Surface + Form

MEREDITH HOST
Learn How to Add Depth of Pattern to Your Work
Meredith will focus on her surface decorating process. Most all of her decoration happens before the bisque firing. This includes underglazes and slip for trailing, thermofax screen printing, and stencils. After the glaze firing, Meredith fires a third time with homemade iron oxide decals for one last layer. This process of adding multiple layers allow the work to have a depth of pattern and an intricate, complex surface. This method of multiple firing allows the work to be less precious and gives one an opportunity to play around with layering. It also provides an opportunity to reclaim or save a piece that is not to your liking by adding another layer of visual information.

Hands on: Each participant will be provided with an already fired surface to practice Meredith’s tricks to applying decals.  Participants will also be able to make their own stencils out of vinyl in order to learn how to achieve an intricate layered surface.

Additional Information
Meredith Host was born and raised in Detroit Rock City. She received her BFA in Ceramics from Kansas City Art Institute in 2001 and her MFA in Ceramics from The Ohio State University in 2008. Meredith has spent time at numerous ceramic residencies including The School for American Crafts at RIT in Rochester, NY, Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts in Newcastle, ME, and Dresdner Porzellan Manufactory in Dresden, Germany. Currently, she lives in Kansas City, MO and is a full time studio potter.

For more information about Meredith, visit: www.meredithhost.com

Ceramic Artist – Meredith Host was featured in Ceramic Arts Daily Website.
Click the link to read: The Ohio State University: From Ceramics Monthly’s MFA Factor.

Hands-on: Participants will learn to construct expressive vessels/sculpture, with soft slabs, using handbuilding techniques. Attendees will gain experience in experimenting with sgraffitio, sprigging, slip trailing and learn how to apply stains, oxide washes and terra sigillata to build layers and bring out surface details.

Additional Information
Tammy received her Masters of Fine Arts degree in Ceramics from the University of Florida. Currently she is an Associate Professor at Gulf Coast Community College. Tammy has also taught at the University of Florida in Gainsville, and abroad at Golden Bridge Pottery in Pondicherry, India, and Skopelos, Greece. In addition to maintaing an active teaching schedule, Tammy is a working studio potter. Her works can be seen at Pendland Gallery, North Carolina, Florida Craftsman, Florida, The Clay Studio of Missoula, Montana, Mary Lou Zeek Gallery, Oregon, and at Lillstreet Art Center, Illinois. Tammy’s work is in permanent collections in Yizing Ceramics Museum, Skopelos Greece: Skopelos Art Foundation, Jingdezhen China at the Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute. Tammy resides in Panama City, Florida with her husbanc Pavel Amromin and two children Pearl and Ari.

For more information about Tammy, visit: TammyMarinuzzi.com

RENE MURRAY
Create Distinctive Surfaces with Inlay Clay
Rene has developed a technique of inlaying one type of clay into a slab of another type of clay to create a decorative surface. She has used this method for over 40 years in both her pottery and ceramic sculpture. Rene will demonstrate by rolling out a slab with a red clay and then show how to inlay into it a design with porcelain clay. In essence, she will be layering the clays like a puff pastry.

Hands-on: The bulk of the class will be hands-on, with the participants learning this inlay technique. The participant will be learning a unique way of painting with clay. It is an inlay method that allows the students to work on surface decoration before the clay has been fired at all. One can see how the decoration will look and can make changes early on in the clay process. It is a distinctive and exciting way of creating design in clay. At the same time, participants will gain knowledge of the nuances of using a rolling pin, a wonderful clay tool, and learn how to control its power.

Additional Information
Rene Murray has been working in her own studio for over 40 years as a full time ceramic artist. She has exhibited widely in galleries and museums in the U.S. and abroad. Her work is in the permanent collection of both the Detroit Institute of Art and the Everson Museum of Art.

For more information about Rene, visit:renemurrayceramics.com

JEREMY RANDALL
Vernacular Architecture; Slab Building with Texture and Reference
Jeremy will demonstrate and discuss the use of templates in the construction of architecturally inspired vessels. He will provide technical information regarding the use of terra sigillata as a finish, and the application of patina finishes using a number of non-glaze ceramic materials. This building of form and surface will help develop a vessel that alludes to age and wear, allows for the textured surface to be accentuated, and provides some variability and surprise in an electric kiln.

