Art Studio 351


ARTS 351
Ceramics II

1. Catalog Entry

ARTS 351
Ceramics II

Credit hours (3)
Prerequisites: ARTS 251

Second year level assignments and experiences within the ceramic medium.

2. Detailed Description of Course

ARTS 351 will meet for 4 and a half hours per week. Two hours of demonstration, lecture, or criticism and 2 and a half hours for the personal development of each student’s clay work. During the course of each semester, individual and group critiques and other discussion will be necessary to aid in the awareness of each student’s understanding of how surface and form can affect one another in both positive and negative ways.

Each student will be expected to spend time outside of class working in the studio to develop their clay work towards this end. The results of this learning experience will be shared with the other members of the class through discussion and other appropriate ways on an ongoing basis.

3. Detailed Description of Conduct of Course

The student is encouraged to explore their own personal interest in the development of their work. The student is also encouraged to utilize the resources available to them, such as the use of books and periodicals in the library, exhibitions in galleries, and the wealth of art information on the internet. The professor will from time to time bring in examples and point out examples from all of the above to aid in the student’s development. The professor will incorporate demonstrations in class, which will aid the students in solving and making successful aesthetic choices and applications in their work.

The students will be responsible for keeping a journal, which will help to document the progress that they will make in their own personalized course of study.

4. Goals and Objectives of the Course

Goals:
     1) Show improved understanding and applied development in their personal work.
     2) Show an increased and improved ability to talk and write about their work.
     3) Show originality in their work.
     4) Create a considerable body of work that displays an improvement in their personal aesthetic
         and conceptual thought.

Objectives:
    1) To end up with a visually and over all aesthetically successful body of work.
    2) To be able to converse at length about the artist’s personal work and what it is about as well
        as what the student may think about other artists’ work.
    3) To have an increased ability to solve visual problems that may arise in the development of the
        student’s personal work.

5. Assessment Measures

In addition to the creation of a considerable body of finished work:
    1) The submission of a journal that documents students’ progress toward the above listed goals
    2) Level of participation in classroom discussion.
    3) Originality, craftsmanship, and response to suggestions for the improvement of their work
        established during critiques.  There will be ample time throughout the semester for the
        student to modify, improve, and strengthen weaknesses as they are revealed.

6. Other Course Information

This will serve as a starting point; it is assumed that additional references will be searched in the development of the students’ personal work.  The technical skills learned from the prerequisite ARTS 251 will be utilized and further developed through the exploration of form and surface design in more ambitious and advanced clay projects. Examples of these projects could include, but not limited to multiple explorations (also called working in a series) of unique vase forms by piecing together thrown and stacked forms with the addition of pulled handles for a more complete and unified balance.

Other techniques involved in advanced clay projects could include building forms with slabs and also working with the coil building method.  The above example could also include abstract or realistic sculptural forms. Stylized forms could also be investigated by the student.  Influences for these explorations could be derived from research done in the library pertaining to the student’s creative interest from both a visual and historical perspective.

The course will fulfill the curriculum requirements for NASAD.

Review and Approval

March 18, 2005 Revision by Steve Arbury, Chair
October 2, 2012
September 2, 2014