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No description available.

The present study of an ideal mixture for thrown ware is an outgrowth of a long-time personal interested developed during undergraduate work at North Texas State University. While a natural earthenware clay proved to be the best all-purpose clay for class use, it was not ideal for throwing.

This research by practice into the visual and aesthetic qualities of ceramic glaze investigates its ability to create an impression of depth. Because perspectival depth alone can not fully account for my artistic concerns, and the requirements of perspectival illusion are at odds with some of my major artistic preoccupations, such as an interest in accidents and imprecision in material rendering, I raised the hypothesis of a poetic dimension of depth, posing the research question for this project: “What is poetic depth in a ceramic glaze?” Traditionally, research into glazes focuses on aspects of material science, craftsmanship, archaeology or art history, and optical depth has been the subject of investigations into the microstructure of glaze. By seeking to address the aesthetic dimension of glaze I am moving away from such concerns. While the aesthetics of ceramic glaze is a new field of research, with little existing material, I am seeking to find parallels with practice, theories and research from the field of literary poetry, even though by ‘poetic’ I am referring to a quality that is not only mediated by language and goes beyond the field of literature. Further, I am also referring to Gaston Bachelard’s approach to material imagination through his poetics of the natural elements and to the concept of transitional space developed by psychoanalysts of the British Independent Group, Donald Winnicott and Marion Milner. My thesis consists of a threefold dialogue between my artistic practice of glaze, theories and practices of literary poetry and the concept of the transitional phenomenon. My findings are at the intersection of those three elements, and they are the results of my investigations through both making and writing: • ‘Poetic tension’ is a paradoxical and conflicting process between authority – the ability to control – and subjectivity on the one hand and factors of dissent, questioning the very possibility of authorship, on the other: among these are the unconscious and the materiality of the glaze. • The concern for interiority is a central element of poetry, the transitional phenomenon and my works. • My practice of glaze is an attempt to re-enact and objectify the fusion between the self and the world, addressing the issues of the illusion of all-encompassing subjectivity and the disillusion of objectivity, both key elements of the transitional phenomenon. • Play has been a natural development of my practice of glaze and I further established parallels with the literary poetic in a shared aspiration for subversion, dissent and laughter. • The concept of the formless permeates Bachelard’s material imagination and my practice of glaze. Moreover it is often a prerequisite for Winnicott’s and Milner’s approach to creativity and play. • Failure is the essence of a certain form of poetry, which Georges Bataille summed up as the ‘Impossible’. It is also a key aspect of my practice of glaze: an essence of flux or a further element of play whose irresolution or unlikely balance can create yet another dimension of the poetic. • Flux is a necessary element of glazes but it also summarizes the dynamics and dialectics of the transitional phenomenon and of the Bataillean ‘Impossible’ and the playful poetic. All three strands: my practice of glaze, the literary poetic and the transitional phenomenon intertwine, cross-fertilize and develop in parallel. Together, they have helped articulate the concepts and the artistic vocabulary through which the poetic and the transitional phenomenon have become operative categories of aesthetics, artistic practice, and of research processes.

This study tests the hypothesis that Khoe speaking herders from northern Botswana brought pottery to the southern tip of Africa. Stylistically in terms of lip types, rim orientations, vessel size, shape and decoration no homogeneity was noted between and within samples from several sites in Southern Africa thus refuting the idea that these vessels were made by the same population. Noted was the fact that during the LSA the technology behind the manufacturing pots and probably the idea of using these pots was the same but each group decorated their variously shaped pots according to their own choices influenced probably by their cultural beliefs. This study argues for a need to shift the mindset that for every new tradition in the southern African archaeological record appearing it has to involve massive movement of people introducing it. Therefore this study brings forth the idea that pottery probably reached the tip of Africa by diffusion.

Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

acase@tulane.edu / It is of paramount importance to me as a maker to marry art and craft within the confines of function. I make porcelain objects with specific physical uses in mind. I develop my work to address aspects of aesthetics and design simultaneously. The relationship we have with handmade pottery is unlike that of other art objects. It is personal, relational, and intimate. As such, I create sculptural vessels intended for physical use. I draw great inspiration from the natural world. My vessels are imbued with volume, and are reminiscent of organic life forms. I am fascinated with the plumpness of sea tunicates, flower ovaries and seed pods. I am intrigued by the ethereal depth of cloud formations. I heavily manipulate my wheel thrown forms by hand to incorporate a quality of pillowy fullness within an organized but imperfect formal structure. I stretch and push the clay into billows, and bind these structures with a criss-crossing of geometric lines to create convex swells within the walls of each vessel. I glaze each piece to accentuate the form, and have utilized colors from the natural world that complement the external curves of the vessels. As a functional artist, I strive for the vessels that I create to have a dual purpose. We fill our lives with objects; I want my contribution to our world to be simultaneously elegant and utilitarian. / 1 / Danielle B. Inabinet

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2007. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

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Thesis (M.F.A.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 1969. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 33).