Friday, October 9, 2009

more work.

More pots! You may notice that most of this work isn't slipped, I'm going to do a "glaze" firing in my kiln this fall. I've been working mostly with slips since I've left college and while I will continue that work I want to try some new things.

stupid blogger.

I'm pleased with these feet.


These pots below are by my two second semester ceramics students. They've produced about 60-70 pieces each in the last 5 weeks. I push them pretty hard but the results speak for themselves. In the second semester we work a lot with repetition, not exact reproduction but rather exploring forms through multiple variations. That's why you see lots of the same thing. My philosophy is that you'll never learn anything by making just one or two of something(technically or formally.) Make 8, 20, or even 50, then give them an honest critique and toss the weak ones and move forward. The way I set their "quota" for an assignment is based on the amount of time they spend in the studio out of class. For cer.2 I expect 6-8 hours minimum per week out of class, and if I'm not getting that then I raise the amount of required work. In their third semester I expect double that. Fourth semester and beyond it's their full-time job. I ride them pretty hard but the goal of these two students in particular is to get into graduate school right after undergrad. Gotta instill that work ethic.


That's all I have for now, cheers!

3 comments:

Craig Edwards said...

I like the way that you get the pots to stay on the shelf, it's sorta like wearing a baseball cap backwards.

Linda Starr said...

Can't wait to see the glaze load. That's a lot of production for the student's, do they carry other classes at the same time? Once I get to my new studio I need to take a lession from what you have said about making multiples of the same form till I get it right. Thx

brandon phillips said...

yeah they're fulltime students. i approach ceramics 2 as if they're going to make it a career and i need to adequately prepare them for it. a ceramics "major" in most univeristies will only take 4-5 semesters of ceramics. this is not nearly enough if they want to go on and make a living and usually not enough to get into a good grad school unless they're practically living in the studio. so i tell my ceramics majors right from the beginning that if this is what they want then they have to work. i had one bail on me last year because whe didn't want to work that much.
now if someone were just taking ceramics for fun...i wouldn't be as hard on them. it just so happens that all my advanced students are majors at the moment.