The Year in Review: Ceramics

     Handbuilding, wheel-throwing, figurative sculpture, and mosaic murals were among the courses offered this year by the Ceramics Program to a mix of nearly 600 undergraduate, graduate student, staff, and community enrollments. The Ceramics Program complemented its courses with visiting-artist master classes and workshops, Clay All Night undergraduate parties, a symposium and seminar on Islamic Ceramic Traditions, and special programs for The Boys Choir Of Harlem and Harvard’s Japan Society. In addition, the Ceramics Program helped develop several undergraduate community service projects: Empty University Lutheran Church); the Strong Girls-Strong Women mural project for Dorchester’s Lucy Stone School; and clay prints at an after-school program in Chinatown.

     The symposium on Islamic Ceramic Traditions featured two scholar-artists (Wasma’a Chorbachi and Alan Caiger Smith); three academics (Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Henry Glassie, and Walter Denny); three curators (Mary McWilliams, Julia Bailey, and Kim Masteller); and three artists (Sanam Emami, Neil Forrest, and Liz Quackenbush). Lectures and master classes on the technology, history, and contemporary legacy of Islamic ceramics were presented, as well as study sessions with the Islamic collections at Harvard’s Arthur M. Sackler Museum and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

     This year’s artist-in-residence was Cambodian painter, sculptor, potter, and architectural designer Yary Livan. Having eluded the Pol Pot regime, Livan is the only surviving master of traditional Cambodian ceramics and kiln building. He also uses traditional Cambodian imagery, relief carving, and design systems in new contexts and configurations. Livan have several master classes to Ceramics Program students as well as to Cambodian teenagers from the Boston area. A lecture on 11th-century imperial Khmer kiln sites at Angkor Wat, delivered by Pamel Vandiver, senior research scientist in ceramics and glass at the Smithsonian Center for Materials Research and Education, provided valuable historic and technical background to the rich cultural heritage that permeates Livan’s work. Vandiver also discussed her work on the reconstruction proect for the large Bhuddas destroyed by the Taliban in Afghanistan, and her research at the Museum of Art in Baghdad.

     Visiting-artist workshops and master classes were also conducted by Gala Sorkina, a Russian sculptor of porcelain figures in theatrical settings; Patty Rosenblatt, an artist interested in the changing states of raw clay materials; Denny McClaughlin, a studio potter who creates strong functional forms; and Ara Cardew and Miranda Thomas, British potters who specialize in expressive slip painting.

     Clay All Night parties were held in September, January, and February and attracted a total of 600 students eager to spend a Friday night with friends, music, pizza, soda, and lots of clay for modeling figures or spinning on the potter’s wheel.

     In conjunction with the East Coast Japan American League Conference, hosted by Harvard’s Japan Society, Makato Yabe, master potter and instructor at the Ceramics Program, demonstrated techniques and discussed aesthetic attitudes with 50 of the conference’s undergraduate participants. The students learned to make a form on the wheel, participated in a raku firing, and attended glazing demonstrations.

     During the ARTS FIRST performance fair, six students demonstrated spinning clay on pottter’s wheels for an enthusiastic crowd in front of the Science Center. They welcomed eager children who could not resist trying their hand at the wheel.

     The Ceramics Program also staged large group exhibitions in December and May, as well as ongoing individual exhibitions both at its Allston studio and at Hilles Library in the Radcliffe Quadrangle. From June 5th to July 2nd and exhibition of work by Ceramics Program students and instructors will be on view at the Holyoke Center Arcade.

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