Category Archives: Uncategorized

Thomas Schmidt is a professor and artist, interested in 3D modeling and fabrication involving ceramics. I’ll let him describe his academic role and explain more about what’s happening in the academic world. He also took some time to explain the evolution of his artistic interests and his experiments with qualities and attributes of clay. JW:Continue reading “Thomas Schmidt – Artist Profile”

Stoneware “face jugs” were made by African slaves and freedmen in the area around the Edgefield District of South Carolina. Production seemed to have begun prior to the American civil war (1861-1864), perhaps back to the early 1800s. There are collections of these face jugs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York asContinue reading “Face Jugs from the 1800s”

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The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a new podcast called Immaterial. The Met explains the podcast this way: “Immaterial examines the materials of art and what they can reveal about history, humanity, and the world at large.” The most recent podcast is entitled “Clay”. I’ve listened to the episodes on paper, concrete and now clay.Continue reading “Immaterial: Clay (Podcast)”

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Chris Alveshere is an interesting ceramic artist in that his work is highly focused on color and color combinations, which I do not often find. I spoke with Chris about the progression of his work and how color has come to be so central to his creative vision. Interestingly, Chris mentions multiple sources that influenceContinue reading “Chris Alveshere – Artist Profile”

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Curtis Benzle has focused on the interplay between porcelain and light for most of his adult life. His porcelain pieces, carefully constructed in a methodical way, reveal themselves when light is shown through the thin, translucent material. Read about Curtis’ creative process and inspiration in his answers to questions I posed. JW: How has yourContinue reading “Curtis Benzle – Artist Profile”

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Years ago I did some multimedia projects combining audio recordings and photography. I’m interested in getting back to this form, which I think can be very powerful. I’d like to profile some ceramic artists. This post is simply testing the upload of a .mov file format onto this blog. There’s a lot of technical mumbo-jumboContinue reading “Multimedia Test”

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In September 2020 I wrote an article on the Mimbres pottery collection at Western New Mexico University. I wrote the article during Covid, so I was unable to visit the museum at the time. Today, that changed. Although WNMU is a small university, their collection of Mimbres ceramics is outstanding. Simply outstanding. I’m told thatContinue reading “Mimbres Pottery at WNMU”

Here’s a short (7 minute) silent film from 1926 documenting ceramic production. Its a short watch and kinda’ fun: the story-line, the silent movie with musical soundtrack, and the documentation of ceramic production that really hasn’t changed all that much in almost 100 years (apart from bricking up the kiln prior to firing). That’s oneContinue reading “The Pottery Maker (Silent Film)”

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I recently completed a course in figure sculpture. Instead of the typical stoneware clay I use for ceramics, we used oil-based clay for the sculpture. After creating the sculpture in oil-based clay, one normally creates a mold and then either creates bronze or resin casts of the sculpture from the mold. I thought I wouldContinue reading “Mold-Making Experiments”

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Here’s an interesting challenge for yourself. Take a minute to see how well you do at throwing and decorating a vessel online. It’s not as easy as it looks! Here’s the link to try this out if clicking on the image above doesn’t work: https://artsandculture.google.com/experiment/3d-pottery/nwHg1D0riJ1ltA It looks like Google is just building this out rightContinue reading “Google Arts: 3D Pottery Experiment”

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