Hello,

This week I asked Carolyn Jonauskas, our fellowship student from Grand Valley State University, to interview our visiting artist Anders Ruhwald. I knew they would have a lot in common since they are both dealing with histories of decoration and the sculptural potential of hand building with clay. Please see Carolyn’s response to spending time with Anders in this newsletter. She also wrote a profile of Daniel Axe, our fellowship student from the master’s program at Cal Arts.

We are excited for our first Open House of the season. It is always great for students and faculty to step back and reflect on the work that has been made over the past few weeks. Students have been raving about our faculty and it is obvious from the work in the studios that they are learning a great deal.

The Tuesday night faculty roundtable discussions have been a big hit. This week I asked Andrea Peterson, Jerry Catania, Audrey Ushenko, and Anna Mayer questions about their work, community based engagement, and art as an agent for social change. They were all very generous with their responses based on their experiences as artists, farmers, teachers, and grass roots activists.

Not only were host to a new crop of students and faculty this week but we have also been a preferred haven for turtles. We had one snapping turtle and one painted turtle drop off at least 2 dozen eggs each on campus. How many art schools can claim they have an amphibian protection initiative as part of their program?

Sincerely,

Mike Andrews
Academic Director

Anders Ruhwald, by Carolyn Jonauskas

While talking with another fellow at OxBow I was told that I had to meet with Anders Ruhwald from Cranbrook. He came here with many good recommendations and did not fall short on any of them. Ruhwald's lecture was my first introduction to his work. The images of his objects and their placement as well as the format in which he presented his work gave expression to a very methodical man, who is honest about himself and the work, as well as devoted to crafting objects out of ceramics. To try and develop an in depth analysis of his work in this limited space would would be futile so instead I intend to focus on his role as a self-described form-giver, which can briefly be described as one who gives forms to functional and decorative objects. This term seems to mean something both similar yet different from words like craftsman or artist and carries less social baggage with them. The word also can be more descriptive of Ruhwald's work, which often looks to be designed for a specific purpose but it is often difficult to understand what that purpose is. His objects have an ambiguous functionality that makes them intriguing and engaging with both the viewer as well as the space. His use of the term form-giver also reflects Ruhwald's consideration for where his work is places, as well as his position within art organizations. Ruhwald visited me in the studio and his interests in objects, their existence in spaces and the manipulation of that space really powered the conversation. Instead of focusing on technical aspects of ceramic object making, he responded directly to the forms of the work as well as considered the intent and interests in making those objects. We moved between my work space as well as the intended location and hashed out possible solutions and the effects of those solutions in the space itself. The total consideration of my in progress work helped me to better think about future problems and outcomes in ways I hadn't thought of before.

Dan Axe CalArts Fellowship student by Carolyn Jonauskas

Daniel Axe is a second year graduate student at California Institute of the Arts and frequently makes sculptures often utilizing miniature model making techniques, although drawing, bookmaking and other technical medias are also employed. As an art maker, his work starts out with a research topic which he then begins looking for a subject, an anecdote, a story, a photograph, something that sparks his interest and seemingly becomes the beginning of a work. He keeps researching until some anecdote takes it from history to something that turns it into a story, and then he strips away everything that is recognizable besides what he finds interesting. The objects themselves become very narrative, but often that story is ambiguous, and more complex than the viewer may be aware of. In the work titled, “The Almighty has said, no doubt: ‘Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together,’” Dan investigates interests in Halley's Comet and much of the interesting facts and lore that surrounds the comet. Using topographical maps, he constructed a model of the comet and lofted it into the air with thin steel rods above a dining table. The height of the comet makes it unobtainable by the human viewer below. The sculpture also addresses humanity's interest with the only comet humans can see both with the naked eye as well as twice in a lifetime. It is an interesting example of how Dan funnels his research into a sculptural object. When discussing the project, small facts and fictions filled the interview and quickly intrigues the listener into a finely spun tale of the incredible comet. His incredibly fast narrations describing his work and his research becomes almost as interesting as the work and makes the objects much more complex and human oriented. When asked about how much of his research he thinks shows in the work and can be gleaned from the viewer, he expressed that he hoped his work would ignite questions and intrigue in the viewer, even if those questions are not the same ones he himself asked during the research process.

Class Highlight: Land is as Land is Land Art: Experiments with Clay

Anna Mayer’s class “Land is as Land is Land Art” produced a wide range of objects in the ceramics studio. The scope of this class was to introduce students to a variety of hand-building techniques. Group discussions of process were tempered with histories of site specific sculpture, performance art, and contemporary feminist discourse. The final pieces were only viewable by canoe ride toward the lake.