This workshop is a perfect opportunity to hone and strengthen your forms to embolden your work! Christa will demonstrate throwing and altering techniques, cutting and constructing, and incorporating hand built additions into a variety of vessel forms. With a focus on teapots as a vehicle for expressing your ideas, students will be encouraged to explore the potential compositions of their thrown and hand built parts – to see these elements as building blocks with unlimited potential. We will examine the profiles, details, edges and joints of your pots, and whip those handles into expert shape. Never fear pulling a handle on your cup or pitcher again!
Christa will give daily demonstrations and work alongside the class, encouraging team spirit, collaboration, idea swapping, and improvisation. She will talk individually with students to trouble-shoot and accommodate all skill-levels. The longer workshop format is ideal for resolving ideas and making real progress with your throwing!
The plasticity and malleability of clay seduces us all. Combine that materiality with some basic design concepts and aesthetic investigations and you will find your own personal expression through functional pottery. Pots are subtle yet powerful communicators that infiltrate most every home. Their use invites an intimate moment and a connection with the “actual”, snapping us out of our virtual slumber in today’s technological world. We will discuss the cultural relevance of our pursuits, and the value of the simple hand-made object.
All levels welcome.
Biography
Christa Assad recently returned to her studio full-time after a one-year special appointment to the Kansas City Art Institute faculty. Reclaiming the San Francisco Bay Area as her home, she now resides in Berkeley, CA, where she is only a one-mile walk from her bayside studio.
Christa brings to her teaching a flavorful blend of life lessons, traditional and contemporary ceramic techniques, and an enthusiasm for learning. Her work is primarily utilitarian, and incorporates industrial design ideas with geometric minimalism.
Christa was awarded a J. William Fulbright Research and Travel Grant (1993), and was nominated for the Louis Comfort Tiffany Biennial Award (2005). Her work is in the permanent collections of The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, The Ceramic Research Center at Arizona State University Museum, The Penn State Fulbright Scholar Collection, and Copia, The American Center for Food, Wine& The Arts in Napa, CA. Publications include Garth Clark’s Shards , Kevin A. Hluch’s The Art of Contemporary Pottery, and Lark Books‘ 500 Teapots and 500 Pitchers. Christa’s work is on the cover of American Craft magazine’s October/November 2008 issue.
Christa earned an M.F.A. from Indiana University (2000), a B.A. from The Pennsylvania State University (1992), and studied as a Fulbright Scholar at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (1993-94).
This workshop is a perfect opportunity to hone and strengthen your forms to embolden your work! Christa will demonstrate throwing and altering techniques, cutting and constructing, and incorporating hand built additions into a variety of vessel forms. With a focus on teapots as a vehicle for expressing your ideas, students will be encouraged to explore the potential compositions of their thrown and hand built parts – to see these elements as building blocks with unlimited potential. We will examine the profiles, details, edges and joints of your pots, and whip those handles into expert shape. Never fear pulling a handle on your cup or pitcher again!
Christa Assad recently returned to her studio full-time after a one-year special appointment to the Kansas City Art Institute faculty. Reclaiming the San Francisco Bay Area as her home, she now resides in Berkeley, CA, where she is only a one-mile walk from her bayside studio. 