emotion and imagination in pottery

National Art Education Association

Emotion and Imagination in PotteryAuthor(s): Robert C. BurkhartSource: Art Education, Vol. 15, No. 6 (Jun., 1962), pp. 7-9Published by: National Art Education AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3186661 .

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FIGURE 1

EMOTION and ROBERT C. BURKHART

IMAGINATION in POTTERY One of the main problems in teaching ceramics ap-

pears in the first few weeks when average students discover that ceramics is primarily an intellectual rather than an emotional learning activity, and that certain skills must be clearly understood and de- veloped prior to self expression. Certainly, some students discover a challenge in learning a new discipline and experience much excitement in developing new skills. However, there are clearly a number of students who, in the beginning, are not interested in ceramics as a discipline. Their orientation toward learning in the arts is primarily emotional. Ceramics soon appears to them to be essentially an impersonal and unemotional art which does not provide any im- mediate emotional outlet for their feelings. Therefore, they are without any personal learning incentives and so often fail to develop any real understanding of ceramics as an art. Ceramics, then, is hard for them to learn which makes it difficult to teach them since they lack any intrinsic or real reason for working other than passing the course.

Students can be helped to discover the kinds of emotional significance characteristic of ceramics without suppressing the importance of mastering funda- mentals. One way is to keep the process a unitary whole from the very start so that throwing and glaz- ing are natural parts of the process. The emotional

meaning of a pot is really obscure until the pot is glazed. Some finished work is necessary early in the course so the student will think of the process as a whole. Still, the student must be brought to under- stand that emotional expression in ceramics is essentially dependent upon the potter's imaginative sensitivity to those subtle changes in form which increased control makes possible. For instance, there is a point where most beginning students find the various differences in a curve intriguing to explore. When they are confronted in this way by the numerous alternatives existent within every single pot upon which they work they soon seek to become more discriminat-

ing about the forms they make. Though their control over the form of the curves they make usually lacks refinement they do gain much by discussing the kinds of curves they have been able to produce especially when their pots are placed in a row as they are in

Figure #1. When students develop this initial con- sciousness of discrimination in regard to the forms and meanings they are expressing, it is useful to open up the ceramic medium further.

At this point if the emotional significance of ceramics is to be understood there must be a con- stant insistence upon imagination as well as crafts-

manship. To be imaginative here means to be sensitive to the variety of alternatives which their products have inherent in them. This is more likely to be dis- covered when they are required as a class to work

Robert C. Burkhart is Asst. Prof. of Art, Central

Michigan Univ., Mt. Pleasant, Mich.

JUNE 1962 7



FIGURE 2

on one type of pot in which the emphasis is placed upon the need for a variety of solutions. Problems in- volving cups have some ideal properties in this respect. Important differences in the cup are brought about by the simplest changes in the cylinder. The cup as a functional object also demands some important kinds of sensitivity because it is meant to be held in the hand and rested against the lip. Its form also has aesthetic significance as related to use and occa- sion, liquid content and atmospheric value. It is interesting to note the variety of meanings and contrasts conveyed by the student cups in Figure #2. They also serve to illustrate some valuable and easily learned supplementary techniques which can greatly extend the imaginative range of the beginning potter's work. The simplest, of course, is represented by the finger dents which were pressed into the thin walls of the wine cups as the student removed them from the wheel (group b). The tumblers to the left of them (group a) were scored because of the student's alert- ness to the possible value of the twists in the cup shape he was throwing. He then learned to create these twists by scoring the cylinders he made on the outside and rethrowing the cup at the lip until the twists appeared round between the grooves. On the opposite side of this illustration there are two cups (group c) which have been scored on the inside to make them square in shape at the top. Here again, to succeed, the students must develop the willingness to be a little daring with their products. The cup is ideal in this respect, also, in that if it is lost as the result of some experiment, it can be made again. However, most important from the learning point of view is the fact that the functional value of a cup tends, when it is completed and used, to make the emotional significance of its form tangible.

An experience such as this leads to a natural con- cern about the emotional significance of texture in relationship to form. It is interesting to note by way of a comparison that none of the early pots done in

Figure #1 have any textural variations and are less distinctive, perhaps, because of this fact than those in Figure #3. Here scraping, grooving, and cutting, which here has a textural value, plays a dominant part in determining the meaning these pots have from an aesthetic viewpoint and does add emotional vitality to their form, giving them additional strength and vigor they may otherwise have lacked. Most important, however, is the fact that these supplementary techniques tend to add range and flexibility to the throwing process which allows more freedom for the students to express themselves in an individual manner.

Our students' concepts of pottery, however, can be widened still further by establishing experimental problems for them. Experimentation with new ideas encourages the development of more imaginative kinds of pottery. When less is known which can be precon- ceived, the resulting expression is likely to be more original. Here, the capacity of the students to be sensitive in the creative process and to creative problems can contribute much to the development of pots like those in Figure #4. For instance, the student thought of the spikes in the several necked pot (c) in the foreground because he used pencils to hold the necks in place and liked the total effect suggested by them. The tall leather-bound ceramic holder (d) next to it was done by a beginning student who wished to keep the tallest cylinder she had made but did not consider it adequate as a pot. She solved this problem by converting it into "a closed and private container." The pitcher (a) represented an imaginative solution to the problem of a handle which could be clearly differentiated from and yet related to the spout of this vase in its feeling and structure. The lantern (b) represented the solution to the intriguing problem of how to hang a candle holder and still leave an open- ing into which to put the candle. These are creative pots from an educational point of view in that they represent the students' solutions to their own prob-

8 ART EDUCATION



FIGURE 3

lems. These kinds of explorations in form are necessary challenges to our students' imaginations if we intend to elicit responses from them which are individual.

In this respect, as teachers our major function is to help our students develop a creative orientation toward their work by bringing them into contact with a variety of new problems, and thus to encourage them to develop more freedom and flexibility during the creative process. A ceramic program for beginning students should make enough creative demands of this sort upon the students to remind them that in the arts they must remain flexible in their approach to their work, because in art there is no right answer or correct procedure which will have an individual significance for them. By insisting upon a wide variety of original responses, we tend to widen their concepts of ceramics as an expressive art, and by so doing, give a new excitement and emotional significance to the creative process and product.

FIGURE 4



emotion and imagination in pottery

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