Presenter: Dennis Meiners | Altered Ceramics

DENNIS MEINERS

Pursuing Narrative Surfaces for Expressive Pots

Dennis’ presentation will focus on the possibilities that arise from making slabs by hand, rather than with machines, and will demonstrate the advantages of this process for discovering what we each have to say through the ceramic process. This is a simple, fun, low-tech way to use clay. Dennis will demonstrate scoring, stretching, stamping, sprigging, and overlays that he uses to produce what he refers to as psychodramas on the surfaces of his utilitarian and sculptural pots hand-built from slabs. Conference participants will have the opportunity to see a way of working with clay that requires little other than a good table, homemade tools, and an ability to be observant and open to what the art-making process offers.

Dennis uses cone ten stoneware fired in a reduction atmosphere, but the possibilities he will present are applicable to any clay or firing method. Students will learn how to make and use rolling stamps and sprig molds to create their own iconography.

Additional Information

Dennis Meiners earned a BA in Fine Arts from Washington State University in 1973, and has been a full time studio potter, mostly, since then. He has taught at Portland Community College, Oregon College of Art and Craft, as well as many workshops and classes. He has published articles and photographs in numerous books and magazines, and has pieces in several public and private collections, including Racine Arts Museum and the Washington Cultural Trust. For the last 15 years he has lived near Jacksonville Oregon where he built a strawbale house and adobe studio with his wife, painter and former clay artist, Leslie Lee.

Read more and register: http://ceramicartsdaily.org/potters-council/altered-ceramics