Ian Johnston
Summer School at Alfred University

Maureen Wright Scholarship Recipient Report

This past July I had the opportunity to participate in the
Summer School at Alfred University. My intent was to explore a
variety of aspects of ceramic arts practice. I was fortunate to meet
Johnan Creten, guest artist, and a host of other ceramically
obsessed individuals in the context of a fourteen person month
long Ceramic sculpture workshop. The workshop was led by
Walter McConnell, Ceramic artist and associate professor at
Alfred and we were technically assisted by eight extremely skilled
and diverse graduate students. Throughout the workshop we
were treated to almost daily demonstrations and slide lectures of
everything from diverse hand-building techniques to press-mold-
ing, slip casting and throwing. It was a hot and humid July in
the tradition of the Eastern states and we spent many evenings at
the local café discussing the merits of each other’s work, direc-
tion, studios and lives. We got to hear first hand from Johan
about the complexities of creating, showing, warehousing and
shipping large scale sculptural objects across international bor-
ders. While Walter McConnell presided over the group more dis-

tantly, he too showed me a dedication to exploration and idea
that has begun to inform my own thinking and approach to my
work.

As a self taught ceramic artist 1 have participated in a number of
workshops and symposia that tend to be technical learning
binges. The workshop at Alfred was no different. There was a
glaze calculation course run by Bill Carty, professor of Ceramic
Engineering, that shed much light and clarity on a subject that
had eluded me. I was introduced to press moulds by Andrea Gill
and her husband John entranced a group of us with a three hour
demonstration of his favorite hand-building techniques and zeal
for object making.

As a group we shared the responsibility for keeping the studio
clean and the grad students tirelessly loaded and unloaded kilns
for us. The kiln room, centrally located and round in plan, hous-
es 31 kilns many of which are walk in. In a shed next to the
main building there were a couple of wood and soda kilns.

Alfred, a town of 800 people, swells to 8,000 when the students
return in the fall each year. During the summer there is ample
cheap accommodation but the nearest grocery store is in a town
that is twenty minutes away. Thankfully there were many people
there with cars that were more than happy to share a ride and
the graduate students were gracious enough to pick us up at the
airport in Rochester about an hour north of Alfred.

Although I had no specific intention of creating finished work I
was able to make twenty five pieces some of which will form a
part of my next exhibition, Tangible Shadows II, at the Nelson
Fine Art Centre in January 2006. All in all it was a mind
expanding experience that I highly recommend and would have
been impossible without the support of my partner Stephanie
Fischer, the Northwest Ceramics Foundation, Maureen Wright
Scholarship, the CABC’s Grace Cameron Rogers Scholarship,
and the BC Arts Council Professional development Assistance
funding.

lan Johnston
Nelson, BC

for lodging members of our group to attend the NCECA.

request as soon as possible.
The following information would be helpful:

Number of people traveling

Method of travel (car, plane)
Anything else you want to mention.

like a pot of your own.

NCECA Lodging Needed?
Let us know.

The Oregon Potters Association, through Ginger Steele, has provided a list of members who are making their homes available

To assist the OPA with matching up members with hosts, please contact Don Jung (ot Ginger Steele directly) with your

Dates arriving and leaving
Preferences (pets like dogs or cats ok or not, etc)

email to communications@bcpotters.com would be easiest. Phone 604-873-1836 is also ok. Pll match you up with an OPA
host and you can contact them and arrange the details. There’s no money exchanged, but I highly recommend a hostess gift,

Don Jung

8 Potters Guild of British Columbia Newsletter

February 2006