Helen's gallery

Sean Forest Roberts:

Lidya Johnson:

Lotte Westphaell:

Exhibit: January 22 - March 6 Reception: February 5, 4 - 7 p.m.

Curator of Exhibits Alison Erazmus looks at expressions of love by artists, including contemporary artists from the campus and community.

I made this during the AD404 class last year.  Since the theme of the show is LOVE, there are various aspects of love is included in this show.  The messages on my pieces are a pure innocent expression of motherly love.  However, there are several pieces of most interesting contents including two small Andy Warhol’s paintings.  

While living in México several years ago, I learned to love “Café de Olla.”  After grilling for a family meal or a picnic, red earthenware pot (olla) is placed over the remaining charcoal and traditional spiced coffee is brewed.  It is similar to campfire coffee.  Usually this coffee is made with raw sugar, cinnamon, and cloves.  Similar to chai, this café de olla is sweeter and fragrant than office coffee or morning coffee that you drink to jump start your day.  

So as a way of reminiscing of my days in México, I made a small coffee carafe and a mug with red earthenware decorated with mexican white calla lily for a strong mexican accent similar to the typical mexican terra cotta pottery.  I thought this will be a relaxing way to start my day with spiced sweet coffee and some “pan dulce ( variety of sweet bread eaten for breakfast or for snack).”  The clay body is low-fire red earthenware, and slab construction was used.  The calla lilies were painted with slip before bisque firing, and a thin layer of low-firing clear glaze was air-sprayed for the final glazing.   

Attend the Visiting Artist Lecture and / or the ceramic exhibition in the Surplus Gallery and post a reflection about the work of Alex Hibbitt. 

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Watch this short video on Grayson Perry (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjKqr2E4QWs), comment about it, and talk about your sensibilities as an artist. 

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Grayson Perry is a British artist/ceramist known for traditional shaped pots decorated with vibrant color and quirky designs and text.  In this short video, he tells what the students may learn at art school.  In fact he is the new Chancellor of University of Arts London.  Unlike in the past when there may have been more or less a certain paths available to an artist, the contemporary art offers wide open territory.  “Anything Goes!”   Therefore it is most important to find out what is one’s own artistic sensibilities; what type of artist one wants to be!  I enjoyed this video, and watched another video of his Guardian interview.  He is rather charming and cheerful, and I agree with most of his cultural comments and even his colors and designs.  

Regarding my sensibilities as an artist, of course I’m not anywhere close to the firm conviction stage yet, although I think my being a transplanted person could be the a main element.  So far my choice of color and the shape seem to be quite “Oriental,” if I may say so.  However, I wonder if I could overcome that sentiment?

I think I would continue to watch Grayson Perry.  He is quirky but highly open- minded intellectual artist.  

Prof Brooks, Thank you for bringing him to my attention.

Post a short paragraph response on how you intend to approach the next project, “6 impossible things.”

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My first thought was the story of “The fox and the crane” from Aesop’s Fables, a collection of Greek fables with a lot of ethical teaching.  The food you enjoy would be rendered totally impossible to eat by the other party due to your inability of understanding who your friend is.  There are many stories like this in this collection, and I’d like to illustrate 6 of them in this project.  

