Students explore the pottery making processes of throwing, jiggering, extruding, casting, and pressing. They test and experiment creating the ceramic surfaces from a variety of high temperature glaze and firing techniques. They establish and challenge the creative and expressive potentials of utility.

Major Requirement | BFA Ceramics

In the first semester, graduate students begin their investigation and produce clay works that allow the faculty to assess their approach and capabilities. Students are available and pursue active contact with the faculty. Students also attend supplemental department presentations.Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department.

Enrollment is limited to Graduate Ceramics Students.

Major Requirement | MFA Ceramics

A seminar exploring ceramic idea, method, and expression in ceramic art from the technical perspective. Raw materials, clay bodies, glazes and glaze calculation are studied. The potential connection between technical understanding and the fulfillment of your vision and aesthetic expression is examined. Independent research is required.

This course is a requirement for Junior Ceramics students. Non-majors may enroll pending seat availability. Email the instructor to request permission.

Major Requirement | BFA Ceramics

Ceramics: a Global Perspective will focus on two non-western ceramic traditions/movements: the Indigenous Ceramics of the Americas and Asian Ceramics. These two seemingly disparate movements have had a profound influence upon western, modern and contemporary ceramic art. Indigenous Ceramics of the Americas provides a ‘close to home/under the surface foundation’ of material and design. Asian ceramics, with its global reach of historical trade roots, provides insight into the movement and transformation of material, technology, and use value.

This combined seminar and studio class provides a historical context and hand on experience of historical developments and hierarchical structures in the ceramic arts. To enhance the students’ understanding of traditional materials and technology upon form and content, students will make ceramics (using the corresponding traditional techniques) alongside art historical study. Each clay and firing type embodies making parameters that effect form, color, content and use. Through the remaking of historical forms, students acquire a nuanced understanding of the importance of technology upon the content and use value of objects made.

The class will focus on three distinct regions and periods in ceramic history: Indigenous Practice of the Americas (Peru, New Mexico), Asian Porcelain, Production and Kiln Technology (Korea, Japan, China) and the Silk Road Trade Routes from Asia into the Middle East, Africa and up into Western Europe effecting ceramic production between 1600 – 1900. The class will culminate by illuminating the effects of colonialism and globalization of these three periods upon late 20th century, and current ceramics. In particular, we will become sensitive to the cultural appropriation of Indigenous culture and Asian aesthetics by teaching its philosophy, colonial history and initiate sensitivity to stereotypes and cultural erasure within ceramic production and its communities. The Ceramics department has visiting artists representing artists from many world cultures and students are required to attend these lectures. Independent research is required.

This course is a requirement for Sophomore Ceramics students. Non-major Sophomores may enroll pending seat availability. Email the Department Head and instructor jointly to request permission.

Major Requirement | BFA Ceramics

In the beginning of your fourth year you work independently with a ceramic faculty tutor to develop your individual degree project. Your project is expected to be a body of ceramic work that is unified in direction, significant in its degree of growth, innovative in its resolution, and personal in its expression. Students are pre-registered for this course by the department.

Enrollment is limited to Senior Ceramics Students.

Major Requirement | BFA Ceramics

Drawing is explored through ceramic techniques. This class serves to enhance the artist's perceptions relative to what drawing can become through the exploration of surface becoming form, and form mediated by surface. Drawing can be premeditation and drawing can be realization.

Elective

The second semester is a development of the ideas and work begun in the first. Students are available and pursue active contact with the faculty. Students also attend supplemental department presentations.

Major Requirement | MFA Ceramics

An exploration and development of personal ideas and vision with their materialization in clay. An introduction to the techniques of handbuilding focusing on clay as a sculptural medium.

This course is a requirement for Sophomore Ceramics students. Non-major Sophomores may enroll pending seat availability. Email the Department Head and instructor jointly to request permission.

Major Requirement | BFA Ceramics

Ceramic Sculpture will cover a range of concepts, traditions and techniques that are specific to the disciplines of both ceramics and sculpture. Projects will revolve around the topics of space, structure and form and the development of ideas. Techniques and processes including hand building, surface treatment and glazes will be covered. Clay is a subtle material allowing an exchange between the medium and the self. Through making, your skills and confidence will develop giving you more control over the objects you wish to realize. Students will approach these dynamics through installation, large construction and small-scale object making. Designed for students at an advanced level, using clay as a primary material and involving a variety of processes and forming methods.

Major Requirement | BFA Ceramics

Continued exploration begun during the first year leads to the presentation of a thesis project. Students work during class hours to ensure daily contact with faculty.

