“The experience is more than the end result.”
ARTS | Grace Sweatt
The Springfield Art Association is offering two exciting opportunities for the community to explore ceramics and pottery-making over the summer months. A kickoff event, ROASTED: Hot Pots or Pork, is June 16. A visiting potter offers several workshops and classes in June and July.
Work with a visiting potter Southern Illinois potter CJ Niehaus will travel to Springfield this summer to offer a series of workshops. Niehaus, who admits she is a “messy” potter, becomes fully immersed in the tactile experience of working clay. “There is no separation between me and the clay.” She goes on, “The immediacy of clay lends itself to work by people at all levels – the experience is more important than the end result.”
Niehaus has been a “functional potter” for more than 20 years and has shown her work in a number of juried fine arts fairs in Eastern and Midwestern states.
While teaching at Fine Line Creative Arts Center in St. Charles, Mo., Niehaus came to enjoy the moment when a struggling student “got it.” She became interested in teaching at a local college only to learn that, in spite of a B.A. in art therapy from Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio, post-graduate study in ceramics at Xavier University and at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, and her years of experience both working with clay and teaching the craft in the community, she had to have an MFA to teach in a formal setting. Niehaus enrolled in the ceramics program at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. Now entering her final year at SIU, Niehaus says she has been exposed to new firing techniques and has become more interested in “altered” pottery styles.
The first Niehaus workshop, “Beginning Wheel Throwing” begins June 30. The workshop explores the use of the potter’s wheel for centering, opening, pulling, shaping and trimming clay.
Experienced potters will want to take advantage of the five-week “Achieving Great Finishes in Clay” class beginning July 11. This class explores the use of terra sig and burnishing, slips and carving, resists, underglazes and underglaze pencils.
July 14 marks the beginning of a fourday “Pit Firing” workshop exploring the oldest form of pottery firing. Participants will learn the history of pit firing, basic methods of clay construction, use of oxides and methods for pit firing.
