Last week I had the privilege of taking a ceramics workshop with John Gill at the University of Hawaii as part of the 'Aha Hana Lima programs of Hawaii Craftsmen (www.hawaiicraftsmen.org). John is Professor of Ceramic Art at Alfred University and one of the best handbuilders on the planet. He's won awards for his teaching and I can see why. I've taken some great workshops with some very good potters, but this was the best workshop I've taken so far. John is a highly skilled artist, but he's childlike in his fascination and enthusiasm about everything and I found that quite inspiring. He looks at things differently which helped me think about my own work from different angles. At one point he asked if I had any photos of my pots so I pulled up a few on my phone. He grabbed my phone and started holding it at different angles. He held up one pot, a vase, and turned it upside down. "Have you made one like this? This would make a really great bowl!" I had to agree. He had the softest hands I've seen working with slabs. Whenever I'd pick up a slab I'd stretch it out of shape and gouge it with deep fingermarks. John looked at what I was doing along with a few others and said (with a wry grin), "Some of you are molesting the clay. Please stop molesting the clay!" At random moments John would gather us together to watch a video of Portuguese craftsmen making clay ovens, or look at Krazy Kat cartoons, or look at Brice Marden's Suicide Notes. It was easy to be creative in such a rich environment.
During the two and a half days we spent with him, he shared many things with us and some of them you can pick up while watching the videos below. There are a few other things that I observed during the workshop or that John shared with us that I thought were important to mention here: 1. When making slabs, he worked on a huge piece of light denim, not heavy canvas. He especially seemed to prefer the greater flexibility of the denim. I noticed too that the denim didn't get heavy creases in it that would make impressions in the clay when he rolled it out; 2. I closely watched his technique for making slabs with a rolling pin. First he started out with a large coil, then he flattened it out with the palm of his hand, and finally he rolled it out with a fairly heavy rolling pin. My main goal for the workshop was to learn how to roll out slabs like that so I was working on it almost the whole time. Everyone around me was making stuff but I kept rewedging my clay and rolling out another slab. They didn't comment on it, but I think they thought I was crazy. 3. He made forms like his ewers and cups when the slabs were still fairly soft. He made his boxes with slabs that were a bit more stiff. He didn't always score and slip the soft slabs, but he always scored and slipped the stiffer ones. 4. He showed us how he made paper cutouts to help him think through the forms of pots. 5. He introduced us to a French book called Formes de Vases by Alexandre Sandier. Trained as an architect and decorator at the Ecole des beaux-arts in the late 1800's, Sandier repudiated decorative schemes based on historical forms and traditions and proposed that designs be based on the contemporary people and objects around them. The book starts with seven basic forms like a cube and a cone and then adds one of the seven forms to each original form and then proceeds to add two and finally three additional forms to each original form until you have 2,800 possible forms. It's a great tool for studying form, especially the forms of vases, and was intended to inspire new forms of pots. John gave each of us a PDF of the book and I've included it just below.
During the two and a half days we spent with him, he shared many things with us and some of them you can pick up while watching the videos below. There are a few other things that I observed during the workshop or that John shared with us that I thought were important to mention here: 1. When making slabs, he worked on a huge piece of light denim, not heavy canvas. He especially seemed to prefer the greater flexibility of the denim. I noticed too that the denim didn't get heavy creases in it that would make impressions in the clay when he rolled it out; 2. I closely watched his technique for making slabs with a rolling pin. First he started out with a large coil, then he flattened it out with the palm of his hand, and finally he rolled it out with a fairly heavy rolling pin. My main goal for the workshop was to learn how to roll out slabs like that so I was working on it almost the whole time. Everyone around me was making stuff but I kept rewedging my clay and rolling out another slab. They didn't comment on it, but I think they thought I was crazy. 3. He made forms like his ewers and cups when the slabs were still fairly soft. He made his boxes with slabs that were a bit more stiff. He didn't always score and slip the soft slabs, but he always scored and slipped the stiffer ones. 4. He showed us how he made paper cutouts to help him think through the forms of pots. 5. He introduced us to a French book called Formes de Vases by Alexandre Sandier. Trained as an architect and decorator at the Ecole des beaux-arts in the late 1800's, Sandier repudiated decorative schemes based on historical forms and traditions and proposed that designs be based on the contemporary people and objects around them. The book starts with seven basic forms like a cube and a cone and then adds one of the seven forms to each original form and then proceeds to add two and finally three additional forms to each original form until you have 2,800 possible forms. It's a great tool for studying form, especially the forms of vases, and was intended to inspire new forms of pots. John gave each of us a PDF of the book and I've included it just below.
| formes_de_vases.pdf |
I'm including a few photos and quite a few videos of the workshop. Most were taken with a Canon camera and a few were taken with my phone. I had to switch from one to the other one day when the battery in my camera ran out! You'll need to turn up the volume on these, but it's worth hearing what John has to say.
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