NCECA: Ceramics education in Texas

I recently spent a week in Houston, TX for the 2013 annual NCECA meeting -  the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts. This is not an exclusive society, explaining why ceramics single handedly kidnapped me in the middle of the night while I was innocently studying drawing. Rather, all mediums are embraced - the opening NCECA ceremony proves just this, it involved a performance artist as guest speaker, and a mime - who performed a tear jerker of a memoir on stage. This open love of creativity speaks how Ceramics willingly redefines itself into the future.

My own artistic attraction is to describe a personal alchemy. I like piles of tiny delicate objects and I like thinking about how to arrange these personal things into assemblages - like a primitive's curio cabinet, a natural science collection of experience instead of objective records. This aesthetic really reflects the nature collection I began as a small child exploring the woods in Germany -  the germ of my creativity was in finding feathers and creatures and childishly assigning my place within them. So heres a look at my favorite clay experiences from the Houston galleries...

My favorite of all time. Keys, hammers...hands...

Clay layered and fired multiple times to simulate peeling paint on wood.

The 'ingredient's list contained the word 'mum' - took me a second to realise it was the flower..

NCECA Biennial - A memorial to a pianist friend. The artist slip-cast rose twigs and inserted them into piano strings - the hanging chimes in the wind. Eloquent.

This cotton-rat pup, is just a few hours old. He is from a litter born inside a live trap on a transect I was helping with. He and his descendants live at Cheyenne Bottoms, in Kansas. The pup and his litter were released a few minutes later. We watched as the mother quietly came into view, and carried to safety each pup inside her mouth under the safety of a Kochia plant. This maternal behavior was a rare and rewarding sight.

Holding a recent find: a large Cotton-rat. He was tagged, weighed, sexed, and released  - free to go about his business, chewing on tasty forbs.

Petri dish of grass seeds I am working with. The goal is to germinate the grasses for scientific illustration.

The seeds were allowed to germinate. Here is a view of a Little Bluestem cultivar a few days within germination.

The past seven years of my life reflect an intimate relationship with the unique grasslands of Kansas.These pictures and my work reflect how my experiences with this great system and the rural environment it intersects with, have influences my art-making. I am now a graduate student of art with a background in biological sciences. I was a graduate student of Biology too. For the same reasons I entered science, I enter art to maintain a grounded reality. Rangelands create this experience for me. They are known for being wide, unarable places populated by cattle and vegetation - but to me they are one of the rare places on earth where a person can be overwhelmed by place, and actually be present. This connectivity encapsulates knowing not just names of organisms in a place, but understanding their social value - ethnobotany and agriculture for example - and of course, the personal experiences we inevitably gain from interacting within this system as another living being.

Installation using plants collected from the Field in Kansas