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27th Annual California Conference for the Advancement for Ceramic Art

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27th Annual California Conference for the Advancement for Ceramic Art

CCACA brings the ultimate ceramic sculpture event to Davis, CA from May 1 – May 3rd, 2015. In an intimate setting, you can interact with top artists in a way not possible at other venues. UC Davis, home to the late sculptor Robert Arneson, was instrumental in defining a new direction for ceramic art. Enjoy delightful downtown Davis and be inspired by nationally recognized ceramic art talents.

Demonstrations, lectures, shows—no other event delivers more inspired knowledge of ceramic sculpture for a better price. Meet face-to-face with distinguished ceramic sculptors you might only read about; see and hear from the artists what makes them top in their field.

“This is the kind educational, intellectual event one expects from museums or universities, but which public institutions seem less and less able to provide.” – ARTWEEK

Artists demos from today's top ceramic artists including:

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Patti Warashina

Patti Warashina is a key West Coast figure in the transformation of ceramics from mere pottery to extravagantly imagined sculpture over the past 50 years. Her work has been collected by the Museum of Arts and Design (New York), National Museum of Modern Art (Kyoto) and Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, D.C.), along with every major museum in our region. The youngest of three children, Warashina was born and raised in Spokane, Washington. She received her bachelors degree and M.F.A from the University of Washington, Seattle, where she studied with sculptors Robert Sperry, Harold Myers, Rudy Autio, Shoji Hamada, Shinsaku Hamada, and Ruth Penington.  Warashina’s work is often humorous, and includes “clay figures placed in imagined environments that show her subversive thinking.” She uses sculpture to explore such themes as the human condition, feminism, car-culture, and political and social topics.

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Irina Zaycteva

Irina was born in Moscow, Russia in 1957. She has advanced degrees in book illustration from the prestigious Moscow Art Institute. Having illustrated a number of children’s books, Irina found that her love for sculpting offered a wider range of expressing her artistic views. Porcelain had a particular attraction because of its historical importance, as well as for the finer grain this material offered as opposed to other ceramics. She developed several unique techniques that had never been used before, resulting in few limitations to her creativity. All of her works are created using high-fire porcelain, over-glaze as well as under-glaze colors, and 18K or 24K gold luster.

Irina begins creating a sculpture without knowing how the story ends. She rarely does a sketch for a piece beforehand. Her initial goal is to create an intriguing shape. When the object is completed, Irina determines what the shape suggests in terms of colors, spaces, painting, and gold luster. Her creative process is always an improvisation.

Richard White inspects a recent sculpture

Richard White

Richard White is an artist. He specializes in clay — a ceramist — but he also draws, creates with wood, concrete, metal, found objects.

He heads the ceramics department at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo. He’s a teacher, but he’s never stopped being a studio artist. He’s had hundreds of exhibits all over the United States and the world.

“The creative process is a mysterious process. Most important is to be present when something inspiring hits. You have to be aware. The doing the art is the payoff. For the last 40 years I’ve been trying to follow a non-verbal intuition with my art. I’ve found all the things I don’t want to do; I’m narrowing it down, finding out the things I do want to do.”
“I do some kind of art almost every day, he continued. I keep my hands going, the juices flowing, it’s how I stay vital. I like to do things where I don’t have a goal. I just want to let loose. The minute you’re conscious that it’s for a show, or to make money, it gets subverted. The act of art is a gift to yourself, to do something excellently in life. It’s a gift to those who might also appreciate it. Once you turn art into a commodity, it sucks the life out of it. I could make more money, but I wouldn’t love the art the way I do.”

