hal mc whinnie on tue 29 dec 98
10111 Frederick Ave.
Kensington Maryland 20894
E mail
Halchaos@juno.com
What kind of garden would Bosch have developed?
A public garden opened from May to Sept for the ceramic and the digital
arts.
THE GARDEN OF EARTHLY DELIGHTS
December 28, 1998
THE DIGITIAL INSTITUTE FOR ARTS EDUCTION
The garden of earthly delights, a public garden for the ceramic arts will
establish an INSTITUTE FOR ARTS EDUCATION DIGITIAL beginning on April 2
1999.
This institute will focus on the development of artist/teachers listservs
and online distance education courses in various aspects of arts
education.
Beginning April 15 1999 the curriculum shall consist of three online
distance education courses on the following topics:
Ceramic glaze course
Drawing ion the whole brain
Chaos and the arts
In addition, the institute now maintains three weekly listserves, which
are
The glaze of the week
The fractal of the week
The drawing and thought of the day
All of these services are free to artists, art teachers and students.
CERAMIC GLAZE RESEARCH CENTER
My own personal involvement and fascination with the universe of
ceramic glazes probably began at the School of the Art Institute of
Chicago where I studied with Myrtle Merrit French, an early student of
Charles F. Binns at Alfred University and an associate of Baggs at Ohio
State. Mrs. French had graduate from Alfred University and went to
Chicago to establish a crafts program, one of the first in the country,
at the Jane Adams Hull House. For me, this commitment; to ceramic glazes
has led me to trace my own roots back to Binns and beyond to the arts and
crafts movement in the early decades of our century, This is a tradition
which has lasted almost a complete century.
With this background in mind, I have decided to complete my career in
ceramics with continuing with the activities of the Ceramic glaze
research Center that I established at the University of Maryland several
years ago.
The arts and crafts movement in this country also helped to
established the tradition of china painting and moved to the forefront
some of those essential gender issues, which still seem to haunt the
field of ceramics today. Probably for the first half of our present
century, the world of the ceramic arts and especially the world of the
ceramic glaze were the honored places of the woman. It was not until the
advent of the "macho" potters of the 1950's that the male influences
began to become dominant in the ceramic world. If one could not throw 50
pounds of clay into a large plate or bowl in 10 minutes one just did not
belong. Who are the glaze grurus of today?
After I learned glaze calculation according to the Seger method,
I moved away from clay work for a few years but I still have always
remembered the influences of Mrs. French on this subject. When I went to
College Park to teach ceramics, design, and art education I discovered
the new world of clay at both the Renwick Museum and at the now legendary
super Mud conferences that were, at the time, held at Penn State
University.
I was most probably one of the first clay artists to make use of
the computer for ceramic glaze calculation and for glaze research and
development. In 1976, I had a grant from the National Endowment for the
arts to develop a ceramic glaze data bank at the University of Maryland.
As a part of that effort I collected 5,000 ceramic glaze formulas from
many sources and coded these for placement in a computer data file. In
addition, I developed separate computer program for glaze development
according to the Seger methods. These efforts have resulted in a series
of more than 50 papers published in many ceramic journals throughout the
world.
During the past several years I have been engaged in a ceramic
glaze research project that has involved the translation into English of
the ceramic glaze formulas of the great Spanish glazemaker, J. Llorens
Artigas. Artigas was a ceramic artist in Barcelona who developed glazes
for the ceramic sculptures and the ceramic mural projects of Joan Miro.
Artigas's use of color and his glaze work not only reflected his native
Spanish traditions with the powerful influences of Moorish ceramics and
the architecture but echoed the works of Gaudi, the Art Nouveau, and the
ceramics of Picasso. This is covered in my recent paper on Artigas and
Miro, which has been just published in the current issue of tile Heritage
magazine.
As a part of this intensive ceramic glaze research I have
developed several ceramic glaze workshops which are based on the work of
artigas and which I hope to introduce to potters in American over the
next several years. These will be featured in my online glaze course.
I have also started a second glaze research project which is to
re-analyze published and historically important glaze formulas. As a part
of these two current glaze research projects I have collected 10
different computer based glaze calculation software programs that while
presenting the basic Seger analyses also represent glaze relationships in
a variety of different ways.
FUTURE RESEARCH CONCERNS AND PROJECTS
One major future project will be to offer a free glaze analysis
service to art teacher and to studio potters. This project will be
modeled after my glazes research data bank and this new service will be
through published research notes in various journals and information in a
form such as this on clayart and on my glaze of the week network.
In addition to this free service for art teachers, I shall also
provide glaze development workshops at various locations in this country
for a modest fee and travel expenses. Our workshop projects and our glaze
analysis service will be a major service activity of the glaze research
center and the Institute for Arts Education, Digital.
HAL MC WHINNIE
CERAMIC AND COMPUTER ARTIST
December 28, 1998
Page 3
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