Additional Information
Jeremy Randall has his B.F.A. from Syracuse University and his M.F.A. in ceramics from the University of Florida. He currently lives in Tully, New York, where he owns and operates his studio in a converted barn on his property. Jeremy is a visiting professor of art at Cazenovia College, and an adjunct professor of art at Syracuse University. Jeremy has been involved in numerous national and international shows, has work represented by Red Lodge Clay Center, red lodge MT, and has work included in the permanent collections of Robert and Jane Myerhoff in Baltimore and the Southern Illinois University Museum in Carbondale, Illinois, and the Orton foundation.

For more information about Jeremy, visit: www.jeremyrandallceramics.com

Ceramic Artist – Jeremy Randall was featured in Ceramic Arts Daily Website.
Click the link to read: Emerging Ceramic Artist to Watch: Jeremy Randall, Tully, New York

ELLEN SHANKIN
Traditional Clay Construction and Surfaces
Ellen offers the “best of” traditional clay construction and clay surfaces. The beauty of her work comes from a balanced understanding of form, function and aesthetic beauty.Ellen will focus on the pleated jar form; including fluting, faceting. She will also provide detailed explanation of spraying glazes.

Additional Information
Ellen has been making pots for more than 30 years now… every day, steadfastly.They are pots for the table, cooking and serving, celebrating and sharing. They are objects she loves to make. As she grows in this devotion, this work of her hands, Ellen’s direction has changed. At one time, early on, she chased skill and competence…. later maybe, some notion of beauty. At this point in her life, both personally and artistically, she is striving for clarity. Ellen’s aim is to make pots that sing of their nature in a total way. In rim, foot, surface and form…a common language…a single voice.

Ellen thinks there is a deep appreciation for the grace and beauty of well made functional pots. In a gallery setting, however, you can take in only part of what they offer. Over time, through continuous use, you uncover the remainder. Some forms she makes are simple, others complex, with lots of altering after throwing. But they are all part of the monthly cycle of work that is made in the studio, day in, day out, cycle by cycle, year by year. The continuous involvement with this body of work brings about a slow natural development of form with which she is comfortable. It is easy to imagine this passion continuing to ripen and evolve, sustaining her for another 20 or 30 years.

For more information about Ellen, visit: www.ellenshankin.com

gwendolyn yoppolo
Unifying Form and Surface: From Inside Out
Gwendolyn will talk about using the abstract formal vocabulary of utilitarian ceramics, with a focus on food preparation utensils, presentation devices, and personal consumption dishes. As she builds, she will discuss how forms grow from the inside out, and how surfaces emerge along with forms in an organic way. Participants will be encouraged to discover and develop their own personal formal language that arises from their bodily experience and can lead in a unified way to appropriate surface treatment.

Gwendolyn will share thoughts on how to navigate from instinctual surface design decisions through to a palette that unifies form and surface. Techniques and concepts of glaze chemistry will be discussed. Special considerations for working with porcelain to avoid cracking and warping will be addressed as gwendolyn builds composite forms through throwing, hand building, and molding various elements. Wet altering, pinching and coiling, leather hard forming, stiff shaping, and erosive techniques will be covered.

Additional Information
Gwendolyn is currently a studio artist in residency at the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, Montana. She spent the previous years as a Studio Technician at Alfred University and as Assistant Professor at Juniata College in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, before leaving to devote more attention to her studio practice. She received her MFA from Penn State University in 2006. While at Penn State she received two fellowship awards for her research using the scanning electron microscope, and continues to work with this instrument to photograph the tiny landscapes of beach rubble, sugar cereals, plant seeds, and insect parts.

She creates sensuous kitchen and tablewares that use the physical experience of hunger and satiation to allude to larger issues of human desire and consumption. Her visionary designs challenge us to rethink the ways we nourish ourselves and others within contemporary food culture. By preparing whole foods with minimal technology, by sharing food with a group from a single serving dish, or by sitting down with a loved one to create a shared experience, we break apart from the individualized ready-to-eat mentality of our industrialized food system.

