Have you you ever had someone ask you about a scar and it turns into a 30 minute conversation? Or other people you might not even know chime in on your conversation and everyone tries to outdo each other with stories of how they got this or that scar? The trauma of the event seems to light up the neurons in the brain and people can remember with detail every little event associated with their scar.
Jeff Campana's ceramics always draw me in because of their deep scars. They display them proudly as a badge of honor. The scars make his pottery delicately artistic yet add great structural strength.
It also reminds me of different African tribes who use scarification as both a right of passage and a mark of beauty. Sometimes in our culture we might not be able to get over the disfigurement but I think we are all fascinated on some level by the story behind those scars. I'm sure the bearers of those scars would love to tell us all about them, and I personally would love to hear what they have to say.
With my advanced ceramics students I am hoping to create a project with them that focuses on wounded pottery. We will take a perfectly fine pot and cut into it. We will reassemble it or even sew it back together and hopefully we will have a pot that now contains a little more history, a badge of honor, and a story to tell.
Check out more of Jeff Campana's work and purchase items at his shop on Etsy
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1 comments:
I love this idea and perhaps how students might connect the scars on their work with their own experiences. Can you show your students' work?
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