Thursday, September 25, 2008

Echoes From the Rustbelt


Oil Cans
March 2008
Various sizes / 7 - 9 inches tall
Thrown and hand built
Porcelain, Glaze and Stain
Cone 10 electric
I have spent most of my work time as a studio artists except for the past six months which has been spent on teaching and developing new assignments to teach K-4 grades. I have mostly taught in conjunction with working in the studio but the studio time has always been a bigger part of the work time except for the past few months. I am however ready to get back in the studio. The last time I made a small body of clay work was for a show titled Echoes From the Rustbelt.

This show was a concurrent exhibition in conjunction with the NCECA 2008 conference.

The following was the proposal premise:
Echoes From the Rust Belt
An exchange of ideas and clay between Cleveland Pittsburgh and Beyond.
NOC (Northern Ohio Clay) Invitational

“The rhythmic cycles of growth for the earth and humans are driven by the pulsations of invisible fields of force, which Aboriginal tribal people call the ancestral beings or the Gods.”1 When European settlements blocked the Aboriginal people from iron and red ochre deposits in the earth, the Aborigines would scrape rust from farm machinery and industrial equipment in order to continue their sacred rituals. To the Aboriginal red ochre or iron was the life blood of the earth.2
Steel and iron has over the years been the life blood of many civilizations. Cleveland and Pittsburgh also had their turn as the steel industry fueled their economy for many years. The different shapes and forms that steel becomes to create and build buildings to toasters are ever evolving. So is the clay object. This show represents the artist work and their interpretation of a clay and steel theme in the physical aspect of their work and the physical aspect of their environment. Whether simply using a clay body with a high iron content or iron oxide in surface decoration, to actually incorporating steel in the construction, this show represents the artists interpretation of ECHOES FROM THE RUST BELT.

1 Robert Lawler, Voices Of The First Day, awaking in the aboriginal dreamtime. Inner Traditions International, Ltd, 1991 pg. 100.
2 Ibid, pgs, 100-105.e for the show

The image entered in this blog is work which was shown at the March exhibition at Planet Art Gallery in Mt. Lebanon, PA.
Theresa Yondo
Concept to Creation

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Obstacles



















Glen Lake
Fall 2007

There are so many obstacles out there to overcome. Creating this blog has been quite a challenge for me. I changed one of the settings which enabled Hindi as the primary language. It took me a while to figure out what was going on with the blog. In addition to this, my computer was not working for the past week and I needed to use another computer which did not recognize the Hindi language when I was trying to access the blog. When I was able to get back on my computer, I was able to recognize what was going on and disabled the Hindi setting. In other words, I'm back.

Last week, I was in Glen Arbor in Michigan relaxing, playing and enjoying Glen Lake and Lake Michigan. Teaching started yesterday and I hope to hold on to the serene state one can achieve when Kayaking at dusk on a quite lake. I drove into Leeland one day and visited the Leeland Library. The big find was a first edition book, The Potter's Challenge by Bernard Leach. This exceptional book is full of such great examples of fine clay work. I highly recommend anyone interested in clay work to read this book.

Theresa Yondo
Concept to Creation

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Day one of Blogging






















bodhi tree
installation
the buddha project
cleveland state university art gallery
cleveland, ohio 2004












the bodhi tree, detail

Jeanne finally convinced me to begin blogging in order to document art and ideas. So, here we are setting up the template to begin.
Thanks Jeanne for your knowledge and of course for the tea.
Theresa

It seemed appropriate to choose these images for the opening of this blog page as Jeanne invited me to participate in a show titled the Buddha Project at Cleveland State University. The hand built installation was created in 2004 using porcelain clay fired in an electric kiln to cone 10. The patterns were created using a wax resist technique on the glazes.