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KC Clay Guild Teabowl National 2018 juror: Kevin Snipes Artist may submit 3 teabowls (1 image each) for $30 entry. All work must be original. No single piece may exceed $250 in value. All works must be original and completed within the last 2 years. No single teabowl may exceed 7x7x7". Prospectus and application available at:https://www.kcclayguild.org/admin/website/?pageId=18094 Contact Susan Speck: Gallery@kcclayguild.org

Some educational stuff here relating to Chawan........... NCECA has the audio and PowerPoint content of my lecture at the spring 2015 annual conference held in Providence, RI up online now. If you are interested in making Chawan for actual Tea Ceremony use....... this might be interesting for you. http://blog.nceca.net/what-makes-a-teabowl-a-chawan-now-online best, ...................john

I love making Yunomi's. I don't call them that, I call them cups. But the shape is the same idea, a tallish cup form with a trimmed foot. Anyway, I love sitting down and throwing tons of them off the hump. I also love trimming them. There seems to be something pure about this particular shape and I enjoy it immensely. My problem is this: people in Minnesota don't know what to do with it. They know what a mug is and will buy one blind. But it's like having to pull teeth to get people interested in cups. I use a cup WAY more than a mug. Yet I find that most people enjoy their glassware and don't intend to include any ceramics with their cold drink lineup. It seems like only coffee, tea, and hot cocoa can be drunk from a ceramic vessel. Anything cold like soda, milk, juice, or water, ceramic cups tend to fall by the wayside to glass. I have thought awhile on this and believe it may have something to do with people wanting very SPECIFIC uses for things--too general and people don't really want it. Think about all the one hit wonders like French butter dishes, apple bakers, ring keepers, etc. The general public seems to adore these things. But you show them a cup and they are like, what the *ell do I use this for? Perhaps the ingenuity of potters is biting me in the butt? Does anyone else experience this? I am an educator at heart so I am always trying to teach people pottery things but no one seems to like ceramic yunomis/cups. It is always disheartening how many cups I have leftover from a sale. All my mugs go really fast, but I'm lucky to sell a few cups. PS - this does not include the cup form that is similar to glassware, like something that I might call a "dinner cup." I am specifically talking about the traditional yunomi form. I will post a picture too so there is no confusion

Jack Troy – Pottery Forms: Intention and Happenstance WS05 – Saturday & Sunday, 10-4pm, November 9 & 10 Fee: $200 member/$225 non-member This 2-day demonstration/discussion workshop includes presentations on Japanese teabowls as well as both contemporary and historic pots to help enlarge our approach to our persoanl work and emphasize the evolution of personal forms — pots with a unique identity. Using the cup as a take-off point, Jack will demonstrate how the cup reflects a concern for functional and aesthetic values, including surface decoration, tactile qualities, inside-outside considerations, spontaneity and control, as well as focusing attention on the cup as a whole: weight, lip, foot, body, handle. Thrown cups will be altered by faceting, carving, paddling, stamping and heavy slip application. His most recent, tactile, sculptural teabowls are altered significantly from thrown components. Jack will demonstrate extending the scale of work, and will apply a variety of altering techniques to thrown forms while addressing how and why some pieces are made specifically to be fired with wood. Pitchers, jars, and bowls of various scales with be thrown and altered, befriending asymmetry. Jack Troy's anecdotal style of information-sharing covers a wide range of topics, including technical and aesthetic issues in ceramics, personal goals, and the dilemma of being a literate potter while knowing that most of the world's best pots were made by people who couldn't read, write, or do glaze calculation. The aim of the workshop will be to meet each other and exchange ideas that help extend our personal knowledge of forming and firing so the choices we make about our work might enliven the clay we use. Participants are asked to bring with them 2 pots “lived with over time†– one made by the individual and one by someone else – to illustrate two types of “meaning†with regard to how a piece convey’s significance to us. 2013 is Jack Troy’s 51tst year of making pots. During the past year he fired 11 different kilns, including the anagama at Golden Bridge Pottery, in Pondicherry, India, in February 2013, where he taught his 230th workshop. Other events include workshops in Washington State, at Fern Hill Pottery, Brush Prairie; and Shoreline Community College, Seattle. In Maine, he held a Residency at Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts, judged the 2012 Strictly Functional Pottery National exhibition, and received the 2012 Excellence in Teaching Award from the National Council for Education in the Ceramic Arts (NCECA). His education in ceramics has included trips to 26 countries. Having published over 80 articles in ceramics publications, he also wrote Salt Glazed Ceramics, Woodfired Stoneware and Porcelain, and Calling the Planet Home, [poems]. His work has been exhibited widely, and is in numerous collections, public and private. He has said, “I made my first pot - a wretched little bowl with a pitted glaze - in November, 1962. This simple act changed my life, leading me to believe, 51 years later, that potters may change the world for the better, one handful at a time. “We potters finish our work, but only others can complete it, through use. Pottery, then, is only finished once, but can be completed endlessly, by a succession of users, keeping it active in a variety of settings.†WS05 - Saturday & Sunday, 10-4pm, November 9 & 10 Fee: $200 members; $225 non-members Register on-line or contact Matthew Hyleck at matt.hyleck@baltimoreclayworks.org for more information. Baltimore Clayworks 5707 Smith Avenue Baltimore, MD 21209 www.baltimoreclayworks.org