Ceremonial Ceramics: Crafting Vessels of Ritual and Meaning
with Chenlu Hou
$250 Lab Fee | August 9–22 | Exploratory
In this course, participants will explore clay as a material of transformation—an elemental medium that holds narrative, symbolism, ceremony, and function. Using coil and slab construction as a primary sculptural language, students will create ritual vessels and altar objects that reflect personal and collective mythologies. Demonstrations will include coil building, pinching and paddling, carving, sgraffito, slip layering, and low-fire terracotta techniques. Participants will also harvest local clay from a nearby beach, process it, and transform part of it into terra sigillata—connecting their work to place, process, and the alchemy of the elements.
We will look to Guatemalan incense burners, Mexican ceremonial vessels, Chinese Neolithic pottery, and Japanese Jomon works to understand how clay has long been used to invoke the sacred and embody story. Contemporary references will include Akio Takamori, Nicole Cherubini, Simone Leigh, and Rose B. Simpson. Readings from Ceramics in the Expanded Field and viewings from At Home: Artists in Conversation featuring Sonia Boyce and Simone Leigh will help frame clay as both a spiritual and political medium.
Assignments will invite participants to develop a personal visual language through intuitive, symbolic making. Students will create small talismanic forms, trace and translate shadows into vessel designs, and use site-harvested terra sigillata for surface development. The course will culminate in a collective, ceremonial installation—a gathering of vessels as offerings that honor narrative, transformation, and the unseen.
This course is available for non-credit only.
Chenlu Hou (she/her; b. China) is a ceramic artist whose imaginative sculptures draw inspiration from Chinese folk art, ceremonial objects, and moments from her daily life. Blending personal memories with reinterpretations of traditional storytelling, Hou creates a distinctive artistic language that weaves together sharp decorative elements and narrative suggestions. Her hand-built ceramic works explore the intricate relationships between human, animal, and plant forms, inviting viewers into layered worlds where the boundaries between myth, memory, and lived experience blur. She received her MFA in Ceramics from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2019 and has completed residencies at the Museum of Arts and Design, the Penland School of Craft, the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, and the Archie Bray Foundation. She is currently a Visiting Critic in Ceramics at RISD.