Jane McDonald lives in Petaluma, California where she gives regular workshops and classes in  her studio. She is also an adjunct ceramic instructor at San Francisco State University. She received both her BA and  MA in Ceramics from SFSU in 1983. With over 30 years of exploring both wheel work and handbuilding, along with various alternative firing processes, Jane now focuses on raku.

“ I am  currently exploring the vessel using textured slabs of clay with intersecting vertical and horizontal lines to create my ‘Ribbed Vessels’. Having returned to Sedona, Arizona, d each of the past 30 years to visit my parents, I’ve been drawn to the beauty  of the desert and especially the expressive ribbed saguaro cactus of the lower elevation foot hills. My ribbed vessels take the natural beauty of the saguaro and infuse it with a touch of humanity. Using bold and contrasting colors, I aim for a flowing movement encircling the surface, as you might see in the subtle twist of a body engaged in dance or expressive motion.

“In a contrast of exploration and expression, my ‘Monostones’ are simple, hollow, architectural forms with a broad surface on which I apply my palette of bold colors and patterns. Geometric cut-out shapes in the walls allows your eye to weave in and out of the form and through to the other side. The raku process gives the fired surfaces  unintended and subtle nuances, leaving something for the imagination.

]]> http://www.ceramicsannual.org/?feed=rss2&p=975 0 http://www.ceramicsannual.org/?p=935 http://www.ceramicsannual.org/?p=935#comments Fri, 02 Sep 2011 20:49:34 +0000 kerry http://www.natsoulas.com/caa/?p=935

Leslie Plato Smith, Associate Vice-Chancellor of Governmental Relations for City College of San Francisco, educated at UC Santa Barbara, Tulane University, and UC Berkeley, has received a national award from the Council for Advance and Support of Education, the National Association of State University and Land-Grant Colleges, the American Association of State College and Universities, and the American Association of Community Colleges innovation in using art to advocate and educate on behalf of the California community colleges, specifically, bringing together 60 different art departments to make 125 life size statues to visually show how budget cuts are negatively impacting our students and to fight for public education.

 Her ceramic sculpture has been featured in Ceramics Monthly, the Crocker-Kingsley, auctioned at the Crocker Art Museum, received an Award of Excellence from the ACCI Gallery in Berkeley, shown at the Thompson Gallery, exhibited on crafthaus.org  and is currently being exhibited at the Second Annual Ceramics of America exhibition at the Festival Pavilion, Fort Mason, San Francisco, CA. www.leslieplatosmith.com

Tomoko  Nakazato narrates the emotive tales of human experiences through her animated ceramic sculptures.  Tomoko’s love for all things cute, animation, and West coast funk ceramics is evident in her artwork, although the complexity of her vision and concept seem misfit, or even displaced, to be categorized in such terms.

Tomoko describes her life in the 21^st century being profoundly defined by a sense of isolation; loss and being lost.  “In a post modern world of globalization in U.S.A. and Japan, popular culture, materialism and consumerism are the leading moral and family values destroying the life and natural environment of this planet to the points of no return.  I feel as if I exist in a world that seems to be in a constant state of flux. I am lost in an ever-morphing entity, which is full of blinking visual “pow!”, drips of fantastic plastic colors, and glossy gobs of melting patterns and symbols. Such visual ‘blings’ are all advocating for temporary, disposable, and instant gratifications. I indulge in such temporary sense of forever, but I am often left with a feeling of void and isolation, so brutal that nothing feels endearing and everlasting.”

There is a feeling of childlike playfulness, oddity, and enigma in her sculpture that her audience find familiar, but Tomoko delivers it with a cheek pinching sort of jaded mischievousness.  The fragility of cute pretense gets mocked by crudeness or grossness which her artwork also presents in itself.  This implosive self contradictions may be the delightful creative predicament of the materialistic world the artist exists, indulges, and finds herself trapped in. Clay is a material so malleable and recyclable, yet when fired, becomes ceramics that is solid, permanent, and fragile.  She says, “I like working with the concept of contradicting yet coexisting natures of the material.  What I create reflect on such contradictions and polarity of the reality. My sculptures are often innocently precarious, irrational in nature, and grossly jaded. It mirrors my metaphysical reactions to the predicament of today’s self and earth-destructive mass-consumerism.”

Tomoko grew up in Tokyo, Japan, and moved to San Francisco, California in 1996.  A graduate of San Francisco State University MFA program, she’s received Artist Residency opportunities at Headland Center For the Arts, California, and Holualoa Foundation For arts and Culture, Hawaii. Although she has exhibited her artwork nation wide,  Tomoko loves to remain in her clay “dungeon”, and enjoys a strong cup of English tea with milk in a company of her old cat.

The emergence of creativity is a manifestation of the interaction between that person and their environment. I am always inspired as I feel the interplay through this medium that unites touch, movement and ideas with the movement and emerging dynamics of the clay. It is this interplay between the person and environment that shapes an outcome that is creative and fluid.

The impulse to touch, to “see” what is real drives my work. I feel drawn to Tromp-l’oeil because of this real/not real tension. Recreating objects that are familiar, literal, and nostalgic, are used to tell stories. It is the object and its content that covey the specific message. The objects chosen become metaphorical for what is happening personally in my life and what I see happening in my environment, relating current events and the human experience. Viewers must question for a moment “what is real”, then interpret using ones own experiences as to the meaning and creating ones own story.

In my recent work, I am creating a moment, glimpse in time; but I want the viewer to think past that moment. I reference familiar, literal and nostalgic objects to draw the viewer in close to trigger memory and reflection. This work documents current events and personal experiences. Using objects that hide messages, encoded information and personal data, I compose scenes that carry double meaning. Sometimes they convey humor but also outrage and hurt, exposing disparities that divide family and culture.

