Tom Lane, Joyce Lyon, & John Archer

Korla Luckeroth

March 2012

Committee Members:

Tom Lane, Joyce Lyon, & John Archer

Thesis Addendum

This document, in conjunction with the book Locals and Locales, is submitted as the supporting thesis in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Master of Fine Arts Degree in Art at the University of Minnesota. The book Locals and Locales documents the work included in my thesis exhibition and explains the influences behind the work. The addendum serves as a supporting document that includes information about the construction process and other artists that have influenced me.

Making and Construction

In the creation of my ceramic dwelling sculptures, I often begin with a story and from there I find imagery to accompany it. Once my subject matter and sources are decided, the construction portion of the process begins. Garnering enough wet clay to make an entire piece, I place it with force on my worktable. Images from within are imagined and the details begin to emerge. Shaping the clay with my hands until it is in the general shape of the scene I want to create, I then leave it for a day or two, covered lightly until it has hardened some. From there it is further sculpted until I am ready to add the final details. This may take from one to five days. At this point I stop. Once the clay is completely leather hard and it does not give much when pressed on, it is flipped over, and placed on a piece of foam or in my lap, carving away the unnecessary clay from the back side. This makes the piece much lighter and creates a place to hang it. While carving out the under side, I periodically check the thickness with my needle tool. The piece is carved out until it is approximately one-half inch on all sides. After this removal process, the piece is flipped back over and I proceed to add the details, which usually take between one to three days. At this stage, the work is finished and sits to dry for at least a week before firing. I often wait until I have many pieces done and fire them all together in order to conserve energy. After the initial firing, the pieces are washed and then sprayed with an air hose, to brush away crumbs and dust. They are then painted using underglazes, mixing until the desired shades and hues are found. I choose to use matte underglaze finishing techniques to create a flat and dry surface. The pieces are then fired a final time in order for the glazes to mature.

Influential Artists

I am inspired by the work of documentarian artists. One of the artists that I appreciate and draw inspiration from is Keith Jacobshagen, a Nebraskan landscape painter. Jacobshagen depicts low horizons and wide, dominant skies. I discovered his paintings while completing my undergraduate degree at the Kansas City Art Institute. His work documents a place and a mood, which I find captivating and hard to capture. I am drawn to the work of Keith Jacobshagen and that of other painters because I believe what I do is a form of three-dimensional painting. Each piece begins by drawing on the clay with my exacto knife, sketching out dimensions, and erasing markings with my fingers.

I am also enlivened by the work of William Christenberry. Christenberry is a photographer, painter, and sculptor who is most famous for documenting and replicating scenes from his childhood spent in Hale County, Alabama. He makes an annual pilgrimage to rural Alabama and documents the decay of individual structures, as well as rural scenes and landscapes. "What I really feel very strongly about, and I hope reflects in all aspects of my work, is the human touch, the humanness of things, the positive and sometimes the negative and sometimes the sad," Christenberry says. He does this by not depicting the people within his work but what they left behind: the remnants. This notion and way of working is something that is important to my work as well.

Another documentarian that I truly appreciate is Dale J. Travis. Dale has organized a website, to which I have been able to contribute, in an effort to document and catalog all of the round barns and covered bridges in the United States. The website organizes the barns and bridges by state and includes directions and coordinates, as well as photos. On his site, thousands of photos and records help preserve the history of these barns and bridges before they are gone, and a few document restoration efforts.

Kaylynn Deveney is another artist that I am inspired by, and her collaborative work with Albert Hastings. Deveney, a photographer and former fine-art graduate student in southern Wales, met and took an interest in her elderly neighbor, Albert Hastings, in 2001. While she was in school she began to follow him around and take photographs. He would then write a few words or a sentence or two in response to what she caught on film. The photographs and writings were published in a book, The Day to Day Life of Albert Hastings, depicting beautiful and quiet moments, and documentation of this man's existence.

I think about the place I hold in the history of my medium, and specifically ceramic relief sculptors. A pivotal artist in the history of ceramics and one of my favorite sculptors is Luca Della Robbia. Della Robbia was born in Florence, Italy in 1388. He made many sculptures in marble and bronze, but it was his work in ceramics that was part of a movement that changed the way the medium was viewed and elevated it to a new status. Due to his elegant and powerful way of depicting people, he helped raise the value of the medium, bringing ceramics closer to mediums such as bronze and marble. Robbia's wall-hung earthenware ceramic pieces are provoking to me because of his ability to transcend time and relay emotions.

Conclusion

Through my book and this addendum I hope that you are able to understand more extensively the motivation behind the ceramic work included in the 2012 Master of Fine Art thesis exhibition. The work serves as a documentation of the people and places I have been surrounded by for the past three years while in the graduate program at the University of Minnesota. Additionally, this body of work reflects and my thoughts on a number of sociopolitical issues ranging from historic preservation to the development of master planned communities.

Bibliography

Deveney, KayLynn, and Albert Hastings. The Day-to-Day Life of Albert Hastings. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006.

Jacobshagen, Keith. Biography. 6 Mar. 2012 <

Travis, Dale J. Round Barns & Covered Bridges. 2012. 6 Mar. 2012. <