BSC brings Red Lodge Clay Center residents for March 28 and 29 workshops
Published: Mar 22 2022
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Red Lodge Clay Center residents Bill Jones and Christopher Watt will visit the Bismarck State College campus Monday, March 28 and Tuesday, March 29 to share their journey as artists, creative processes and conceptual development.
The public is invited to attend informal conversations with the artists while they work on their pots in BSC LEA Hall 221 on Monday from 8-9:50 a.m. and 1-3:50 p.m., and Tuesday from 9-11:50 a.m. A Tuesday evening presentation will take place in the BSC National Energy Center of Excellence Basin Electric Auditorium at 7:30 p.m.
Jones is a potter who works with simple materials and methods in a constant attempt to channel this same beauty in simple articulations of material.
“My pots are a fusion of my education in architecture and my formal training in the Leach/Cardew tradition of functional pottery. Old British and Moravian slipware, the softened concrete forms of late modernist architecture, quick drawings that articulate big ideas–these are the sort of things that continue to bring me inspiration,” says Jones.
Watt finds meaning in his work through the processes of materialization and uses both commercially available raw materials and materials he gathers from nature such as igneous rocks, wood ashes, clays, and other calciferous materials.
“I am captivated by the intricate forming processes of atmospheric-fired pottery and locally sourced glazes,” he says. “I believe it is with practicing and advancing these craft skills, and the social practices that arise from them, that we may create, build and further our understandings of our social and material selves.”
The informal artist sessions and evening presentation are free and open to the public. This event is made possible in part through funding from the Dakota West Arts Council.