California Conference for the Advancement of Ceramic Art

The John Natsoulas Center for the Arts is proud to announce its official dates for this year's ceramic conference! CCACA will be held in-person from October 22 23, 2021. https://www.natsoulas.com/ccaca-2021/

Join us Feb. 20 from 1 to 4 p.m. for Esther Shimazu Workshop - How to Build a Figure - Hands, Breast, Shoulders, Arm Parts Workshop. https://www.shop.natsoulas....com//esther-shimazu-how-to-buil Over the years, Shimazu has established herself as one of Hawaii’s best-known artists. She received a Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation Purchase Award in 2001, and an Individual Artist Fellowship award from the Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts. Shimazu’s rise to success was not an isolated process, however. She drew inspiration from the great Toshiko Takaezu, also Japanese-American from Hawaii who left home to study on the mainland and in Japan. Shimazu’s work references Japanese culture often, specifically the delicate folding fans; ceramics itself is a medium rooted in Shimazu’s ancestry. Shimazu’s art is further influenced by her interest in nature, history, and family. In creating her distinctively charming stoneware pieces, she draws heavily from her experience as an Asian-American living in Hawaii. She is best known for her stoneware sculptures of bald, nude, chunky Asian women constructed with hand-building techniques. Her figures are created without complex details in order to accentuate their ceramic origins.

Join us this weekend for Clayton Keyes Online Workshop, Feb. 20th - 1 to 4 p.m. PST https://www.shop.natsoulas.com//clayton-keyes-figure-build In this worksho...p, Clayton Keyes will show a startlingly simple and effective approach to rendering the human form in clay. He will demonstrate slab construction of the head, torso, arms, and hands in approximately twelve inch scale. This process allows the artist to work extraordinarily quickly to create a human figure and can be used on most any scale. See more

Join us Sunday, Nov. 8th from 10 am 4 pm to see Michelle Gregor’s live workshop! Are you ready to bring your figurative sculpture to the next level? Do you fe...el like you have hit a plateau with your current work? Do you strive to loosen up but find yourself repeating old habits? This ceramic workshop is a rare opportunity to work alongside Michelle Gregor, from the comfort of your own studio, and push your limits. All levels welcome. Audience members can interact and ask questions to Michelle while she demonstrates her artistic process. See more

Join us for a 3 hour long workshop from Shalene Valenzuela this weekend. Shalene will reveal the secrets of her success within ceramics from mold-making to slip... casting. https://www.shop.natsoulas.com/ceramic-w/shalene-valenzuela In this workshop, Shalene will take participants through a step by step process on how she creates her narrative slipcast works. Topics covered will include slipcasting and altering of forms, and the process of developing imagery on bisqueware utilizing drawing, painting and screenprinting techniques.

Check out our line up of upcoming workshops. Margaret Keelan on Dec. 5th, Bill Abright - Feb. 6th, Rene Martucci - Dec. 19th and Richard Notkin on Nov. 21st. https://www.shop.natsoulas.com/ceramic-workshops

Coming up this Saturday, Sept. 26th from 1 - 4 pm PST, artist Lisa Reinertson will be giving a live demonstration of her process including a live Q & A. View a...ll available workshops at: https://www.shop.natsoulas.com/ceramic-workshops Lisa Reinertson is known for both life size figurative ceramic sculptures and large-scale public sculptures cast in bronze. Her work ranges in content from semi-autobiographical female figures with animals in clay to historic bronze monumental portraits of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Cesar Chavez, immersed in narrative bas-relief imagery. The underlying presence of her work is an expression of humanist compassion. In viewing her work, we are witness to concerns of feminism, peace and social justice as they intertwine with nature and our relationship to creatures with which we share the earth. Reinertson’s expressive use of the clay medium creates sculptures that capture her nuanced observation of life forms and empathetic observations of life issues. Her work combines a realism rooted in figurative art traditions with a contemporary expression of social and psychological content. Lisa completed her MFA at UC Davis in 1984, studying with Robert Arneson and Manuel Neri at the legendary TB-9 studio. She has taught at several universities, primarily across California, including the San Francisco Art Institute, UC Berkeley, CSU Chico, and Santa Clara University.