For more information about gwendolyn, visit:www.gwendolynyoppolo.com

Ceramic Artist – Gwendolyn Yoppolo was featured in Ceramic Arts Daily Website.
Click the link to read: Persnickety Porcelain: How to Minimize Your Loss Rate With this Gorgeous, Yet Difficult, Material

Ceramic Artist – Gwendolyn Yoppolo was featured in Ceramic Arts Daily Website Book Store.
Click the link to read book excerpt: Ceramic Projects: Forming Techniques

Keynote Speaker | TOM UNZICKER
Traditions and Innovations
Tom Unzicker will give the keynote address on Saturday. Tom recently returned from a year spent working with crafts producers in Cambodia. His presentation will reflect on the challenges of working to establish a pottery with scant resources, and the surprising innovations that working within limitations can sometimes inspire. On Sunday Tom will demonstrate on the wheel and discuss the collaborative approach to woodfiring that he and his brother Jeff have taken over the years.

Additional Information
Tom Unzicker began making pots as a college student in 1986. In the years since he has pursued his interest in clay as a student, a teacher, development worker, and a studio potter. He received his undergraduate degree in Art from Goshen College in 1991 and an M.F.A. in Ceramics from Indiana University in 2000. He has taught ceramics in community arts programs and at Indiana University while a graduate student. He has presented demonstrations and lectures at various conferences and in other educational settings, including through a teaching training program of the University of Botswana in Southern Africa.

While a college student, he worked for one year in Tanzania, building his first wood-burning kiln and participating in a pottery training project with rural African women. From 1993 to 1996, he and his wife worked with craftspeople in rural Botswana where he built kick wheels and a wood-burning kiln and provided pottery training to local men. He also worked with traditional Batswana potters to produce their water and beer vessels for the local tourist market and he collected traditional pots for a village museum as well as the National Museum of Botswana.

After graduating from Indiana University, he served a brief stint in a refugee camp on the Thai-Burmese border, helping to set up a recreational pottery workshop at a camp youth center. He returned to Southeast Asia from 2008 to 2009, setting up a pottery workshop in Siem Reap, Cambodia where he trained five young adults to produce and market pottery to the local tourist and international export market. He continues to serve as a consultant to this project, talking with them on a weekly basis to assist in the securing of export orders.

In between these international experiences, he has built numerous wood-burning kilns in Indiana and has worked as a studio potter since 1989, starting Unzicker Brothers Pottery with his brother Jeff in 2000. The Pottery is located in central Indiana and focuses on large wheel-thrown, wood-fired pots. Tom and Jeff fire two to three times per year in a 900 cubic foot tunnel kiln.

For more information about Tom, visit: www.unzickerpottery.com

Comfort Suites
420 Riverboat Row
Newport, KY 41071
Phone: (859) 291-6700
Fax: (859) 291-6702
Go here for website

$94 per night for Single or Double. Rate includes complimentary deluxe continental Breakfast, Fitness Center, Guest Computer/printer, and complimentary parking for one vehicle per room.

Ask for Potters Council meeting block to get preferred rates. Room block will be held until Thursday, December 30, 2010.

Car Pooling
Note: The hotel does not provide transportation to the conference. If you’re interested in car pooling, go to the Ceramic Arts Daily forum.

Welcome to the Comfort Suites, a Newport hotel near the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden

Overlooking the Ohio River and the Cincinnati skyline, the Comfort Suites® hotel is conveniently located less than one mile from the Newport Aquarium. This Newport, KY hotel is minutes from area attractions, like the Great American Ball Park, the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden, Turfway Park, Paul Brown Stadium, National Underground Railroad Freedom Center and major educational institutions such as the University of Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky University.

Additional points of interest in the area include:

* Hofbrauhaus Newport
* MainStrasse Village
* Beer Sellar
* Kenwood Towne Centre mall

There is something for everyone in downtown Cincinnati or at Newport on the Levee, a restaurant and entertainment complex, which are both just minutes away. Several art museums and historical districts are also nearby.

Hotel Services and Amenities:

• Exercise Room
• Fitness Center
• Free Continental Breakfast
• Free Newspaper Mon-Fri
• Government Travelers: FEMA Approved
• Guest Use Copy Machine
• Guest Use Fax Machine
• Guest Laundry
• Interior Corridors
• News Stand
• No Pets Allowed
• Outdoor Parking
• 100% Smoke Free Hotel
• Valet Cleaning Service

Services/Amenities in All Rooms:

• AT&T Long Distance
• Cable/Satellite TV
• Computer Hook-up
• Free Coffee
• Free Local Calls
• Hair Dryer
• In-Room Air Conditioning
• In-Room Safe
• Iron & Ironing Board
• Microwave
• Non-Smoking Rooms Available
• Refrigerator
• Voice Mail