Beginning with round pots coming from the wheel, we'll push, cut, coax, and stretch those form. Why alter pots? Tom Spleth nicely observed, "As work departs from thrown forms that typically refers to pots and pottery, it gains the ability to describe forms in nature, suggest the vulnerability of the figure, and express the asymmetry found in human experience." Our focus will be on utilitarian pots but we'll take some liberties with that notion too. Various ways of making handles, lids, and spouts will be explored. Slides and demonstrations will form the backdrop for lively conversation about everything from making a living to making pots personal. Process is paramount, humor emphasized, taking chances encouraged. Some throwing experience is recommended. Pots will be bisqued but not glaze fired.
Biography
Nick Joerling is a full-time studio potter who has maintained a studio in Penland, North Carolina since the mid-1980's. He received a B.A. in History from the University of Dayton, Ohio, and an M.F.A. in Ceramics from Louisiana State University in 1986. He has taught in craft programs in the United States and abroad, been widely reviewed and exhibited, and is represented in public and private collections.
Artist Statement
I make pots as much from a drawing sensibility as a pottery one. Daydreaming with a pencil. Not drawing as rendering but simply doodling, then working hard to get that drawing to function. Profile line is therefore a strong attraction, a strong dictate, as are the smaller spaces within spaces. And of course that sense of animation. My pot reference is most often you and I, our bodies. It's where my cues come from: dance, people seated on a park bench, the cleavage that forms on the inside of a bent elbow. But I want to stay in the pot's world--- too literal and the pots seem deflated. In my studio what I hope for are pots that have qualities of sensuality, compassion, humor, and risk.
Beginning with round pots coming from the wheel, we'll push, cut, coax, and stretch those form. Why alter pots? Tom Spleth nicely observed, "As work departs from thrown forms that typically refers to pots and pottery, it gains the ability to describe forms in nature, suggest the vulnerability of the figure, and express the asymmetry found in human experience." Our focus will be on utilitarian pots but we'll take some liberties with that notion too. Various ways of making handles, lids, and spouts will be explored. Slides and demonstrations will form the backdrop for lively conversation about everything from making a living to making pots personal. Process is paramount, humor emphasized, taking chances encouraged. Some throwing experience is recommended. Pots will be bisqued but not glaze fired.
Artist Statement