Grad school!

I’d like to update this journal more with updates on my garden, on my work, and opportunities to share my work with you.

To that end, I’m excited to announce (one year late) that I am attending Georgia State University for an MFA in ceramics. After my first year I was awarded the Welch Fellowship.

It’s been extremely exciting to have an opportunity to expand my practice and learn so much. My first few months in grad school, i kept getting feedback asking why my work, which dealt so much with the native ecology of the American South east, looked so greek inspired. This has led me to abandon (for now) the sgraffito work I was comfortable with to chase down rabbit holes of American ceramic traditions. This led me initially to the blue and whit salt glazed ceramics that was common along the eastern seaboard, especially in New England. This was a good opportunity to refine my brushwork on ceramics and get comfortable with other forms of image-making on ceramics that weren’t just sgraffito.

Getting even more local my work turned toward the traditions of Southern folk potters. This pottery tradition can be traced from the Edgefield district in South Carolina.

http://www.asjournal.org/56-2012/south-carolinas-edgefield-district-an-early-international-crossroads-of-clay/

Proliferating from here, the traditions of this part of the country spread across the South and this is where Georgia’s folk pottery traditions draw their lineage from. I’m finding this tradition exciting to work from as it allows me source ceramic materials from this state and even from my yard, allowing for a more gentle environmental impact with such an extractive medium that ceramics is. 

We’ll see if this sticks.

Coming up on this page next, I’ll be sharing some term papers from school that are influencing my work. 

Cheers,

Mark R