Twenty-six visual art students from the Culver City High School Academy of Visual and Performing Arts have been exploring the art form of ceramics, and their work will go on display Saturday, one day only, at the Craft and Folk Art Museum in mid-Wilshire.
During an eight-week program sponsored by Sony Pictures Entertainment, AVPA art students are participating in an artist-in-residency with the Craft and Folk Art Museum.
Ceramicist Tetsuji Aono and Museum program manager Fabrizio Flores have led the workshop series.
AVPA art students have been exploring the theme of personal identity as experienced through ceramic art and Made In China: New Ceramic Works by Keiko Fukazawa currently on view at the Craft and Folk Art Museum through May 8. Students demonstrate an understanding of terms and techniques related to ceramic art.
All ceramic works made by the AVPA art students will be on display at the Craft & Folk Art Museum on Saturday from 2 o’clock to 5.
Eleventh grader Emily Shin explained her excitement for the residency. “I really love pottery,” she said. “I cannot wait to work with this new medium.
“I’m interested in exploring ceramics and using an unfamiliar material to express myself and my ideas.”
During the intense program, each student created a low-relief medallion by making a plaster press mold duplicated into a three-dimensional vessel. Tetsuji gave introductory lectures on ceramics. The students learned about various types of clay and the firing processes, which hardens pottery into permanent art pieces. As the students worked with the material, they learned how to manipulate the clay into forms called, “pinch pots,” simple bowls shaped by pinching a ball of clay into a hollowed shape.
In the following sessions, art students combined two of the bowls into a head shape and filled it with a ball to make a bell head. Each bell head relates to an aspect of the artist’s identity.
“My bell head is modeled after a traditional Indonesian mask representing my culture,” said senior Laksmita Cadrisari.
Students made self-portraits, animals similar to their personalities, or sculptures that symbolized aspects of themselves.
Junior Allison Goldsmith said that “finding your own identity can be difficult. It can feel like you are restricted to certain limitations. If you go beyond them, you are considered an outsider.
“To demonstrate how wrong these limitations are, and how being an outsider isn’t a bad thing at all, I sculpted my bell head to look somewhat like an alien; the epitome of all outsiders. The alien-like figure is meant to encourage myself and others to embrace our individual personalities in order to truly find our unique identity.”
AVPA artists were also invited on a field trip to the museum on Feb. 19 to attend a guided tour of Made in China: New Ceramic Works by Keiko Fukazawa, featuring curator Holly Jerger and guest speaker Andres Payan, curator of Public Engagement. Ms. Fukazawa is a Japanese artist living in Los Angeles. She spent three years creating porcelain work in China and her unique cultural perspective forms the basis for her artwork. Made in China explores the interaction of consumerism with traditional Chinese culture.
Some of Ms. Fukazawa’s pieces on display include sculptures of Mao Zedong engulfed by ceramic flowers and traditional Chinese landscapes decorated with Louis Vuitton logos.
See avpa.org