Asymmetrical Coiled Vessels

Ceramics I
Cleveland Heights High School

We studied different Cultures of Coiled vessels

Japanese Jomon Vessels

French Biot Rope Jars

East Asian Coil Throwing

Pueblo Potter Maria Marinez

and Modern Ceramic Artists in Ceramic Daily Online.

Students combined two silhouettes

to inspire an asymmetrical design

for their Coiled Vessel.

First Quarter Projects

Cultural Tile Study

Ceramics I 

Cleveland Heights High School 

We studied ancient Islamic and Spanish tiles,

Moroccan Tiles,

and  Roman tile work.

tiles in our school display case.

Zen-tangle Animals

9th Grade Art

Cleveland Heights High School

Students practice patterns

Final Collaborative Display
(with Ms. Skehan)

This Summer has been such a Joy at the Orange Art Center

I must say that this Summer I have had the most talented and patient students which made it such an enjoyable teaching season!  I am going to miss it at the Orange art Center, but cannot wait to teach at Heights High School in two short weeks!  Here are some of the highlights from this summer:

The Smallest Successful Bowl I have seen thrown on the wheel! 

Carved Model Cars

Bobble head Mouse

Watercolor Wreaths

Silhouette Printing

Nature Rubbings

Finding Frogs

Charcoal Shoe Portraits

Model Student Work

In the past few weeks I have been extremely impressed with my students hard-work and finished products at the Orange Art Center and Shaker Heights High School.  Here are just a few examples from the past few projects we have been working on.

Multi-media Kitty (K-2nd Drawing and Painting)

Symbolic Pinched Box ( New Directions)

Elephant Teapot (New Directions)

Magritte phone-apple (3-5th Drawing & Painting)

Sumi-e Ink Drawing (3-5th Drawing & Painting)

Volcano Island (High School Mixed-Media)

Tea Pot (Teen/Adult Ceramics)

Adult Pottery Class

Over the Fall I taught an adult pottery class at the Orange Art Center, to four ladies.  Two of the women had worked before in clay and the other two had never.  Here are a few examples of each of their final products.

Coiled bowl and slab leaf pressed plate

Woven coil box

modern slab vase

thrown sgraffito cup

Starting January 23rd I will be teaching another Spring Teen/Adult Functional Pottery Class where students will learn all types of techniques for making Tea and Coffee sets including, cups, saucers, trays, creamer/pitchers, covered jars, tea pots, and utensils.

Realistic Color, Abstract Rhythm

Students progress again this week was very impressive! 5-8th graders at the Orange Art Center mixed acrylic to paint the colors they saw in real fall leaves, then drew organic rhythmic lines in the background.  Inspired by Cherie Roe Dirksen's style paintings.

Progressive Abstraction

So proud of my 5-7th grade students at the Orange Art Center tonight they have worked hard the past three classes on their progressive abstraction of an object. Each student depicted their chosen object through a range of materials; detailed pencil drawing, tonal watercolor, and abstract collage.

Here are the results