His work really allows for a connection to the materials in a tactile way. Tadao also uses local wood from his area of residence in western PA. I bought a couple of wooden plates at SCC's store that he made. They were glossy black and highly textural and I learned about the process. I am going to butcher this, but basically he rough cut the plate and used a billowy torch flame to blacken the wood and burn down the soft wood pulp, leaving the harder grain pattern raised. I don't have a picture of my plates, but here is an image from his website of a great table:

I think that he made all new work for the exhibition, so it should be a real treat!

Willi Singleton is also a highly skilled artist who produces exquisite wood-fired pottery in traditional forms. On his website Willi explains how he was introduced to wood-firing during an apprenticeship in Tamba, Japan. Naturally, this experience colored his aesthetic and perspective on pottery and he returned to the US 5 years later to set up a wood-fire pottery in eastern PA. He utilizes many local materials for his glazes and even for his clay body. Having had the opportunity to handle his work in SCC's Store, I can say that it is substantial. It's not overly heavy by any means, but it has a heft to it. The work in person appears stately and dignified, if I may attribute such qualities to a pot, while also being quite functional and accessible. Here is a picture from his website:

I am not familiar with the third artist in the exhibition, Yoichi Nakajima, who works in silk. The exhibition description says, "Using handspun thread from carefully selected Japanese silk worms and natural dyes, Tokyo’s Yoichi Nakajima reconstructs historic silk brocade. His work is used to enhance the beauty of collections in museums across the US." I would expected that the work is equally as enticing as that of the other two artists. 

This exhibition is focused on these three artists, all with strong ties to both Japan and the US. Each artist finds great inspiration in nature, and, it seems, particularly in their own local environments. Of the two artists I am familiar with, and I will assume the third as well, they all make work that expresses the best material qualities of the wood, clay and silk, allowing the materials to empower the piece. If you have a chance to get to DC to check it out, do.

Society for Contemporary Craft