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Chris Antemann

Chris Antemann . Chris earned her M.F.A. in ceramics from the University of Minnesota and her B.F.A. in ceramics & painting from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. She has exhibited extensively in the United States and China. Her work can be found in many private and public collections, including the Museum of Arts and Design, The 21 C. Hotel Museum, The KAMM Teapot Foundation, The Archie Bray Foundation, and the Foshan Ceramic Museum in China. Her artist residencies include The Archie Bray Foundation and The John Michael Kohler Arts Center, where she was the NEA funded resident. IN 2010 she was the First Place Winner of the Virginia A. Groot Grant, a prestigious grant awarded to artists working in 3D to allow them time to further their work. Chris is currently working on a full room installation titled, Forbidden Fruit: A Porcelain Paradise in collaboration with the Meissen Porcelain Manufactory in Germany. Spanning the better parts of two years, the installation is set to debut at the Museum of Art Meissen in the fall of 2013.

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Beverly Mayeri

Beverly Mayeri’s figures “evoke a richly complicated human presence.” Her sculptures often “bridge the psychological, the political and the sensuous within one hybrid form.” Beverly Mayeri is a studio artist living in the Bay Area. She earned a BA from the University of California, Berkeley, and an MA in sculpture at San Francisco State University. Her work has been shown extensively in numerous museums and galleries, and is included in many public and private collections. She has received 2 NEA grants, and a Virginia Groot grant, and has lectured and taught many workshops throughout the United States.

 

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Shalene Valenzuela

Shalene Valenzuela was born in Santa Barbara, California. She received a BA in Art Practice at the University of California at Berkeley and an MFA in Ceramics from California College of Arts and Crafts. In 2007, she moved from her longtime home of Oakland, CA to participate in a long-term residency at The Clay Studio of Missoula. She currently maintains a studio in the historic Brunswick Building in downtown Missoula and is the executive director at the Clay Studio of Missoula.

Additionally,  has participated in summer artist residencies at the Archie Bray Foundation (2006) and Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts (2004, 2011). She has taught at Flathead Valley Community College, University of Montana, Oregon College of Art and Craft, The Clay Studio of Missoula, Missoula Art Museum, Richmond Art Center, ASUC Studios at UC Berkeley, and CCA Extended Education. Shalene has been a guest artist and speaker at a number of art centers, colleges, and universities. Her work has been featured in several group and solo exhibitions nationally and is included in numerous private collections. She recently received an Artist’s Innovation Award from the Montana Arts Council, and was featured in the Ferrin Contemporary Top 40 Exhibition.

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 Esther Shimazu

Esther Shimazu is the granddaughter of Japanese immigrant laborers and was born and raised in suburban Honolulu, Hawaii in a large, close-knit family. She attended public schools and the University of Hawaii/Manoa near her home before transferring to the University of Massachusetts/Amherst to obtain her Bachelor of Fine Art in 1980 and a Master of Fine Art in 1982. Over the years, she has established herself as one of Hawaii’s best-known artists. Clay and a figurative approach have been present in her life from very early on into college, where her current style first came together. In her work, she strives to bring together her lifelong love of clay and the figure, using traditional vessel-making techniques to make what amount to animated pots. Each stoneware sculpture is constructed body part by body part and assembled from individual toenails and teeth on to form a continuously hollow, lightweight but sturdy one-of-a-kind piece. Each is obsessively worked over, smoothed, accented with slips and oxides, bisque-fired, hand-sanded, colored further with rubbed-in oxides and more touches of color and a final airbrushing of oxides. Firing is to cone 5-6 oxidation and there is one last sanding, the better to touch. Most of the imagery is of bald, nude chunky Asian women, unconcerned about clothing and hairdo, comfortable in their own skins. There is the occasional male figure or companion animal. All invite the viewer to play, but underneath, there’s a hint that they might bite.

 

CCACA will include the  local gallery exhibitions and over 40 college shows bring the best work of the year within easy reach.

  • John Natsoulas Gallery’s annual 30 Ceramic Sculptors
  • The Artery’s California Clay Competition
  • The Davis Art Center
  • The Pence Gallery

These shows run concurrent with CCACA 2015. See all this and over 40 amazing student shows within a short walk. This is a chance to surround yourself with the top ceramic art of today and the ideas of the artists of tomorrow.

 

Contact Information: 

Nancy Resler

John Natsoulas Center for the Arts

521 First Street, Davis, CA 95618

www.natsoulas.com

art@natsoulas.com

 

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