I made a medium size vase with red terra sigillata.  The vase was put together with three thrown sections.   Three coatings of terra sigillata were applied with buffing after each layer.  The surface was then decorated with permanent markers after firing.  The six stories are as follows: 1.  Fox and Crane.  One day, the crane invited his friend fox, and served soup in his usual long-necked jar. Sitting at the other side of the table, the fox had no means to eat the soup hidden well blow the long-neck, and returned home hungry without having dinner...  Moral of the story is that even your good intentions needs understanding of the recipient of your kindness.  2.  A Milkmaid.  While on her daily run to the market with a milkpail on her head to sell, she was overly fantasizing her future:  Selling the milk will give her chance to save enough money to be rich, then a handsome young lad will propose her, so on.   Carried away in this daydream, she didn’t see a rock on the road, and tripped to drop the pail, and ruined the day’s milk.  Moral of the story- do not carried away by a useless daydreaming. 3. Golden egg.  There was a farmer who had a hen which laid a golden egg every day.  The farmer’s wife thought if the hen had a tummy full of gold, why not just take whole thing at once, rather than waiting an egg each day.  She opened up the hen only to find that there was no gold at all.  Afterwards, the hen didn’t lay any gold at all.  Greed do not get you anywhere!    4.  Country mouse and city mouse.  Country mouse invited the city mouse to enjoy the food in the field after the harvest.  They found so much to eat and had fun running around the wide open field.  In turn, the city mouse wanted to treat the country mouse with delicious morsels he finds in the city dwelling.  When they were about to eat the delicious smelling cheese, suddenly there were such a commotion from the people coming into the house, they had to run into the mouse hole to hide for safety, let along eating the morsel that city mouse served to his guest.  Country mouse lamented; your delicious dainty morsels are precious, but I prefer my freedom in my country field. 5. A Bird and a fox.  One day, a fox saw a bird on a high up on a tree with a piece of meat on his beak.  The fox wanted that piece of meat for himself.  So he started to flatter the bird saying how beautiful the bird was,  Bird didn’t budge, and the fox thought up a better idea.  “ How wonderful singer you must be!”  Sure enough the bird start singing to show off, and the piece of meat fell out of his beak.  Do not fall for the useless flattery!   6. Sour grapes.  One day a fox found deliciously ripe grapes hanging high on the trellis.  He tried to take some down to eat, but they were too high to reach.  Finally he gave up and thought, they must be to sour,  I don’t want them anyway!  What one can not have, it does not carry have any value...

Post a paragraph response (3 sentences minimum ) about the following Matt Wedel video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfvw1AX0-5g

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Matt Wedel is a 31-year old ceramic artist who creates large scale pieces representing nature and people.  It appears that he is attracting a lot of attention in LA area due to the unusual take on his artistic expression.  In one of the articles about him, even a word like wunderkind was mentioned.  He grew up with his functional potter father, and he seems to have a thorough understanding of the ceramicness (what we learned in Prof Jeremy’s class in earlier) of the clay, the firing, glazes, etc.  He studied architectural ceramics in Barcelona, Spain, and he mentions influence of the famous Spanish architect, Antoni Gaudí. In this context I see how Wedel’s pieces became so large, and interesting.  I watched a couple more videos of his interviews and I thought he is unique as a ceramic artist.  One thing impressed me was that he said that he can not do abstract pieces so far.  I think I understand why and how he might say that.  He seems to be an honest, unassuming artist.  

Post the words that you rolled for Project 3 and some of your initial thoughts on how you plan to approach this assignment.

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I rolled the following words (chances):

Location:  Hanging

Color:  Blue/Purple

Size:  Cabbage

Expression:  Full

Style:  Abstract

My initial response to these limitations are a piece light enough to hang with surface treatment of light pink - range of purple - dark blue - light blue.  The theme is an evening lake view with purplish sky and water reflection.  

I am planning to make with three designs using thin slab with various surface treatments: 1. rice paper collage, 2.  square block with several cut outs of  small circular holes and thin lines, colored with acrylic paint, and 3.  rectangular block with similar treatment. 

Post a paragraph response (3 sentences minimum ) about Clayton Bailey.  

Visit his website:  

http://www.claytonbailey.com/

And watch this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZl9cqyDuQg

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I found Clayton Bailey a cheerful fun loving artist although some people may consider him rather eccentric and not a main stream artist.  As he claims in one of his videos, the cartoon, “MAD” was where he found art initially as a young man.  His creations using metal, wood, clay and other materials confirm his way of expressing “FUN” in a cartoonish way.  His physical appearance with corded beard on both side of his face typically gives away his approach to life and fun.  His wife Betty Bailey’s art appear to be similar to his artistic sensibilities as well.  Clayton Bailey is creative in quite different ways and a big time Funk Artist. 

Post a paragraph response (3 sentences minimum ) about the following Ron Nagle video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMD0AR9ltGo

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Ron Nagle is a singer/ceramist in San Francisco.  He is best known for variation (altered) forms of cups (or mugs) rendering the object nonfunctional in the style of small simplified contemporary objects with strong colors. They are whimsical, and he’s been sufficiently successful to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship. 