Major Requirement | MFA Ceramics

A posed model will serve as the visual base from which students will compose and articulate 3-dimensional form in clay. Class projects include a series of small standing figures, a portrait, and a series of larger figures or large fragments of figures. Students will learn to build armatures and use clay modeling tools effectively. Outside assignments include skull study, a hand study and drawings from figurative sculpture found in and around Providence. Strong emphasis is given both to whole sight and to abstraction of essentials - proportion, spatial relationship, and axial orientation.

Major Requirement | BFA Ceramics

This course helps the Ceramics Graduate Student develop a vocabulary of concepts concerning their works in clay. A slide presentation is made by each student concerning the relationship between an artist's resources, historical precedent and works in clay for class discussion.

 Major Requirement | MFA Ceramics

Continued exploration begun during the first year leads to the presentation of a thesis project. Students work during class hours to ensure daily contact with faculty.

Major Requirement | MFA Ceramics

A seminar exploring ceramic method and expression from technical perspectives. A study of raw materials including clay, clay bodies, and glaze calculation. The focus is the connection between technical development, and aesthetic expression. In-depth independent research required. A materials diary kept.

Major Requirement for Graduate Ceramics students. Non-majors may enroll pending seat availability. Email the instructor to request permission.

Major Requirement | MFA Ceramics

Students in this class will learn to use a variety of ceramic production methods techniques including; molding, pressing, extruding, and giggering, to design and make small pottery editions. The focus is the design and perfection of the objects made and methods used. This class will also serve as a platform for inviting visiting artists to make small editions using our production facilities.

Major elective for Junior and Senior Ceramics students. Advanced non-majors may enroll pending seat availability. To request permission, email the Department Head and instructor jointly and include images of past work.

Major Requirement | BFA Ceramics

A seminar exploring ceramic method and expression from historical and contemporary perspectives. The focus is the connection between historical awareness, and aesthetic expression in the student's work. In-depth independent research required.

This course is a requirement for Graduate Ceramics students. Non-majors may enroll pending seat availability. Email the Department Head and instructor jointly to request permission.

Major Requirement | MFA Ceramics

This class helps you to develop the vocabulary of concepts relating your work to your sources. A number of exercises are undertaken culminating in a presentation of your ideas.

 
Elective

The second semester is a continuation of the senior degree project begun in the Fall. The work and ideas are further developed and refined for final presentation at the Woods-Gerry Gallery.

Major Requirement | BFA Ceramics

In this studio elective, students will explore extended reality (XR) technologies and their implications for our shared spaces and collective futures, from surveillance and smart cities to interfaces and intimacy. Looking far beyond traditional tech canons — which skew heavily institutional, Western, white, and male — we will actively work to broaden and upend existing narratives about XR’s uses, users, and possibilities.This course is ideal for students looking to connect their own research interests with critical approaches to augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) tools and concepts. Students can expect to leave the course with new technical skills, a body of self-initiated work, and a critical understanding of the promises and perils of extended realities past, present and future. We will focus on beginner-friendly, no- and low-code software, but students who know how to code are welcome to use more advanced techniques in their work. In the class’s first third, workshops and experimental exercises briefly introduce AR/VR tools, photogrammetry, and 3D modeling. Over the rest of the semester, students develop two individual projects. Regular feedback, shared during 1-on-1 meetings and group critiques, will help students define their own process, motivations, and criteria for success. Throughout, in lectures, readings, and discussions, we will analyze diverse work by artists, designers, technologists, and activists who are imagining alternatives to big tech’s constrained visions for our shared futures.

Estimated Cost of Materials : $100.00

Elective

In this course, students will play, critique and make artistic games. These can generally be characterized as simple, conceptually-based and personal interactive experiences. Unlike mainstream games, these games highlight individual narratives, emphasizing self expression, non-linear logic and creative inquiry. Using the free and widely supported Unity Engine, students will learn the basic programming, 3D modeling (using the built-in ProBuilder plugin) and environmental storytelling, with no prior experience required. This will give students the technical and conceptual framework necessary to build their own “world”, one where they set the rules for a change.

Final projects could address identity, agency and self-expression though are not limited to these themes.Every week a new tool will be introduced alongside a playable prototype (made by myself) that demonstrates how the tool can be used and misused (in a productive way). Students will receive a homework assignment based solely on the weekly topic, challenging them to craft an experience within a limited set of parameters that will slowly expand. Additionally, a curated selection of related games and relevant texts will be provided every week.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $100.00

Elective