“We recognize the significance of ceramics in our region,” explains Shayna McConville, division manager of Cultural Arts for the City of Kettering. “There are incredibly talented ceramic artists throughout the Miami Valley but also many people who come to Rosewood with an interest to learn about clay.”
Rosewood’s ceramic studio coordinator Sara Torgison says ceramics is an unusually intuitive art form because it’s so tactile. “We all played with mud or Play-Doh as children, so it is one of the few things we share an early experience with,” she says. “We all have the ability to interpret our surroundings through clay because it encourages a playful approach to those interpretations.”
The Rosewood team determined to celebrate the special material by planning a year of programs, events and workshops — all about clay. “From beginners to experienced artists, from kids to adults, we wanted to represent a range of activities that got people’s hands dirty,” says McConville. “We hope that this celebration of all things clay inspires those that have been actively working with clay and those curious to try it for the first time.”
Planned events range from workshops on surface decorating and figurative sculpture to visits by well-known ceramics artists. A September “Clay Festival” will include daylong free activities and demonstrations and this summer’s Art on the Commons will incorporate a clay-themed program. The Art Ed exhibition in the fall will feature art educators from the region, including many ceramics artists.
WATCH NOW: Rosewood Art Center’s effect on the community.
In order to ensure accessibility, many of the programs are free and open to all. “This is a clay studio for the community and the more we can share this space, the more we can impact the creative health of our region,” McConville believes. She says the wheel pottery and hand-building classes at Rosewood are constantly busy and many people come into the clay studio to do their own work independently. “Our community is passionate about clay and our staffers are changing how people think about clay as a medium.”
A case in point is Jolene Jespersen of Centerville who first heard about arts programs at Rosewood when her daughter was in the preschool TotLot program housed at Rosewood in the early 1990s. She began taking courses and eventually landed in some ceramics classes.
Those captured her interest and over the past 15 years, Jespersen has taken classes with a number of Rosewood teachers and has participated in many workshops including Raku. Next up is a luster glaze workshop. “Doing clay classes has opened up a whole world of possibilities,” Jespersen says. “I had never been artsy, so this has really been a lot of fun for me.”
Cavener will speak in Kettering
In the news at the moment is a public lecture and three-day workshop conducted by internationally known sculptor Beth Cavener, a graduate of The Ohio State University who now lives and works in Montana. Best known for her hand-built ceramic animal sculptures, Caverner is currently represented in the Akron Museum’s exhibit, “Turn the Page: The First Ten Years of Hi-Fructose.”
The folks at Rosewood are organizing a trip to Akron to see Caverner’s artwork the day before she comes to Kettering.
“Beth Cavener’s impressive ceramic sculptures of animals are surreal, with very human-like features and gestures,” says Akron’s assistant curator Elizabeth M. Carney. “This is both delightful and disconcerting, because the animals relate so directly to our own emotions. Beth’s work invites us to look and be amazed by her process and handling of her medium, as much as it invites us to reflect upon ourselves and empathize with others.”
READ MORE: Rosewood shows works on paper from top local artists.
Cavener says she’s not the first to imbue animals with human emotions. “It’s one of the oldest things we’ve been doing — just think about the pigs and wolves that were characters in children’s morality tales,” she says. “That’s more or less what I’m doing, just with a more contemporary twist. I create psychological portraits of people disguised through animal skins.”
Cavener says as an artist, you have to choose your audience. “You can’t make work for everybody; people will be looking for a certain experience when looking at art,” she notes. “I target a specific audience, people who have their own hidden fears and insecurities. I’ve found that confronting people directly is uncomfortable and isn’t productive. A lot of people have an easier time relating to their pet cat and dog. We project a moral innocence to the animal.”
Empathy for the subject
When she puts human morality into the image of an animal, she explains, there’s something that allows a sense of empathy that might be troubling if presented as another human being.
Cavener admits that a lot of her sculptures are upsetting. “I also think of a lot of them as being funny,” she says. “I try to project human situations as being avoidable and therefore amusing. If only the animal could stop struggling so hard, stop biting its own self or pulling against a rope needlessly. It’s a metaphor for the fact that a lot of our human struggles are self-inflicted.”
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In her Rosewood workshop, Cavener will demonstrate her ceramic methods, including her conceptual framework, the technical methods of building solid and hollowing out, firing, finishing, repairing and installation of work.
“Anybody can come to my workshop, it’s mostly demonstration,” she explains. “I call it an interactive demo and talk about how I form my ideas and how we can turn the expression of those ideas into something mysterious. I talk about gesture and scale and I’ll create a study for this idea in front of them. On the last day, everyone will create an eye.”
Getting started with clay
Andrew Dailey, Rosewood’s cultural arts program supervisor, urges anyone who wants to learn ceramics to take the plunge and sign up for an introductory class. “It may seem intimidating but it’s the best way to start learning,” he says. “Once you’ve got a solid handle on the basics, the sky is the limit. And because we have a large studio open to the public, you don’t have to invest in all the big expensive equipment yourself. “
Overall, Dailey says, the hope for this year is to inspire others to express their creativity through clay. “We want people who are curious to learn about pottery and ceramics to jump in and start getting their hands dirty,” he concludes. ” We hope those who are already into ceramics will learn something new and perhaps expand their own artistic practice. Ceramics is such an amazingly broad medium and we want Rosewood Arts Centre to be the hub for it in the Dayton area.”
HOW TO GO:
What: An Artist Talk with sculptor Beth Cavener
When: 6:30 p.m., Saturday, April 29
Where: Rosewood Arts Centre, 2655 Olson Drive, Kettering
Admission: Free
HOW TO GO:
What: Beth Cavener workshop
When: Friday, April 28 to Sunday, April 30
Where: Rosewood Arts Centre
Registration: $145 per person including a continental breakfast on all three days. Educational rate for groups of 5 or more is $100 per person.
RELATED: There will also be a "Hi Fructose Art Trip" to the Akron Art Museum on Thursday, April 27 that includes a presentation by Beth Cavener. Cost is $110. For information on other clay programs, classes, special events, call (937) 296-0294.
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