The function of drawing in the context of MA ceramics
One of the main pointers I received in my crit last week was the importance of using drawing at this stage in the course to explore forms I’ve made that have potential, and the different directions in which they might be taken. this is something I have been a bit stuck over as am used to using drawing in either observational or illustrative ways. For a while I haven’t been confident on how to progress with drawing. I was therefore very happy when yesterday’s remote seminar raised the topic.
Seminar overview
During the seminar, lead tutor Rob Parr gave a talk on the development of his own practice, from formative experiences & early arts education, to a varied early working life spanning from working as part of a team producing tiled ceramic murals to order for large-scale projects; in a firm making architectural terracotta; a customer-facing role in a business selling ceramic tiles; and a staff role in an arts college in Cumbria. Rob described how his choice of work was spurred on by a lifelong interest in making, from mucking about in his grandfather’s toolshed as a child to his development of an interest in art and ceramics particularly. His ceramic education, starting at A-level, was extremely skills-based, involving the development of wide-ranging competence from throwing to slip-casting to glaze science, and his subsequent jobs working with clay also involved the development of a high level of technical precision, such as in the transference of mural designs from paper onto an expanse of clay, or the particularities of mixing plaster and using moulds on an industrial scale.
Rob then went on to describe a tipping point when, after he was able to gain staff development funding to go on a residency at the international ceramics centre in Kecskemét, Hungary, the head of the centre expressed interest in the animal forms he’d been modelling and asked if they could keep one for the centre’s permanent collection. This affirmation of the potential of his work spurred Rob to begin his MA at UCLan.
Working at MA level: drawing as a tool
When discussing how his ideas developed during his MA, Rob showed us some examples of his drawing. What really struck me when looking at these was how well they exemplified what had been emphasised to me during tutorials - about the need to draw specifically as a way to process or sort through ideas. This was really apparent in Rob’s drawings in part because, due to both the nature of his work - sculptural, exploratory, pulling from a wide variety of techniques including slip-casting, using concrete, and carpentry - and the how much his ideas changed and developed over the course of the MA, it is immediately apparent how the drawing process is central to processing each idea.
One thing Rob noted which will be particularly relevant to me was how drawing can fit into your practice even if/when your method of making itself is quite spontaneous. drawing can be used to explore different possibilities or potentialities beforehand, which can then be acted upon in the moment.
‘The importance of drawing is about…observing, and understanding [your subject, and/or the form you’re going to make] something. You can use drawing as a tool to access information, and exploring ideas.’
Rob’s work + drawings from the first module of his MA: exploring sculptural possibilities of casting concrete into cube forms - top left, polished with a ceramic mug placed in the hollowed centre; bottom right, with a circular dark mark in the centre of each face; in the drawings, exploring different cube pieces could be attached or stacked to form modular sculptures, and the possibility of alternative outcomes.
Further work and drawings - developing the stacked forms, moving from precise, modernist cubes to forms that undulate and curve, suggestive of the segments of a centipede or millipede, or else the suckered arms of an octopus. Here, Rob’s drawings explore different ways the circular marks might be developed - applying them unevenly, replacing them with circular indentations into the form itself. This is a great example of how drawing helps to map out the different directions a project can take.
From later on in Rob’s MA course, after he’d developed the idea for his final project, of a ceramic chess set in which each piece is reimagined as an expressive rendering of an animal that fits with the nature of the piece. Here, he uses drawing to brainstorm ideas for heads of vultures, sketching them expressively on paper first to capture the “essence” of the bird, which can then be modelled in clay. Drawing here functions as a means of clarifying form.