Debra Fritts Workshop
Head Talk - 2010
Debra Fritts will lead this three day exploration of the human head. Participants will learn to combine coil, slab, and modeling techniques to construct and refine the head. Debra will share her ways of telling stories with clay, expressing the mysteries and joys of life's necessities.
The workshop will also address detailed measurements for correct placement of facial features. Participants will learn to convey emotion and information by adding, subtracting, and pushing from the interior of the form. After basic construction, Debra will guide the class in personalizing the head by using incised lines, carving, and found object impressions. Participants will explore ways to use symbols or narrative elements, including attachments, carving, and painted sections.
Debra will demonstrate how she approaches color on clay as a painter, working with a palette of slips, underglazes, dry clays, and oxides. The workshop will go beyond the technical skills presented, and address the search for the spiritual core of the sculpture which gives it a voice with which to speak.
Class size 18.
Free to the public
March 19-21, 2010
10:00 am - 5:00 pm
Debra Fritts Bio
Debra Fritts is a studio artist working in Roswell, Georgia. She received her undergraduate degree in Art Education from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and continued graduate studies in ceramic sculpture, painting and printmaking. Debra currently teaches sculpture classes and handbuilding classes at Art Center West in Roswell and conducts master classes and workshops nationally.
Debra enjoys national recognition for her work in ceramic sculpture through invitational exhibitions and awards, museum exhibitions, gallery representation, private collections, and publications. Her sculptures were including in "Form and Imagination" Women Ceramic Sculptors at American Museum of Ceramic Art, Pomona, California and at SOFA Chicago and New York regularly. Debra is currently represented by Ferrin Gallery, Pacini Lubel Gallery, Blue Spiral Gallery and the Lowe Gallery. Her sculpture is handbuilt and multiple fired with a painterly glazed surface. The work is autobiographical - a continuous story of life and daily living.
Debra Fritts Artist Statement
As time and experience embraces me as a sculptor in clay, I feel free of art trends and fashionable art. My expression is basic yet intrigues me daily to continue this exploration of clay and the female figure. Working intuitively from pounds of wet clay, ideas develop and stories appear. These stories dwell on the mysteries and joys of life's necessities. The search continues until I reach the core: the spiritual level of the sculpture. Then the work can speak. Sometimes combining found objects with the sculpture enhance the visual composition and gives a reference to the past. Each sculpture is hand built, mainly using thick coils, and fired three to seven times depending on the color and surface I am trying to achieve. I approach the color on the clay as a painter. My palette is a combination of oxides, slips, underglazes, and glazes. I mix, I paint, I fire, and I never know exactly the end results.
