Woodfire: Ancient Methods & Contemporary Applications 

with Henry Crissman & Virginia Rose Torrence
$300 lab fee | May 31–June 13 | Communal

This course will explore the many histories, methods, and potentials of using wood as fuel to heat and transform clay into ceramic. Presentations will survey ceramic science, the history and logic of kiln design, and the range of objects made with wood fired kilns. Demonstrations will include handbuilding and wheel throwing techniques as well as experimental methods with found ceramic materials and objects. Films and readings including Maria Martinez: Indian Pottery of San Ildefonso and Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass, will offer insights as we engage and form the material of the Earth. Conversations throughout will aim to assist students in finding creative agency with ceramics. Students will work on independent projects and the class will culminate in a nearly two day long firing of Ox-Bow’s 50 cubic foot catenary-arch wood-kiln; a massive group effort that will involve loading the kiln, and methodically stoking it with wood for the duration of the firing until our desired temperature is reached throughout. While the kiln cools we’ll explore ways in which the techniques covered might be applied outside of the workshop, and build and fire a small and temporary kiln which students could easily recreate independently. Once cool, the big kiln will be unloaded and cleaned, results will be finished and analyzed, and we'll hold an exhibit of the works created.

SAIC students: This is a 3-credit course; use the course code CERAMICS 660 001. 

Henry James Haver Crissman (he/him) is an artist and educator who thinks of his art as a means, not an end. Together with his wife and fellow artist, Virginia Rose Torrence, he co-founded and co-directs Ceramics School, a community ceramics studio and artist residency in Hamtramck, MI. He regards teaching as an integral aspect of his creative practice; in addition to teaching at Ceramics School, he is currently an Adjunct Professor in the Studio Art and Craft department at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit. Crissman earned a BFA in Craft from the College for Creative Studies in 2012 and an MFA in Ceramics at Alfred University in 2015.

Virginia Rose Torrence (she/her) teaches at Ceramics School, a community ceramics studio and artist residency in Hamtramck, MI, which she co-owns and operates with her partner and fellow artist, Henry Crissman. Her art practice encompasses pottery and sculpture. She received her BFA in Craft/Ceramics from the College for Creative Studies in 2013 and her MFA in Ceramics from Alfred University in 2016.

Ox-Bow on the Wheel 

with Liz McCarthy
$250 lab fee | June 14–27 | Skill-building

In this course, students will use the potter’s wheel to create thrown forms. Through practice and demonstration, participants will hone skills to successfully build scale and refine pieces in clay. Pre-Columbian work will provide insight, as well as contemporary artists which may include Shio Kusaka and Betty Woodman. Demonstrations will focus on centering, producing uniformity, and glazing techniques. Through assignments including throwing many pots in succession, students will become familiar with the disposability and ephemerality inherent to the medium and aim to master its spontaneity. This class will culminate in group critique and is open to students of all levels.

SAIC students: This is a 3-credit course; use the course code CERAMICS 656 001.

Liz McCarthy (she/they) is an artist who combines ceramics, often in the form of playable whistles, with other media. Her work explores the body as an ever-changing material intertwined with human and nonhuman environments, often drawing from feminist and queer themes. She is the founding owner of the GnarWare Workshop ceramics school and teaches in the Ceramics Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Most notably, she has exhibited/performed at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Hyde Park Art Center, Goldfinch, Roman Susan, and Epiphany Center for the Arts, all in Chicago; Ghebaly Gallery, Los Angeles; and Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, NE. She has participated in residencies at locations including Atlantic Center for the Arts, ACRE, Banff Centre, Ox-Bow, and Lighthouse Works and has received support from the Joan Mitchell Foundation, Illinois Arts Council, and Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events. She holds a BFA from the University of North Carolina at Asheville and an MFA from the University of Illinois Chicago.

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.

Clay in the Field 

with E. Saffronia Downing and Rosemary Holliday Hall
$250 lab fee | July 26–August 8 | Exploratory

Clay in the Field is an investigation into environmental clay sculpture. In this course, students will trace clay to its geologic origin as weathered rock, carried by rivers, ground by glaciers, and laid in layers over millennia. We will ask what clay is, how it holds water and memory, and why the shores of Lake Michigan are unique. Venturing to clay deposits, we will learn to see, feel, and understand clay in our environment. We will shape questions and develop projects that deepen our relationship with this ancient material. With earth as our medium, the field of ceramics provides fertile ground from which to explore land-based perspectives in contemporary art. Students in this course will wander sand dune trails, comb beaches, and examine Lake Michigan’s clay deposits as they develop site-responsive clay artworks. We will learn techniques such as coil building, raw clay sculpture, wild clay foraging, wattle and daub construction, and organic burn-out methods. Artists such as Ana Mendieta, Rose B. Simpson, and Gabriel Orozco will ground our conversations about materiality, place-based knowledge, human-nonhuman relationships, land rights, and site specificity. We will explore art historical contexts such as vernacular clay architecture, the land art movement, and environmental art. Students can expect to complete a series of clay “field notes” by making clay writing tools, creating clay sketches, and taking impressions with clay. These field notes will document close observations from Ox-Bow and the surrounding environment. How can clay become a recording device to document observations through material? From geology to gesture, the course will culminate in the creation of an independent, site-specific ceramic sculpture utilizing themes and methods explored in the course. Through this project, students will apply the content of the course, to produce unique environmental artworks of their own design.
SAIC students: This is a 3-credit course; use the course code CERAMICS 673 001.

E. Saffronia Downing (she/they) is a ceramic artist and educator whose art practice and research methods are informed by material studies, vernacular art traditions, and ecological thought. Downing is the recipient of various awards, including residencies from PADA, SPACE, and ACRE and fellowships from the College of the Atlantic, the Lunder Institute of American Art, and Ox-Bow. They received their BA in Studio Art from Hampshire College and their MFA in Ceramics from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Rosemary Holliday Hall (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice spans installation, sculpture, ceramics, moving image, and performance. Her evolving body of work explores the dynamic relationships between nature and culture. Her work has been exhibited in both solo and group exhibitions across the United States and internationally. Hall has been awarded numerous residencies, fellowships, and collaborative research grants with scientists. These include a Nemeth Art Center residency; Taft Gardens Artist Researcher in Residence; an Ex.Change: Artists and Scientists on Climate Change grant; the Art, Science + Culture Grant from the University of Chicago; the Leroy Neiman Fellowship at Ox-Bow; the Maria and Jan Manetti Shrem International Residency at the Royal Drawing School; and a recent residency at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, enabling her to develop new work in collaboration with ecological researchers. Hall is a co-founder of Spore Space, a tiny artist-run exhibition venue in downtown Ojai, CA. She holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BFA from the University of California, Davis, where she also studied environmental horticulture.

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.