Winter/Spring 2019 | Vol 47 No 1 PRINTING AND PAPER CLAY PRINTING studio potter 1 | Mission Centered in studio practice, Studio Potter promotes discus- sion of technology, criticism, aesthetics, and history within the ceramics community. We are a non-profit organization celebrating over forty years of commitment to publishing the Studio Potter journal. We , 2018. 15 x 8 in. welcome hearing from potters, artists, scholars, educators, and others with special interests in Blue Vein #8 Blue Vein writing and reporting on topics Potter Studio and events that matter in their | Porcelain paper clay, glaze. Photograph by Guy Nicol. glaze. paper clay, Porcelain Shiyuan Xu. personal and professional lives. 1 VOL 47 NO 1 PRINTING & PAPER CLAY In this Issue PRINTING Letter from Guest Editor The Architecture of Borderlands 04 | BRYAN CZIBESZ 22 | A CONVERSATION WITH RONALD RAEL A Perspective on Computers & Clay Ephemeral Materal 06 | BY RICHARD BURKETT 32 | BY STACY JO SCOTT Code & the Crafts What Do You Want to Be, Clay? | BY WENDY GERS WITH 10 39 | BY TOM LAUERMAN FRANÇOIS BRUMENT AND SONIA LAUGIER X > CTRL + P Potting in a Digital Age 43 | AN INTERVEW WITH UNFOLD 16 | BY JONATHON KEEP REMEMBERING When I am working in my studio, I think about the use a pot will be put to in someone's home ... through time, we ourselves change, and thus we change the emphasis of the pot. Barbro Aberg. More Secrets, 2018. 19x24x5 in. Clay with perlite and paper fibers, terra Ronald Rael. Cabin of sigillata, stains, oxides. Photo 3D-Printed Curiosities 66 by Lars Henrik Mardahl. 22 (interior), 2018. PAPER CLAY 72 Letter from Paper Clay & 3D Printing WARREN | | BY SANVER ÖZGÜVEN MACKENZIE 51 Guest Editor 60 LORIE NELSON | Wired into Paper Clay MacKenzie | Interviews with Three 62 BY GRAHAM HAY photographed 52 Paper Clay Artists: by Gerry REBECCA HUTCHINSON Paper Clay Illuminated: Williams, JERRY BENNETT | ROSETTE GAULT 66 Journey to an Exhibition 1990. BY LORIE NELSON | Beginning Your 57 Exploration of Fiber Clay BY JERRY BENNETT PAPERCLAY WORD s a co-editor of this issue of Studio FROM Potter, I’m pleased to present several THE perspectives on digital technology EDITOR in ceramics, including many that studiopotter.org A concentrate on extrusion-based 3-D printing with clay. The DIY and open-source roots of these EDITOR EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR processes are something that I have been inter- Elenor Wilson Anthony Stellaccio [email protected] [email protected] ested in since 2013, when I built my first clay 3-D GUEST CO-EDITORS BOARD OF DIRECTORS printer from scratch. I was able to do so largely Bryan Czibesz Destiny Barletta because of the dissemination of open-source Lorie Nelson Hayne Bayless Ben Eberle information by a growing online DIY 3-D printing ART DIRECTOR Bonnie D. Hellman, CPA community. This phenomenon is reassuringly Zoe Pappenheimer Jonathan Kaplan zoedesignworks.com Robbie Lobell congruent with the ethics of clay culture and David McBeth CIRCULATION Jonathon McMillan craft traditions, even while digital processes are a Jessica Detweiler disruption to direct, analog ways of hand-working. [email protected] ADVISORY COUNCIL Louise Allison Cort Developing this issue has prompted me to COPYEDITOR Leslie Ferrin Faye Wolfe Gary Hatcher consider the implications of what it means to Tiffany Hilton print in clay. While the word printing may invoke PROOFREADERS Mark Shapiro Hayne Bayless exclusively digital 3-D printing processes to Mary Barringer FOUNDING EDITOR some, printing is in fact intrinsic to working Gerry Williams PRINTING in clay. Simply put, to handle clay is printing Penmor Lithographers EDITOR EMERITA PO Box 2003 Mary Barringer in its truest sense—to press it through various Lewiston, ME 04241-2003 marks and movement: pinch, roll, compress, INTERN INDEXING Gregory Lastrapes carve, coil, throw, stamp, screen, stencil, and Studio Potter is indexed by Ebsco Art and Architecture Index (ebscohost.com), and PUBLISHING so on; at times, employing mechanized tools. distributed to Libraries digitally through PO Box 1365 Clay is responsive to so many ways of work- Flipster (flipster.ebsco.com). Northampton, MA 01061 413.585.5998 ing, and it has an uncanny ability to reflect the present moment, from recording finger- prints to documenting contemporary culture. Shifts in contemporary culture, including the prevalence of digital data and information, can be disorienting and difficult to situate within our analog selves, particularly when the volume Volume 47, Number 1, ISSN 0091-6641. Copyright 2019 by Studio Potter. of data becomes incomprehensible without the Contents may not be reproduced without permission from Studio Potter. aid of computers. Should artwork reflect both Studio Potter is published semi-annually as the Winter/Spring issue and the Summer/Fall issue. For permissions, corrections, or information about tradition and our time and place? The contri- digital versions of back issues and