"Dwelling in the Earth" — Native Clay Workshop with Chris Stoddard
"Fashioned from the earth, we are souls in clay form.” — John O’Donahue
“For me, sculpture is the body. My body is my sculpture.” — Louise Bourgeois
Creative expression is a powerful way to meditate on our emotions and experiences, and working with earth materials—especially from our individual landscape—can be especially potent. This course will teach ways to work with native clay and earth pigments to represent and honor both our interior lives and the world we inhabit.
We will use both processed and unprocessed materials to make ceramic sculptural houses—"Dwellings"—and then fill them with figures or objects that represent our interior lives.
Part 1 ($75)
When: April 23rd (11-2 pm)
Where: This will take place at the instructor’s home studio in downtown Bozeman, Montana.
What:
Learn how to identify and initially process local clay (participants will be encouraged to collect material and bring to the second session if they want)
Make ceramic sculptural dwellings for play, as displays, as shrines, or in other ways to shelter and honor objects that speak to us.
Part 2 ($75)
When: May 24th (5:30-8 pm)
Where: This will take place at the instructor’s home studio in downtown Bozeman, Montana.
What:
Finish processing native materials for clay, pigment sticks, and paint
Paint, embellish, and furnish our individual houses. We will explore symbolic representation opens up new ways of relating to our inner and outer worlds.
Participants who are unable to attend the first session are welcome to purchase pre-made houses for this second session or use your own "house." Houses will be available for purchase directly from the artist during the workshop.
Cost of Workshop 1 includes clay to build the house, and Chris will fire, sand and finish the houses.
Cost of Workshop 2 includes local Montana clay (already processed) and a pigment stick for each individual. It also includes a final firing and sealant if desired. Participants can also use a variety of Chris's personal handmade pigment sticks and paints from earth pigments.
All tools will be provided for both workshops. For both workshops, bring a lunch and drinks and snacks will be provided.
About the instructor:
Chris Stoddard fell in love with ceramics and native clays while studying in Oaxaca, Mexico with local artists, many of whose families have worked with the same clay deposits for hundreds of years. Returning to the United States, she began making sculptures that express the experience of the body as part of a changing, ageing, decomposing, and regenerating natural world. In western culture, the archetypical form for the fusion of humans and nature is a young, nubile nymph, typically portrayed as an object to be “consumed” by the viewer for pleasure. Instead, her figures represent diverse ages and physical proportions interacting with the natural environment, with frank and expressive gazes that call for an emotional response to the buried reality that the viewer’s own body is also a member of the world of plants and animals.
Chris uses minimally processed clay and earth pigments for both building sculpture and for paints and glazes on her surfaces. She harvested these materials from places she has lived (Montana, Pennsylvania, California, and Utah) as well as sites where her ancestors have lived to reinforce the ties between the earth and the human body, and between the past and the current moment. She has studied techniques for clay and earth pigment processing with both Mexican and US artists whose work spans chemistry, geology, and generational learning. She currently works as a professor of economics at Montana State University.
*This workshop is part of our “Dwelling Series” which takes place over the course of the next few months. It’s a series of workshops where we contemplate our relationship with our inner psyches, our homes, our communities and our environment. Together we will be exploring our personal and collective mythology through creative writing, nature walks and molding local clay–all with the intent of going within to discover how our inner world creates our outer reality. You can view the full series here.
"Fashioned from the earth, we are souls in clay form.” — John O’Donahue
“For me, sculpture is the body. My body is my sculpture.” — Louise Bourgeois
Creative expression is a powerful way to meditate on our emotions and experiences, and working with earth materials—especially from our individual landscape—can be especially potent. This course will teach ways to work with native clay and earth pigments to represent and honor both our interior lives and the world we inhabit.
We will use both processed and unprocessed materials to make ceramic sculptural houses—"Dwellings"—and then fill them with figures or objects that represent our interior lives.
Part 1 ($75)
When: April 23rd (11-2 pm)
Where: This will take place at the instructor’s home studio in downtown Bozeman, Montana.
What:
Learn how to identify and initially process local clay (participants will be encouraged to collect material and bring to the second session if they want)
Make ceramic sculptural dwellings for play, as displays, as shrines, or in other ways to shelter and honor objects that speak to us.
Part 2 ($75)
When: May 24th (5:30-8 pm)
Where: This will take place at the instructor’s home studio in downtown Bozeman, Montana.
What:
Finish processing native materials for clay, pigment sticks, and paint
Paint, embellish, and furnish our individual houses. We will explore symbolic representation opens up new ways of relating to our inner and outer worlds.
Participants who are unable to attend the first session are welcome to purchase pre-made houses for this second session or use your own "house." Houses will be available for purchase directly from the artist during the workshop.
Cost of Workshop 1 includes clay to build the house, and Chris will fire, sand and finish the houses.
