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Colored Clay Workshop

By naomilin on June 3, 2021 in

When:

July 17, 2021 @ 9:00 am – July 18, 2021 @ 12:00 pm

2021-07-17T09:00:00-04:00

2021-07-18T12:00:00-04:00

Where:

Wheelhouse Clay Center
48 Harmony Place Brattleboro
Vermont 05301

Contact:

Wheelhouse Clay Center

802-490-2693

Weekend Workshop:
Colored Clay: Layers Revealed

with Naomi Lindenfeld

Natural objects with patterned imagery surround us in the environment. These will provide inspiration for making pieces from layered, colored clay. It is an exceptional medium for expressing the beauty of ﬂuid movement, the effects of water and wind that transform shells, rock and wood. We will wedge stains into porcelain and layer the different colors into a block. By slicing, carving, rolling, pinching and throwing on the wheel, multi-dimensional effects are revealed. The colored clay integrates the designs with functional or sculptural forms, connecting hand with water and earth. A slideshow of work by artists using colored clay will be shown. Prior experience with clay is helpful but not essential. Due to the coronavirus we wear masks at all times and this workshop is limited to six students.

July 17th and 18th 2021: Saturday and Sunday 9 AM-Noon. $125 plus $42.50 for materials and firing ($30.00 for porcelain and stains and $12.50 for firing).

email Naomi to register at Naomilin@sover.net!

Colored Clay Demo on Zoom

Brattleboro-West Arts group show

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EVENTS

Artist Statement

I grew up with my mother's loom in our family's living room. Not many years later I ended up with clay carving tools and a rolling pin in my own ceramics studio. The pairings of work in this show exemplify the influences of my mother's work on me and have served as an opportunity to both grow creatively and to honor my mother and her life's work.

Lore Kadden Lindenfeld (1921 - 2010) emigrated from Germany to the U.S. in the late 1930s. She attended Black Mountain College in North Carolina in the 1940s and was a student of both Josef and Anni Albers. Inspired by the Alberses and the Bauhaus school tradition, she worked as a textile designer for the New York fashion industry followed by a career as a weaver, fiber collage artist and as a weaving and art history teacher on the college level.

I grew up hearing riveting stories of Black Mountain College, its avant-garde, experimental environment and brilliant, unique personalities. As well, I was exposed to many artists and craftspeople during my childhood and took my first pottery class with a friend of my mother's. I responded to the immediacy of clay more than what appeared to be the tedium of threading warps on a loom.

While working on a degree in ceramics from Boston University's Program in Artisanry, I discovered the Japanese technique, Nerikomi, of layering colored clays to create patterns. I have been captivated by exploring many ways of working with colored clay ever since. I have also come to realize that my method of working with clay - the sense of movement, abstract graphic quality, nature-themed imagery and vivid color - echoes my mother's textiles. In designing work for this show, I was first more drawn to my mother's fiber collage work than her weavings, as a closer match for my own techniques and sensibilities. I later saw that the way I carve into the layers in two directions appear as woven fabric.

It was both fascinating and challenging to interpret a two-dimensional medium within a three-dimensional realm; to not just reproduce my mother's ideas and imagery but to draw inspiration and design the pieces as my own. My hope is that my ceramics, while paying homage to my mother, stand on their own just as her fiber works do.