Liz Zlot Summerfield Workshop
Elegant & Intimate - 2011
Liz Zlot Summerfield will lead this three-day, hands-on workshop, teaching how to create and decorate intimate, elegant forms. Students will create a variety of handbuilt functional pots using paper patterns (made during the workshop) and soft clay slabs. Liz will guide the group in exploring a variety of forms and attachments including lids, feet, and spouts.
Participants will use soft slab forming techniques, then decorate surface with terra sigillata and underglazes. Throughout the weekend, the group will discuss how to draw from personal influences in order to better individualize the work. Participants will explore the broad term "function" through slide talks, class discussion, and the making of pots.
Students are encouraged to come with specific questions, sketches and images (not only of pots) that they are drawn to. Basic handbuilding skills are required.
Class size 18.
Free to the public
March 18-20, 2011
10:00 am - 5:00 pm
Liz Zlot Summerfield Bio
Liz currently resides in Western North Carolina with her husband, Scott Summerfield and their daughter, Roby. They are both full time artists working from their studios located at their home in Bakersville. Lindas work in earthenware has been recoginized through an artisits fellowship from the national endowment for the arts, as well as a florida.
Liz attended the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis to complete her Masters of Fine Arts in 2001. She has taught at numerous clay facilities and she exhibits her work nationally through exhibitions, galleries, and fine craft shows. She currently works as a full time studio artist from her home.
Liz Zlot Summerfield Artist Statement
I find function a vehicle for expression while also allowing approachability to my work. Creamers and sugars, salt and pepper sets, and lidded containers are my primary subjects. My work is small and intimate in size. These handheld objects are constructed with slabs that softly drape over one another creating three-dimensional drawings throughout the surface of the piece. These lines are kept visible to accentuate the process of the making.
The beauty of utilitarian objects is that they are capable of functioning away from their primary context but also retain their inherent sense of function. A pot, box, or tool may function primarily as a useful object and later retire its usefulness and function as an aesthetic object such as in a collection. In either context, the object has a specific purpose, whether it is to contain or sit among others of its kind. Within a collection, everyday objects gain importance as members of a whole; they start to become more than the sum of their parts and have potential to give value to valueless objects.
I view my work as an ever-growing collection, where I am the maker of objects that are similar but also defined by their subtle differences. I draw inspiration from my own personal collectibles such as vintage aprons and hand made boxes. As with many collections I strive to embed my work with a sense of nostalgia, memory, and past time.
