2018-2019 Annual Exhibition

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A sampling of ceramic artwork created by HM students grades 9 through 12 during the 2018-2019 school year.  

Ethan Kim '19: Featured Artist

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Statement from the Artist
Ceramics is my escape from differential calculus, colonial history, and metaphysical poetry. I’m far from a professional. I routinely lose control of the clay and watch it develop a consciousness of its own, slipping forwards and backwards, wobbling uncontrollably, laughing as it transforms me from the artist to a powerless bystander. But it’s still a chance for me to mold the earth beneath my fingers and feel it splatter against my forearms, to drown out my concerns in the humming of throwing wheels, the slamming of wedging, and the wheezing of our kiln. In the ceramics studio, conversation turns from The Physics Test to lessons on getting more height out of a small piece of clay, inquiries on what handle would best suit this particular teapot, and debates about which glaze is the sexiest.

Unpredictability is what separates ceramics from other art forms. I can use a scale to measure how much clay I’m using. I can use a foot pedal to control the speed of my wheel. I can choose what glazes I dip, paint, and splatter my clay with. However, I surrender all control when I place my pieces in a two thousand degree oven that spits flames and melts glass with a mind of its own. Every ceramics firing is slightly different, and I decided to embrace this unpredictability (this way, if a pot turned out hideously ugly, I could place the blame on the kiln rather than my incompetence). I focused on keeping my pieces wet, and obtaining an unnaturally thin layer of glaze that would drip and run of its accord. Simultaneously, I often force a line of glaze to fall into the interior of my pieces, particularly bowls. I treat these as evidence of the glazing process- a pseudo-signature, as well as a reminder that I can still influence the final outcome of my pieces.

I wish we had more porcelain.

Ethan Kim '19

https://photos.app.goo.gl/FWrgW5hHCwwXomvb9

Ceramics at HM

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"31" Coil Pots with Patterns from 31 Ceramics 1 Students

For their 2nd long term project of the year, Ceramics 1 students designed a vessel using a single contour line. From that contour line, students created a tool to help guide the construction of their vessel.  Students then carefully constructed their pots using the coiling technique (stacking long "snakes" of clay).  Students then explored patterns on pots. Some questions that were asked and explored: What is a pattern? How to develop a pattern? How to organize a pattern on a three dimensional form. How can pattern alter or enhance the perception of the form?  

A sampling of artwork created in the ceramics studio at HM during 2017-2018

Featured Artist: Kyra Kwok

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Statement from the artist:

This year in ceramics, I fell in love with the idea of art that makes you think. Art involves a dialogue between the artist and the viewer. No matter how the viewer responds- whether they are surprised by the texture of a piece, confused as to how a piece was created, or intrigued by the feelings that a piece invokes- they participate in this dialogue. I focus on utilitarian pieces (and have since I began ceramics), but I try to challenge “practicality.” The pieces I make are undeniably impractical and perhaps unnecessary, but they are a celebration of beauty for the sake of being beautiful. I create them to challenge the viewer to form a new perspective. By asking the viewer to pause their agenda and take a break from their life (which is often centered around efficiency), I call on them to find beauty in small things. There is something refreshing about pieces that are unnecessary in many ways and yet so necessary in the feelings they invoke and the reactions they produce. Many of the pieces that I make require (perhaps) an absurd amount of time and fine detail. However, I hope that this time translates into a more interesting dialogue for the viewer and allows them to appreciate the piece simply for what it says to them. 

Kyra Kwok ('19)

Featured Artist: Emily Bleiberg

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Statement from the Artist

“Although the wind

Blows terribly here 

The moonlight also leaks 

Between the roof planks 

Of this ruined house.” 

-Izumi Shikibu

Throughout the first trimester I’ve made….like… hundreds of pinch pots. (basically, if you’ve seen me frantically running from Fisher after D period with clay smudged on my sweater, this is why).

It sounds silly, but working with a shape so basic has grown into, in many ways, my ode to clay and the qualities inherent to the medium I love most. One of those qualities is the fact that ceramics are three- dimensional and designed to be held-- once pieces are fired, viewers can wrap their fingers about the very clay the artist initially molded, creating this sort of cyclical, intimate interaction between viewer and artist unique to clay. Further, my favorite component of ceramics is how wildly unpredictable the glazing process intrinsically is; I’m not allowed any expectation of how these combinations of colored glass will fuse with metals, paper or paint as I throw different groupings into the kiln (and eagerly race back to the studio to examine each batch). 

I’ve loved coming to the studio everyday and just getting lost in the somewhat meditative process of pinching clay. I love having no idea where that process will lead. I love, maybe most of all, the way the glass silkily melts through a rigid porcelain exterior, forging this juxtaposition of moonlight leaking through something ruined that the above poem communicates for me.

These pinch pots are vessels-- for what, I’m not quite sure. Yet, being free from the constraints of symmetry of utility and just pinching decorative pieces, just experimenting with glass, has been a really special study of clay for me, and I’m excited to follow wherever this process may lead.  

Emily Bleiberg 
11/28/2017