Sunrise Studio Media

The Eight-Month Workshop:

A Journey of Discovery

by Steven Hill

The gestation period between the conception and the first incarnation of the “Journey Workshop” was several years. Monique Giard, the director of Centre de céramique Bonsecours in Montreal, planted the seed of an idea in 2002, but it was not until the summer of 2007, with the help of Meira Mathison, the director of the Metchosin International Summer School of the Arts (MISSA), in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, that I was able to bring the concept to fruition.

The premise was straightforward: Bring together a group of ceramics artists with at least rudimentary technical skills and help them find their personal voice. After two weeks of exploration at MISSA, students would return to their respective studios to do the hard work of applying what they had learned to their body of work, with the understanding that we would reconvene in eight months at my studio, Center Street Clay in Sandwich, Illinois, for a gallery exhibition of the group’s work.

In retrospect, the original subtitle to the workshop, “Throwing… Personal Style… Developing a Body of Work,” seems so pragmatic and linear. I intuitively knew the workshop had to develop spontaneously, but what surprised me most was how deeply the class delved into the realm of self-discovery. Most ceramics artists want to make work that is personal, but it’s not always easy to figure out how to do that. For some it is simply a matter of refining techniques, tweaking designs and training the eye to be more discerning during self-critique. For others it involves a near reincarnation.

"What I liked most is that we did not focus as much on the technical aspects of pots but on the personal side of who we are and how that can relate to our work."

—Trezlie Brooks, Crestion, BC, Canada

It is tempting for an artist to look externally for ideas, direction and purpose. In the field of ceramics, there are countless workshops taught by potters willing to share their techniques, forms and surfaces with eager students. In school, teachers all too often emphasize technique at the expense of creative expression. Looking inside for personal expression involves sailing in uncharted waters; maneuvering through personal discoveries. There were many tears shed during an emotional two weeks at MISSA, but acknowledging emotion always led to work that was more personal. It is said there is nothing new in the field of ceramics. However, when we travel our own path, letting inspiration flow through us, our spirit infuses the things we make. Our work might not be “new,” but it is uniquely ours and this honest quest has the potential to sustain us through a lifelong career.
We used Robert Piepenburg’s book Treasures of the Creative Spirit as a basis for group discussions. Piepenburg says “…the human spirit is the inspirational source of all that is creative.” Many of us have built a wall to protect our spirit. This attempt to protect our spirit actually limits access to our own creative energy. Through class discussions and group exercises, we attempted to liberate this spirit. Our discussions sometimes felt like group therapy, other times they were simply exercises for the imagination. M.C. Richards says it best in her introduction to Paulus Berensohn’s Finding One’s Way With Clay; “The feeling of our lives will be awake in our fingers. We befriend the clay. The clay befriends us.”

I have never heard of a ceramic workshop that involved a follow-up session and exhibition. Making participants accountable after the initial workshop, however, turned out to be key to the group dynamic. We knew we were going to meet again and there was a lot of work to do before that time. The gallery exhibition gave us a common goal to work toward. When the workshop ended at MISSA, each student wrote and signed a contract that included a broad outline of what they planned to accomplish. The contract made them accountable, both to themselves and to the group. One student created a Wikispace so the group could stay connected. I planned to set up a webcam to conduct critiques over the Internet. The show at Center Street Clay was on the calendar. We each had our marching orders and had accepted the challenge.

As you might expect in a group of fifteen students, there was a vast array of approaches to the task at hand. Some went right to work and some didn’t. At Center Street Clay, my partner Kim Miner and I were deeply involved in kiln building and finishing our ceramic studio. This, along with my personal tendency to procrastinate, kept me from purchasing a webcam and organizing critiques. Just as my lack of planning sabotaged my goal, many of my students would tell a similar story. Some had worked diligently from the beginning, but many were just beginning to fire as deadlines approached. Only a few students met the deadline for promotional material. Panic started to set in as the deadline slipped by. Two students dealt with it directly by dropping out. One just seemed to disappear. Some asked for more time or sent images of bisque or green pots. We had to assume that the three who dropped out weren’t ready for a program like this and focus on those who met the challenge and followed through in spite of the difficulties. The students who participated in the gallery show at Center Street Clay are the courageous ones.

Life being messy, juicy, often intense and always full to overflowing, many of us struggled... but ten of us made it to the end. It may sound corny, but we had become a family, and the reunion was pure inspiration.

—Carol Smeraldo, East Preston, NS, Canada

The final session at Center Street Clay was all Kim and I could have hoped for. Our new dormitory was filled to capacity, and everyone squeezed around our dining room table to share meals and stories. The studio was filled with meaningful conversation during the day, laughter and live music at night. Students were happy to reunite with their classmates and share experiences. The ensuing critiques and discussions, as intense and connected as they had been the prior summer, helped students understand the implications of what they learned about themselves during the last eight months. We had the benefit of seeing the work displayed together in a gallery setting for the final group critique. The turn out for the opening was smaller than we hoped for, but the group was proud, as was I, to show the work and explain the premise to the public.
So the big questions now are: Did the process work? If so, what did we learn that could be applied to the next Journey Workshop? Did this group get what they wanted from the process? Does this represent a new direction for ceramic workshops? Is this kind of workshop a viable alternative to higher education?

This was by far the most satisfying teaching experience of my career. I have taught many workshops in which I relied on my “bag of tricks” to make the workshop engaging. I show students how I make my pots and discuss my philosophy. This is an appealing process and I enjoy it very much, but it often leads to students emulating Steven Hill pots. In this workshop, I never made my own pots; any demonstrations were generic, as opposed to personal. As you can tell from the photographs, no two students made similar work. For me, this represented success!