At the same time, he is known as a rock singer/song writer, since the 60′s (He is 76 yrs old).  His style in music is somewhat whimsical and loud, similar to his ceramics. 

I do understand a person who is pursuing multiple ways of expressing their artistic endeavors, and it is clearly seen that Nagle’s artistic sensibility is expressed in both media quite similarly.  It was interesting that I felt that his strong desire and character was both rambunctious, and heard and seen in this video.  

Share some of your initial thoughts, sketches, photos, etc. about how you plan on approaching Project #2 "Breakfast - Childhood Memory".

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I’m planning to make a set of rice bowl and a soup bowl in reflection of my childhood in Korea.  Traditionally Korea families used serve rice and soup for all three daily meals, and each member of the family had own rice and soup bowls. The shape of these bowls are unique to Koreans.  

I’m planning to use Buncheong method of surface treatment which is unique technique in Korean medieval pottery on those pieces with a design of lotus flower motif.  Buncheong is similar to sgraffito technique in which dark colored clay body is painted with white slip and etched, thereby leaving the graphic details on the surface.  The motifs are usually simplified stylish flowers and trees.  It leaves not-so-refined surface that is simple, but rather modern appearance.  

I have thrown three pieces:

Post a reflection on Wayne Higby's essay "If the Taj Mahal was Made of Glass".  Does the idea presented here apply to any of your ceramic works? Could it?

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This essay deals with what it takes for an artist to produce a piece of art work. Built with white marble and the architectural structure of delicate harmony and balance, the infamous Taj Mahal is the prime example of the expression of erotic sensuality and the ephemeral illusion of transcendence.  The author declares that if this structure were made of sheets of hard transparent glass, it will lose all that caressing sensuality and poetic ecstasy and peace.  

The author describes why any art making involves a triangular relationship of material, process and idea.  The intricate relationship between the nature and the feelings radiated by the material, and the artist’s experience and vision creates the idea and the context of the moment.  And when it succeeds, the product channels feeling and philosophical meditation.  Therefore the very question of where do ideas come from is an ultimate question in art making.  The author asserts that the idea is the product of imagination and experience.  And the question is what promotes imagination and what kind of experiences are best in idea generating.  Furthermore, material itself may spark an idea as well.  Therefore, perhaps each of these components is equally important in the formation of an artistic statement.  

(Write a response to the Breakfast themed show curated by Bryan Hopkins at The Clay Studio.  Share some thoughts on the exhibition theme, and some of the work  featured in the exhibition that you find compelling (also indicate why you find it compelling).

https://www.theclaystudio.org/exhibition/breakfast

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This exhibition includes breakfast wares by several ceramic artists.  I’d like to categorize these pieces in three categories; 1  traditional forms and surface decoration, 2.  traditional forms, but non traditional surface designs, and 3 non traditional forms and surface designs.  

I found most of the category 1 pieces are boring and not interesting at all (unless the goal of this exhibition is for sale, not an presentation of the artistry), while category 2 pieces are overly decorative for breakfast ware which in definition requires complete functionality. Among the category 3, I found Emily Schroeder’s pieces are quite functional and attractive. The forms and the decoration are both simple, unique and very intriguing. 

Post a reflection about creating a menu / portfolio of breakfast themed ceramic wares specific to your palate (taste and palette (aesthetic).  How do you plan on starting your breakfast?

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My first thought about the topic was I want to make this meal a specially good for a person:  Nutritionally wholesome balanced meal will be my approach, and with that direction, I came up with the title, “ Breakfast Special: A Square Meal.” 

The word, “Square” means honest and straightforward. “Square Meal” then mean wholesome, nourishing, yet simple meal.  Also, it is said that this term was originated from British Royal Navy serving meals to its seamen on wooden square block, hence square meal.  

So, I designed my project to reflect both senses, however it might sound like a “visual pun” to some people as well.  Here is a graphic presentation of my intention:

Menu of this breakfast is minimalistic, but balanced nutritionally.  Simply 2 sunny side up eggs with toast, fresh fruits, tea and orange juice.  The wares will be in the form of squares and cubes placed on a 12″ square wooden board.  

So far I made the wares for the presentation.  I’ll add foods on the plate and paint the pieces with acrylic paint.