Cost of Workshop 2 includes local Montana clay (already processed) and a pigment stick for each individual. It also includes a final firing and sealant if desired. Participants can also use a variety of Chris's personal handmade pigment sticks and paints from earth pigments.
All tools will be provided for both workshops. For both workshops, bring a lunch and drinks and snacks will be provided.
About the instructor:
Chris Stoddard fell in love with ceramics and native clays while studying in Oaxaca, Mexico with local artists, many of whose families have worked with the same clay deposits for hundreds of years. Returning to the United States, she began making sculptures that express the experience of the body as part of a changing, ageing, decomposing, and regenerating natural world. In western culture, the archetypical form for the fusion of humans and nature is a young, nubile nymph, typically portrayed as an object to be “consumed” by the viewer for pleasure. Instead, her figures represent diverse ages and physical proportions interacting with the natural environment, with frank and expressive gazes that call for an emotional response to the buried reality that the viewer’s own body is also a member of the world of plants and animals.
Chris uses minimally processed clay and earth pigments for both building sculpture and for paints and glazes on her surfaces. She harvested these materials from places she has lived (Montana, Pennsylvania, California, and Utah) as well as sites where her ancestors have lived to reinforce the ties between the earth and the human body, and between the past and the current moment. She has studied techniques for clay and earth pigment processing with both Mexican and US artists whose work spans chemistry, geology, and generational learning. She currently works as a professor of economics at Montana State University.
*This workshop is part of our “Dwelling Series” which takes place over the course of the next few months. It’s a series of workshops where we contemplate our relationship with our inner psyches, our homes, our communities and our environment. Together we will be exploring our personal and collective mythology through creative writing, nature walks and molding local clay–all with the intent of going within to discover how our inner world creates our outer reality. You can view the full series here.
"Fashioned from the earth, we are souls in clay form.” — John O’Donahue
“For me, sculpture is the body. My body is my sculpture.” — Louise Bourgeois
Creative expression is a powerful way to meditate on our emotions and experiences, and working with earth materials—especially from our individual landscape—can be especially potent. This course will teach ways to work with native clay and earth pigments to represent and honor both our interior lives and the world we inhabit.
We will use both processed and unprocessed materials to make ceramic sculptural houses—"Dwellings"—and then fill them with figures or objects that represent our interior lives.
Part 1 ($75)
When: April 23rd (11-2 pm)
Where: This will take place at the instructor’s home studio in downtown Bozeman, Montana.
What:
Learn how to identify and initially process local clay (participants will be encouraged to collect material and bring to the second session if they want)
Make ceramic sculptural dwellings for play, as displays, as shrines, or in other ways to shelter and honor objects that speak to us.
Part 2 ($75)
When: May 24th (5:30-8 pm)
Where: This will take place at the instructor’s home studio in downtown Bozeman, Montana.
What:
Finish processing native materials for clay, pigment sticks, and paint
Paint, embellish, and furnish our individual houses. We will explore symbolic representation opens up new ways of relating to our inner and outer worlds.
Participants who are unable to attend the first session are welcome to purchase pre-made houses for this second session or use your own "house." Houses will be available for purchase directly from the artist during the workshop.
Cost of Workshop 1 includes clay to build the house, and Chris will fire, sand and finish the houses.
Cost of Workshop 2 includes local Montana clay (already processed) and a pigment stick for each individual. It also includes a final firing and sealant if desired. Participants can also use a variety of Chris's personal handmade pigment sticks and paints from earth pigments.
All tools will be provided for both workshops. For both workshops, bring a lunch and drinks and snacks will be provided.
About the instructor:
Chris Stoddard fell in love with ceramics and native clays while studying in Oaxaca, Mexico with local artists, many of whose families have worked with the same clay deposits for hundreds of years. Returning to the United States, she began making sculptures that express the experience of the body as part of a changing, ageing, decomposing, and regenerating natural world. In western culture, the archetypical form for the fusion of humans and nature is a young, nubile nymph, typically portrayed as an object to be “consumed” by the viewer for pleasure. Instead, her figures represent diverse ages and physical proportions interacting with the natural environment, with frank and expressive gazes that call for an emotional response to the buried reality that the viewer’s own body is also a member of the world of plants and animals.
Chris uses minimally processed clay and earth pigments for both building sculpture and for paints and glazes on her surfaces. She harvested these materials from places she has lived (Montana, Pennsylvania, California, and Utah) as well as sites where her ancestors have lived to reinforce the ties between the earth and the human body, and between the past and the current moment. She has studied techniques for clay and earth pigment processing with both Mexican and US artists whose work spans chemistry, geology, and generational learning. She currently works as a professor of economics at Montana State University.
*This workshop is part of our “Dwelling Series” which takes place over the course of the next few months. It’s a series of workshops where we contemplate our relationship with our inner psyches, our homes, our communities and our environment. Together we will be exploring our personal and collective mythology through creative writing, nature walks and molding local clay–all with the intent of going within to discover how our inner world creates our outer reality. You can view the full series here.