Tomorrow after lunch, that's it. Monday afternoon through Thursday morning is the whole length of this symposium. Today, again, was intense. There was so much effort on the part of every presenter and symposium-goer to fit in as much creation and clay education as possible. Philosophies were flying.
All the while, the clay faculty considered. Consideration after consideration. They pondered and weighed everything as they worked. (That's the making process when it isn't rote.)
Meredith Brickell involved the crowd in making tiny parts for the wall of an upcoming show. She let people take small bits of clay and make any little object they wanted. Meanwhile, she made tiny parts herself from kaolin and organic seeds and fibers, that looked like bent, old rusty nails. Meredith: memory.
Attendees became engrossed, and the room was calm.
attendee Renee made interacting parts
with other attendees engrossed in their own freeform objects
considering formative possibilities
Gwendolyn Yoppolo explained a handle she was making for a cup she made, which I believe was full of her generous spirit. Gwendolyn explored the human interactions involving food and feeding one another and the trust and generosity involved. Her forms are based on interaction between two or more people and some of her ideas involve performance of acts of feeding between two people.
and Giselle Hicks mounded flowers in a blaze of beauty that drew us into its sheer floral whiteness. Giselle's explorations with flowers and highly patterned cast "pillow" forms explored the effect of beauty in the environment and the effect it has on people. She looks at more than what is "beautiful" but also at how "beautiful" affects the person who interacts with it.
Meanwhile, Suze considered handles,
and the gesture created by a bundle of twigs through white slip
and whether to add more brushwork to the slip decoration on a pitcher;
and I caught the connection of color to clay as she added a dot of chrome slip that will turn black in the salt kiln:
While Linda Sikora considered fit and shape of a lid
and what special bit more will make a lid finial feel right.
Linda explored writing, as well, in a breakout session during one of the days of the symposium. All the potters talked at least part of the time as they demonstrated. This was no passive experience. All through the symposium. thought processes were explored, about creating communication and interaction through clay and pottery vessels, whether theoretical or functional art; and five different yet somehow compatible philosophies of clay art gave much food for thought for all of us attending.