This workshop is now FULLY BOOKED: please email us to get on waitlist for future workshops
Touch – Respond: A one-day Artist Workshop with Jane Sawyer
“Jane Sawyer’s teasing vessels are finely balanced between awkwardness and elegance, indolence and vitality, playfulness and solemnity. They are forever in a state of becoming” *
Jane Sawyer draws on a blend of contemporary design, craft practice and conceptual curiosity. Versatile ceramic objects that sit somewhere between sculpture and function engage both the tactile and the visual senses, breaking down distinctions between art, craft and design, and provoking innovative use. Her unique methods, developed over many years, inspire a deep connection and reverence for the material, clay, through the sense of touch. Her work is based on the premise that the maker, the material and the method dwell within a symbiotic, dynamic relationship.
Opening our awareness through touch and response can provide an avenue for reflection and a meaningful pathway to evolving through clay. Jane’s unique techniques evolved since challenging her studio practice with the question: what is the most important thing? Everything else was up for grabs and the result was a fresh free-style wheel-throwing including her signature altering, manipulating and re-throwing and slip coating.
Content: Do you love wheel-throwing but are bit tired of the “samey-ness” of it? Do your objects look a bit like everyone else’s? Have you become a bit of a robot on the wheel? Do you want to kill your robot?
Join this dynamic hands-on workshop where Jane will guide you through structured exercises and demonstrations to unlock your own “signature touch”. It is one of Jane’s passions as an educator to reflect on our signature touch, how we move in the world and how to “read objects” and create meaning through touch. Visual presentations showing the underlying threads of the development of Jane’s style will punctuate the teaching/demonstrations. Jane is looking forward to a lively exchange about making ceramics and living a life grounded by clay and pottery and helping you to re-interpret what wheel-throwing can offer!
When: Sunday 25 August 2024, 9.30am-4.30pm
Price: $315 Full price/ $295 Concession/$275 Slow Clay current/past student
Important: Suitable for students at intermediate-advanced level with sound experience throwing on the wheel. We suggest a minimum of about 12 months attending weekly classes but it’s a very flexible guideline! We can also take students just wishing to observe! Please call us on 99437844 to chat if you are unsure of your level.
Jane Sawyer is an active exhibiting artist, writer, educator and presenter and is the founding director of Slow Clay Centre where she inspires others to live their lives centred by clay. Jane holds an MFA by research (RMIT, 2002) titled The Evocative Object, which investigated the power of the functional object to communicate through the sense of touch. Her ceramic practice has taken her to residencies and exhibitions in UK, US, Denmark and Japan and her work has received many awards and is held in institutional and private collections. Jane has served on professional boards such as Craft Victoria, and The World Crafts Council – Australia, and is a member of the International Academy Ceramics.
*Peter Timms, The Age Newspaper, arts review, 2007
Image: Massage bowl, 2019. Red Earthenware, thrown, altered and re-thrown. Photo: Andrew Barcham
Slow Clay Centre is a specialist ceramic education centre based in Naarm (Melbourne) established in 2012 by ceramic artist Jane Sawyer. Please join our monthly e-newsletter to keep up with all new courses, workshops and events!
CoVid19: Our studio follows all Covid Safe recommendations including air purifiers, extraction fans and cleaning after each class. If we have to re-schedule for any reason we will offer a choice of either a refund or credit note.