I have been the faculty advisor for the Clay Club since 2009. This club has been actively participating in the National Council on the Education of the Ceramics Art Conference (NCECA) under my supervision for the past 5 years. This club has not only attended the NCECA conference but was awarded a competitive group show in Seattle, which focused on the environmental impacts of humans on the landscape of the Northwest.
I have taken multiple groups of SNC students to the NCECA conference where I helped set up and work at the SNU information booth where we promote the the SNU art department and summer workshops. I also have taken groups of students to the CCACA conference where we represented SNU among other west-coast art programs. These accomplishments are aligned with the goal of professional preparedness, help promote SNU, and have the potential to bring prospective students to our program.
Clay Club Empty Bowls:
Empty Bowls is an international grassroots effort to fight hunger and was created by The Imagine Render Group. The basic premise is simple: Potters and other craftspeople, educators and others work with the community to create handcrafted bowls. Guests are invited to a simple meal of soup and bread. In exchange for a cash donation, guests are asked to keep a bowl as a reminder of all the empty bowls in the world. The money raised is donated to an organization working to end hunger and food insecurity.
Money will be donated to Project MANA. Project Mana has responded to the emergency food needs of individuals, families, and children in North Lake Tahoe and Truckee since 1991.MANA is the result of a Sierra Nevada University project by student Ann Ryan.
Collaborative community event. Bowls made by SNU Ceramics/Art Department, Incline Middle School and Incline High School.
NCECA Installation in Seattle
The human figure with the head of an animal is representative of the relationship between humans and the natural environment and its creatures. This connection is fortified through the figural likeness to male and female human forms. The human likeness is a definitive reminder that we (humans) are no more than a species inhabiting the same planet as these creatures.
The figurines are representative of native species which are part of the regional ecosystem; they stand juxtaposed to a human made object: concrete, glass, steel, vehicles, and humans; Seattle. This can be viewed as a symbolic gesture suggesting the potential for an answer to the encroachment and plundering of humans upon the natural environment through technology and knowledge. This juxtaposition is also a symbolic of an irony; that these objects are the very man-made objects and inventions which lead to the creature’s peril.
This relationship between the ceramic material from which the effigies are constructed and their ethereal counterpart, the environment, becomes apparent through their degradation by the erosive weathering processes of nature. In this way the raw clay bodies show the fragility and vulnerability of species under the pressure of mankind. In this way the effigies stand in gesture of submission to the surrounding metropolis. They are diminutive to further represent their present status in the current order of the industrial complex.
This body of work focuses on the relationship between human impact on the landscape and the preceding environmental consequences beginning with the destruction and disappearance of the habitats of native animals. This installation considers the present course of human evolution and its detrimental impacts upon the land and natural environments.
Written by Karl Schwiesow
Creative Team
Karl Schwiesow, Amanda Dabel, Bianca Del Cioppo, Molly Allen, Heath Pierson, Marvin Blake, Shannon O'leary, Flor Widmar and Evan Cook
Faculty members: Rick Parsons and Sheri Leigh O’Connor