articles, please contact the editor. butions in this issue by Jonathan Keep and Tom Studio Potter Studio Lauerman ask, “Why not implicate clay in this The views and opinions expressed in the articles of Studio Potter journal are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or opin- 4 | ions of the editor, the board of directors, or the Studio Potter organization. PRINTING contemporary moment?” Considering As Unfold notes in their article here, as artists and inventors have continued to its fundamental mutability and plas- soon as one kind of aesthetic develops, add to these resources, and a number of ticity of form and outcome, clay might it becomes widely imitated and adopted small companies, such as Potterbot, Lutum, be a perfect reflection of the boundary as a trend that can be hard to shake. and WASP, have successfully marketed between direct manipulation and the But this might not be anything new or high-quality, commercial, clay printers. potential of code and computation. unwanted. Capturing the beauty of rota- The territory defined by clay and digital For decades, people have been asking tional throwing marks on pots via the technology has rich potential beyond the what place computers have in ceramic wheel often compels us not to alter them. outmoded binary construct of hand versus studio practice; for example, Richard Like throwing marks, the evidence of CNC machine. It increasingly engages a range Burkett’s article in Studio Potter Volume tooling and 3-D printing strata might be of disciplines, such as engineering, design, 20, Number 2, 1992. In this 2019 issue, desired precisely because they express a new material science, art, and craft, an inter- Burkett reflects on how the question aesthetic that is derived from new tools. section that, as Scott states in her article, BIO has changed shape over time. Common These “new” tools are not all that new: “opens up other avenues of examining Bryan Czibesz is an artist and educator interested computer usage for ceramists began CNC machines were in use by the late the multiplicity of human experience.” in the relationships with simply sharing recipes and convers- 1950s; 3-D printing dates at least to the In the Summer/Fall 2017 issue of Studio between technology, ing, but eventually included calculating early 1980s; and the plastic extrusion Potter, Martina Lantin wrote “Boundaries material, and object glazes, image sourcing and manipula- 3-D printers were commercialized by the and borders have the capacity to constrict making. He is currently Associate Professor of tion, documentation and sharing, and the 1990s. In 2005, the open-source RepRap movement or provide protection from Art in Ceramics at the emergence of modeling and imaging. project was conceived as “humanity’s first the unknown, but they are at their most State University of New Now the use of computers in ceramics general-purpose self-replicating manufac- dynamic when people are determined to York at New Paltz. often means digital fabrication, an integra- turing machine,” one that “self-replicates cross them.” This might be emblematic bryanczibesz.com tion of digital design and modeling method- by making a kit of itself” (see reprap.org). of the moment. As Ron Rael states in Instagram: @zibes ologies with output to a range of different As extrusion-printing patents expired, my interview with him for this issue, it tools, from carving machines such as CNC RepRap leveraged Internet dissemina- is best to consider borders as positive (Computer Numeric Control) mills to tion and the decreasing cost of global places rather than negative ones. They additive ones, such as 3-D printers. Output manufacturing to democratize and facil- are complex places of sharing and in clay forces digital ephemera to exist in itate a desktop 3-D printing revolution. mixing, culturally rich, and laden with material form, grounding it and humaniz- By 2009, Studio Unfold had adapted potential, where languages and ideas ing it, as Stacy Jo Scott writes in this issue. open-source 3-D printers with a mecha- intersect, overlap, inform, and engage Many early adopters have posited that nized syringe to extrude clay. Soon after, each other—borderlands without walls. what has become a conspicuously digital Jonathan Keep developed a DIY version aesthetic would perhaps change as more that required only hand tools, parts artists adopted digital fabrication tools. It ordered online, and parts from a hard- seems that this has yet to happen to a large ware store. Because of pioneers Dries extent, evidenced by the ubiquity of the Verbruggen of Unfold and Keep, there triangular facets of 3-D digital resolution are now vibrant online communities and the strata, loops, and woven textures grounded in freely sharing this informa- Guest Co-Editor endemic to extrusion clay 3-D printing. tion, such as wikifactory.com. Countless Bryan Czibesz Potter Studio 5 | PRINTING A PERSPECTIVE ON COMPUTERS & CLAY BY RICHARD BURKETT t started early.