Dylan Palmer

This multilevel class is for students with or without experience in wheel throwing. Beginning students are introduced to ideas, materials and techniques for throwing vessels. They acquire the necessary skills to construct and analyze a wide range of vessel forms. Intermediate and advanced students continue their individual development of throwing, glazing and firing kilns. Course discussions focus on issues around the vessel to acquire critical understanding of containers and their functions, as well as using the wheel as a means for constructing sculptural forms.

Patternmaking is at the heart of metalworking, woodworking, fashion, architecture and many other disciplines. Why? Because so many materials are available in sheet form. Students in this course will investigate a range of processes by which flat sheet materials like paper, wood, metal, fabric, vinyl, and plastic can be used to make volumetric, three-dimensional forms. Patternmaking for Sculpture will teach the student digital and analogue methods of designing, cutting, and assembling 3D work. Practical strategies as well as contemporary industrial use and the history of patternmaking will be explored to give each student a range of options for making their own work, whether it be art or design.

This course will serve to illuminate and complicate the opportunities and challenges associated with making ceramics on the throwing wheel. Invented in Mesopotamia roughly 5000 years ago, the potter's wheel was a tool intended to speed up and increase consistency in the production of utilitarian ceramic vessels. The spectrum of practitioners using the potters wheel today spans the world and ranges from traditional artisans, design and crafts people to contemporary artists. Working with regard to this dynamic reality, this course will work to address and accommodate all manner of interests with the goal to enable students to make diligent use of the potter?s wheel, both in consideration of historical and contemporary methods and dialogs. Advanced Throwing is for students already proficient in throwing techniques Pre rec. Wheel Throwing Fundamentals and Intermediate Throwing CER We will look at artists working both in traditional and non-traditional methods. Artists will vary, but some we will look at include: Yuta Segawa, Dove Drury, Adam Silverman, Donte K. Hayes, Carl-Harry St?lhane, Gerrit Grimm, Steve Lee, and more. Readings will include articles covering topics about the convergence of fine art and craft, how objects affect our daily life and rituals, the place of craft within contemporary society. Specific authors may be : Jenni Sorkin, Okakura Kakuzo and Edmund de Waal Students should expect to produce two bodies of work consisting of 20-30 finished pieces during the semester, to be presented in mid-term and final critiques.

Advanced students pursue individual casting projects while continuing to develop and refine casting skills. Alternative investment techniques are explored. Emphasis is placed on individual experimentation and development.