Louise Radochonski Workshop
Expressing Your Figure - 2007
Louise Radochonski will help participants master the technical and creative challenges of rendering the figure in clay while expressing their personal vision. A broad range of sculptural techniques will be covered, including coiling, pinching, slab and solid construction. The session will address basics in anatomy by referring to our bodies, as well as simple diagrams that discuss proportion and scale. Louise will work with participants on a variety of scales using appropriate techniques.
The workshop will focus on the difficulty of modeling hands and feet, and the incorporation of gesture and movement to create a more dynamic figure. Participants will be led through improvisational exercises generating "clay sketches" to inspire personal content and narrative. Louise will also present numerous images of historical and contemporary figure sculpture to further assist participants in developing their own unique voice.
Class size 16.
Free to the public
10:00 am - 5:00 pm
Louise Radochonski Bio
Louise Radochonski teaches and exhibits nationally. Radochonski has held workshops at the Penland School of Crafts, Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, Tyler School of Art, Roswell Art Center, Odyssey Center for the Ceramic Arts and Savannah College of Art and Design. Her most recent exhibitions include shows at the Hodges Taylor Gallery (NC), Garth Clark Gallery (NY), Lucy Lacoste Gallery (MA), Santa Fe Clay Gallery (NM) and Baltimore Clayworks (MD). In addition, Radochonski has participated in residencies at the Penland School of Crafts and The Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts.
Louise Radochonski Artist Statement
My work responds to current political events and uses psychological expression to shape the human figure. Using a social context, my sculpted ceramic figures become a vehicle for profound subjective epiphanies. I take objective realities to evoke a range of feelings and illuminate what lies buried in the subconscious. I combine naturalism with expressiveness to probe the very nature of what is "real."
My ceramic heads evoke a multitude of portraits. By isolating the head, I explore how the face conveys inner life. I seek to marry content to technique by using the pinched pot technique where I form facial features from inside the head, just as the soul etches it character on the face.
I work with the nude to reveal the body as primary evidence of who we are. The nudity of my figures reveals intimacy and strips them of fashionable signs of economic and regional status. They are self-reflective and vulnerable, rather than heroic or erotic. They embody states of rapture and seem lost in thought. Their gestures capture an intimate moment as they look into themselves, and consequently give the viewer a window into their souls.
My recent figures respond to our current war in Iraq. They draw upon the tradition of heroic statuary to contextualize contemporary life and warfare. I am responding to the censorship of our press to film dead soldiers. My figures present a somber commemorative to those who have died in the war. Classically rendered and glazed, they present an idealized, yet vulnerable depiction of veterans.