Did the process work? As I write this, we are in the midst of the first Journey Workshop to be held entirely at Center Street Clay. This group includes two local potters who came to the opening of the MISSA group. They talked to the participants and, in less than one month, they took time off work, found the money and they are here beginning their own journeys! I can say with confidence that for some at least, the process worked.

What did we learn that could be applied to the next Journey Workshop? Planning and follow up has to be a priority. Schedule everything from menus to critiques. Schedule it, make it public and then stick to it. For some participants, the procrastination then panic cycle is probably inherent in a long-term workshop. Understanding this cycle will help us manage it.
Does this represent a new direction for ceramic workshops? It certainly represents a direction we will pursue at Center Street Clay! Ultimately, attendance and support by the ceramics community will decide.
Is this kind of workshop a viable alternative to higher education? I am tremendously excited about this concept and certainly believe it has great potential as continuing education to augment an undergraduate/graduate degree, or for some, even a viable alternative to graduate school. A ceramic artist/potter need only answer one simple question. What is my goal? If the goal is mentorship, community, structure and direction; then it makes sense to try it. Why would someone with the humble goal of making pots infused with their spirit go deeply into debt attending graduate school? The money might be better spent setting up a studio and moving forward with a group of like-minded individuals who share similar goals.

Trezlie Brooks does China From Jingdezhen with love: Margaret Tessman

TREZLIE BROOKS CAME to her love of porcelain in a roundabout way. After a false start as an electrical apprentice and a stint in life-skills training (“I wanted to save the world”) Brooks took up pottery as a hobby at a local studio in Calgary. It was both love at first touch and the discovery of an innate talent. “Within four months I was throwing mugs for the studio owners,” she says. On a whim, Brooks put in an application to the Uniquely Alberta gift show. No one was more surprised than she was when her work was accepted. After a few up and down years that included studying visual arts at Red Deer College, building a house in Fairmont and a split with her partner, Brooks and her son settled in Creston in 2004. Never one to back down from a challenge, she bought a gutted house that she proceeded to rewire, insulate and transform into a home and a space for her studio. Although Brooks was fascinated with porcelain from the get-go, it wasn’t until she was at art school that she realized that her aesthetic was more Song dynasty pots than earthy brown coffee mugs. In 2003 she had met a Chinese ceramist, Xiaoping, and his wife, Junya, at a residency at the Medalta pottery works in Alberta. Brooks credits that meeting with influencing her growth from potter to artist. Brooks was unable to find a mentor in western Canada who threw porcelain so it must have been serendipity that brought her an invitation “as a prominent Canadian artist” to participate in the residency program at Sanbao Ceramic Art Institute in Jingdezhen, China. the answer was yes. Brooks applied for grant money to cover her travel expenses and headed to China in the summer of 2005 where she immediately immersed herself in the experience

For over 2,000 years, Jingdezhen has been known as the porcelain capital of the world. It remains a national centre for porcelain production with the same divisions of labour that have always existed. Thrower, trimmer, wedger, glazer, each person in the porcelain making process has mastered one job and does that job only. Jingdezhen has a research institute and ceramics museum, 15 porcelain factories, and dozens of processing works. It was all an eyeopener for Brooks.

During her two-month residency she did a little bit of everything and learned a lot about many things. The Chinese master throwers produced a lot thicker pot than in the west and it was the process of trimming that made all the difference. Specialized tools are used to carve off excess thickness from the thrown vessels to make them paper-thin..I finally got the hang of it a couple of weeks later, after having to discard many pots because I went right through them or cracked the rims,” says Brooks. She credits the new tools and techniques with a growth in her art. “My form is more refined now. When I want to make a curve, the line is clear and clean. The loushi [master trimmer] spent a lot of time with me. I was so happy to be learning.” The institute also relied on their international visiting artists as the focus of tours. “It was a bit of a challenge to have people watching you all the time,” says Brooks. Brooks was able to go on field trips to tour the factories where they made porcelain from rock, the decal and glaze shops, and a few factories that made large vessels. “I was amazed that they had kilns tall enough to fire those,” says Brooks. In China, glazes are purchased rather than bought, and Brooks’s eye was taken with the bold, dynamic colours. She is experimenting with integratingthe white translucency of porcelain with the strong Chinese glaze colours in her new work. “My challenge is finding a clay body in Canada that will give me the translucency I seek and will tolerate the trimming process,” says Brooks. “The porcelains there are beautiful to work with.”“

Brooks is also experimenting with a new material from Japan, precious metal clay. Microscopic particles of 22 carat gold and .999 silver are suspended in a clay binder that is easy to incorporate with porcelain, such as on the rim of a tea pot or bowl. When the clay is heated with a butane torch it burns off, leaving the gold or silver behind. The metal clay can also be applied to metal or glass for jewellery making. Brooks will complete her level-two certification in metal clay in June, which will allow her to teach others how to use the material. “It’s anamazing product. This will satisfy my need to be a teacher and I can gallivant around the country and teach,” says Brooks. “My work is constantly changing and growing. I’m a firmbeliever in expanding my skills.”

In between gallivants, Brooks is organizing a fall tour of 1001 tea bowls that she plans to build in honour of her inspiration, Song dynasty porcelain.“There are hardly any intact pieces from the Song dynasty of any size, just small bowls, vases and pots.” She feels that her trip to China was a watershed time that helped her to focus on her goals. “Last year I was extremely scattered with the direction I wanted to go. This year everything is coming together in one package, all my thoughts and ideas are making sense. I’m happy and my heart is on my sleeve.” And her unique skills and passion are evident in her work.