Semester One Ceramics Final
Read the two quotes below, choose one, and answer the related question on the back of the sheet. Answers should be clearly written and consist of a minimum of six paragraphs and reference a minimum of two of your personal art works created here. Reflections could also include references to your use of time and connection in the studio, specific feelings and judgments of work created, correct ceramic terms and methods as wells as any thing else that pertains to the level of your work produced in semester one.
1) “To return to Mingei, the problem is how the individual artist today approaches folk craft. Of course the answer is that he should look after his character first. The problem of his own character must come foremost. With one’s intellect, with one’s mind, one can understand what tradition means. The folk art formula may be fed though the mind and through the intellect. But in work, what comes out must come out through one’s own fingertips, one’s own hands; otherwise it is no work at all…. Because Yanagi was a critic and dealt in words, he used the term “beauty” a great deal to express what he was trying to say. In my case, being a workman, I do not feel any lack by not using that word…. Beauty is not in the head or in the heart, but in the abdomen.” Mingei is: “hand-crafted art of ordinary people”
- Shoji Hamada
Q) Interrupt this quote as it relates your “personal connection”, creativity and aesthetics in what you produced this semester, in ceramics.
2) “Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: Yet at the moment one definitely commits oneself, then then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events and issues from the decision, rising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no person could have dreamed would come their way. Whatever you do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.”
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Q) Explain your commitment to semester one ceramics and your fine art credit specifically reviewing which projects triggered a turning point for you, if any.