Danger in Playing with Animals
Instructor: Bernadette Curran
October 15–17, 2010

In this three-day workshop, Curran will share her playful approach to clay by transforming simple pottery shapes into zoomorphic forms and their architectural abodes. From quick gesture drawings on paper to more imposing alterations of pots fresh off the wheel, her spontaneity will demonstrate both functional and sculptural solutions. Emphasis will be on techniques such as cutting, folding, and pushing the clay. Drawing will play a large role, not only for the surface, but also in creating the actual form. Students will be encouraged to explore a special-use pot and a basic place setting, using drawn imagery and narrative as catalysts to pull the ensemble together, keeping in mind the relationship between line and volume. Curran will discuss the use of slips and terra sigillatas as a beginning layer in glaze decoration.

Historical and contemporary examples of animal pots will be presented in slide lectures. Group discussions and class exercises will take place daily in order to explore ideas and encourage spontaneity.

Bernadette Curran is a studio potter in Pennsylvania. She received her BFA from Pennsylvania State University and a MFA in Ceramics at Ohio State University. She has been awarded fellowships from Baltimore Clayworks in Maryland; Chester Springs Studio in Chester Spring, Pennsylvania, and the Moravian Pottery & Tile Works in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. She has exhibited widely and has given workshops at many schools and art centers around the country, and is currently teaching drawing and ceramics in the Philadelphia area.