Paula Moran comes from an athletic and teaching background. After playing professional basketball overseas for four years after college, Paula went back to school and received a Masters degree in Sport Psychology, to then teach and coach women’s basketball for the next 14 years at various colleges. Currently, Paula is in her last year of San Francisco State University’s MFA program. “I have always considered myself an artist, whether on the basketball court or in the studio.”

Carol Holtaman Fregoso sculpts stoneware. Her pieces, primarily human figures, sometimes portraying small, reverent persons, sometimes larger, bolder, articulate individuals, translate a bond between daily life and spiritual life. The sculptures have a kinetic quality; the women and men characters mean to move through the ceramic. And ironically, in their oddity, Fregoso’s sculpted people – Semitic, open-mouthed, awkward, amorous – tell a story of every woman, every man.

Always assured of his path as an artist, Ray Gonzales grew up surrounded by clay. His hometown was and is Lincoln, California. Home to Gladding McBean’s 135 year old operating terra cotta factory. His grandfather worked there, as well as his brothers, friends and neighbors. Lincoln Clay which mines Lincoln Fireclay is also located there.

Clay is a familiar material that conjures up meaningful personal references to Ray. Whether it’s the dusty boot print from someone that has worked in a clay area; the musty odor of soft, wet clay; hearing the ping of a glaze kiln cooling down or holding a still-warm work just out of a firing. Clay feels like home to this artist.

Graduating with degrees in Art from C.S.U.Sacramento; Ray is a long-time Adjunct Art Instructor for Sierra College as well as Lincoln’s public schools. As an Arts-In-Public Places Artist he has completed large-scale clay works for the Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission, the Arts Council of Placer County as well as corporate commissions. In 1988 Ray conceived of, organized and chaired “Feats of Clay”, a now international annual ceramic art competitive exhibition nearing it‘s 25^th Anniversary in 2012. Gladding McBean’s Terra Cotta Factory is the location for this show.

“Many of my works are narratives. Some take the rich voyage into family and cultural history and many reference common events or experiences we all share. My works are meant to notice, celebrate and reflect for just a moment the ordinary, the incredible, the sublime and the humorous. I’m also drawn to the physicality of just pounding out a slab of clay and leaving the beautiful cracks and tears that emerge and having large areas untouched that will later have gorgeous, overlapping colors of glaze poured over.

I’m currently exploring a couple of new areas: One is a series of large, color-field plates and the other is my “Brown Arneson” series. The Arneson series is a body of work I’m making based on what I feel the seminal clay pioneer Robert Arneson would have made if he was brown, like me. While Arneson was producing full-blast at U.C.Davis’ TB-9, I was a student across the Yolo Causeway at C.S.U.Sacramento being taught by his former students Peter Vandenberge and Steve Kaltenbach. Arneson’s reach and influence was/is phenomenal but I hadn’t really had any fun with it in my own work until this series. “

I was born in Quincy, Massachusetts in 1950.  At the age of 3 my family moved to Stockton, California.  I attended local schools through Jr. College.  I then moved to Sebastopol, CA to continue my studies as an art major at Sonoma State College, where I was influenced by ceramics instructor Gary Molitor.

It was while attending Delta College that my love for clay was nurtured under the guidance and direction of Bruce Duke.  It is his influence that has stuck with me throughout my life.  Many accomplished students have passed through Mr. Duke’s classes.  Most notably being; Viola Fry, Bill Abright, Joe Mariscal and Michael Lucero.

After college I went to work for the Western Pacific Railroad as a Conductor.  I married and had four sons (my most notable works to date).  The art that I produced during this period of my life mainly consisted of school projects and gifts for family and friends.

My sons are all grown and I have retired from the railroad.  After a slight detour in life you can say, in a sense, I have come full circle.  I enrolled in a ceramics class being taught by Joe Mariscal at Delta College.  It was with his encouragement and a comment he made “you could have been a contender,” that has brought me to where I am today.  I am just a guy doing what he loves to do.  As a boy I liked to play in the mud.  Nothing has changed but my age.  You are never too old to dream.

A special thanks to Joel Blum for his friendship, support and telling me to jump.

Maurizio’s current exhibits include The Crocker Art Museum, The California Conference for the Advancement of Ceramic Art (CCACA) and the downtown Sacramento Second Saturday exhibits.  Recently Maurizio was invited to several events at the Crocker Art Museum to demonstrate his skills in clay sculpture, figure drawing and received the Kingsley Art Club Award.

Growing up in Italy and living close to the Verona Arena, I had a fascination for Gladiators and Gladiatorial games. At first I was drawn to the beautiful, sinister, bronze body armor.  Then as I got older I read a great amount of documentation about the lives of the Gladiators and discovered the great sacrifices these combatants made, all in the name of entertainment.  After 20 years of automotive restoration and building custom show cars, I wanted to do something more with my art and decided to take a sculpting class with Professor Yoshio Taylor in the fall of 2008.  While a discussion with him about the difficulties of the medium, I remember Yoshio telling me “clay will humble you”, that conversation changed my life forever.  At times, I feel like I am being thrown into the arena as an artist, and is one of the reasons that I feel a connection with these Gladiators and Knights that I sculpt.  It is a privilege and an honor to be able to create and share the history of these men and women that fought in the arena and throughout Europe.

The Ceramics Annual of America (CAA) is an unparalleled exhibition, the first event of its kind in the United States. On par with events like the Korea World Ceramic Biennale, or the Ceramics Biennial at the Museo Internazionale delle Ceramiche in Faenza, Italy, CAA will showcase one of the largest and most diverse exhibitions of ceramic art in North America.