Eating the Object: Ceramics, Food & Performance
with Luka Carter
$250 lab fee | July 13–25 | Communal
This course invites students to experiment with a range of ceramic techniques—including handbuilding, wheel throwing, and surface design—to create both vessels and sculptural objects. Working collaboratively, the class will produce a collection of functional wares to be used in a culminating experimental dinner and performance. Alongside this collective effort, each student will develop an independent project in which a sculptural vessel is activated through performance and the serving of food. Rather than treating ceramics solely as utilitarian or decorative, students will investigate the ceramic object as a site of inquiry, interaction, and activation. We will critically examine the intersections of ceramics, performance, and social practice, asking how objects can embody participation, refuse utility, or generate new forms of meaning. Course material will draw from artists and movements that foreground food, ritual, and audience engagement, including the performances of Alison Knowles (Fluxus) and the surrealist objects of Meret Oppenheim. We will also consider frameworks from Relational Aesthetics and contemporary craft theory. Readings will include “Craft and Its Writing as Collectivized Outsider” by L. Autumn Dagner, and screenings will feature Les Blank’s documentary Garlic Is As Good as Ten Mothers as a lens into food, culture, and performance. Assignments include producing a collaborative dinnerware set for the culminating performance, producing the evening including building a menu, as well as an individual project in which a sculptural vessel is activated through food or ritual.
SAIC students: This is a 3-credit course; use the course code CERAMICS 674 001.
Luka Carter (he/him) is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice spans zines, furniture, tattoos, ceramics, clothing, and installations. With a background in construction and cooking, he has a knack for making space for art in overlooked or interstitial spaces––including an outhouse, an abandoned lot, and a van. Carter has been an artist-in-residence at Eureka! House, Chautauqua School of Art, ACRE, and Anderson Ranch. Recent exhibitions include shows at Spill 180, Brooklyn; Baba Yaga Gallery, Hudson, NY; Scope Art Show, Miami; the Baltimore Fine Art Print Fair, MD; and Manitou Art Center, Manitou Springs, CO. He is a Visiting Professor at Colorado College. His design and functional work can be found at Circles in Hudson, NY.