In our next series of online ceramic workshops, we present the ULTIMATE trifecta: Lisa Reinertson, Lisa Clague, and Shalene Valenzuela! Find more information below. To register, visit: https://www.natsoulas.com/ceramicworkshopseries/

This Friday, September 18th, the John Natsoulas Center for the Arts will hold a FREE ceramics conference online! In a side-by-side fashion, two artists will eng...age with one another in discussion about the nuances of their work and the experience of being a ceramic sculptor in the 21st century. They will also participate in a live Q & A, with questions being sent in real-time by students from all over the world. Sign up here: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_GR3xOBlLReqCibVDZP9iHQ For more info on the conference, visit: https://www.natsoulas.com/ccaca-2-0/ Because many colleges and universities will continue to implement social-distancing regulations this coming Fall, over 50 professors and teachers have requested for this conference to be used as an educational tool for their curriculum. The confeurence will be available on Zoom and for live streaming on Facebook. We highly encourage educators to take advantage of this conference by inviting all their students to participate.

Mark your calendars for Friday, September 18th from 10 am to 4 pm! In two weeks, the John Natsoulas Center for the Arts will hold the largest sculptural ceramic...s conference in the world online! This conference is free to the public and an incredible opportunity for students and interested parties to directly interact with and gain firsthand insight from renowned sculptural ceramic artists. In a side-by-side fashion, two artists will engage with one another in a discussion about the nuances of their work and experiences of being a ceramic sculptor in the 21st century. They will also participate in a live Q&A, with questions being sent in real-time from students all over the world. One of the distinguished artists included in this free webinar is Lisa Clague, whose transformative work of turning the figurative tradition on edge earned her two Virginia Groot Foundation grants. Also included in this conference is Arthur Gonzalez, a recipient of the National Endowment of the Arts fellowship and Michelle Gregor, a leading figure in the second generation of Bay Area Figuration who is multifaceted in her works of clay, bronze, paint and drawing. Other artists at the forefront of sculptural ceramics this year include Lisa Reinertson, Shalene Valenzuela, Jeff Downing, and Louis Marak! To participate, please download Zoom and register in advance at: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_GR3xOBlLReqCibVDZP9iHQ For the schedule, please visit: https://www.natsoulas.com/ccaca-2-0/

Just in, fresh and hot out of the oven: Margaret Keelan's book! Published by the John Natsoulas Press, this book explores the life and works of trompe l'oeil ma...ster, Margaret Keelan. For the past few years, Keelan's sculptures have been glazed, stained, fired, then glazed, stained and fired again to give surfaces the look of disintegrating paint over weathered wood. Directly taught under Joe Fafard and Marilyn Levine, Keelan continues their legacy as the Associate Director of Sculpture at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, CA. Written by Susannah Israel and Allen Yi and designed by Madeleine Nguyen, this softbound book includes four essays and 137 pages with 120 vibrant color plates. To learn more about Margaret Keelan, purchase her book here: https://www.shop.natsoulas.com/p/margaret-keelan-softbound/

Sneak into Patti Warashina’s studio on July 11th! Explore how Patti builds her dreamlike yet ironically absurd figurative sculptures that often portray human be...havior. Warashina will reveal her process, the tools she uses and some of the most important techniques discovered in the 60s. Winner of the 2020 Smithsonian Visionary Award, Patti Warashina was instrumental in bringing the Seattle ceramic scene to prominence, heading up the department at the University of Washington, Seattle, as well as producing pieces that took inspiration from the Funk movement in the Bay area but with their own interpretations. Warashina is best known for her figurative sculpture pieces that tell stories which are often dreamlike or fantasies and ranging in size from very small to larger-than-life. She works in low-fire polychrome ceramics, the colors and surface decoration both vivid and animated. Her works are in the collection of the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. For more information visit: https://www.natsoulas.com/ceramicworkshopseries/ . #pattiwarashina #ceramicsworkshop #ceramicart @ John Natsoulas Gallery

Beth Lo fans we have original works, books and an exclusive online workshop available at https://www.shop.natsoulas.com