Reimagining Processes: Master Class in Glaze with Alex Zablocki

We are very honored and delighted to welcome the renowned ceramic artist in material experimentation, Alex Zablocki @alexmzablocki to our studio for a master workshop in using glaze as a sculptural material! We will be doing two separate workshops, June 14-16th for a 3-day workshop, and June 17-19th for another 3-day workshop. Grab your chance and DM us for registration!

Reimagining Processes: Master Class in Glaze

with Alex Zablocki @alexmzablocki

📅Date:

Group A: 3-Day | June 14-16th, 2024 | 1 p.m. - 7 p.m.

Group B: 3-Day | June 17-19th, 2024 | 1 p.m. - 7 p.m.

In this 3-day workshop, Zablocki will introduce his inventive ways of using glaze as a sculptural material from which to build dynamic ceramic vessels as well as adorn and decorate raw porcelain clay forms. During this workshop Zablocki will share his philosophies around making purposeful and considered pieces that challenge traditional ceramic conventions and embrace chance and risk to make objects that hinge on the verge of utility and sculpture.

Participants can expect a fun, exciting and collaborative atmosphere rich in both traditional and non-traditional ceramic techniques from hand-building, wheel throwing, surface decoration to casting, cold-working and constructing with solid blocks of glaze.

Students will have the opportunity to make a number of vessels that investigate ceramic processes and techniques in turn developing new and authentic ways of thinking and making. The container, the void, the receptacle, the pot, the vessel, will become a springboard from which we leap, creating objects that unapologetically hinge on the verge of utility and sculpture.

Alex’s work takes apart the ceramic vessel and re-animates its constituent parts. Vestiges of utilitarian ceramics are free to perform as comic objects frozen in acrobatic recombination. The proper anatomy of the vessel is let loose and the assembled parts slip along viscous saturations of colored glaze.

Day 1

13:00 - 13:30: Introductions/ workshop content

1:30 to 2:30: Working with Glaze:

Demo- Building Molds/Casting glaze (load and fire)

Demo- Preparing glaze aggregate

2:30 to 3:30: Working with Clay

Introduce aggregates

Demo: Throw small bottles off the hump on potter’s wheel with glaze grog

3:30 to 4: Coffee Break

4 to 6: Practice making small cups on potter’s wheel

6 to 7: Constructing with Glaze

Demo: Assemble glaze stack vase with cast blocks (load and fire)

Day 2:

1 to 3:30: Clay

Demo: Throw and alter large vase on potter’s wheel

Demo: Begin coil building large vase form

Demo: Trim Cups

3:30-4pm Coffee Break

4 to 5: Clay continued

Demo: Build Platter form

Demo: Build small hand build cups with mason stain additions

5 to 7: Student work session

Day 3:

1 to 1:30: Discuss fired glaze stack vase

1:30 to 3:30 Clay & Glaze

Demo: Finish cup forms

Demo: Finish coil-built vase form

3:30 to 4: Coffee Break

4 to 4:30: Glaze

Demo: Wet Glaze fired vase form (load in kiln)

4:30 to 7pm: Student work session