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Colored Clay Workshop

By naomilin on December 14, 2015 in

When:

April 30, 2016 @ 10:00 am – May 1, 2016 @ 4:00 pm

2016-04-30T10:00:00-04:00

2016-05-01T16:00:00-04:00

Where:

Sawmill Pottery
112 Main Street #14
Putnam, CT 06260
USA

Contact:

Dot Burnworth - Sawmill Pottery

860-963-7807

This workshop will explore hand-building as well as throwing techniques with colored clay. We will go through the process of wedging stains into the clay, layering the different colors as a starting point to create patterns for slab-building or spirals in thrown pieces. We will then take it further by faceting, fluting and carving the surface to reveal the striations. It is a wonderfully organic process that integrates the patterned designs with the piece. The weekend will include a presentation of current colored clay work by a broad range of artists, as well as demonstrations and hands-on.

Naomi Lindenfeld demo'ing at Snow Farm June Labor Day weekend 2013

Colored Clay workshop

The Winter Forest group show at Gallery in the Woods

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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.