OUR MISSION

To foster the arts and crafts by providing a wide range of instruction for adults and children. Castle Hill holds exhibitions, lectures, forums, concerts and other similar activities in order to promote social interaction among artists, craftsmen, laymen, and the community at large.

Letter from President | Letter from Executive Director

SUMMER 2009 WORKSHOPS - CLAY

Malcolm Davis: Vase - carbon trapped shino- taught the Fall Intensive 2008

Summer 2009

Painting

Drawing

Clay

Printmaking/
Book Arts

Performance - Yoga - Music

Teens

Kids

Caitlin Nesbit

Mark Shapiro

Gay Smith

Mikhail Zakin, Summer 05

Clay 2009

Raku Extravaganza on Memorial Day Weekend

May 23 & 24
Sat - 12 - 8pm
Sun - 11 - 3
Castle Hill
2 sessions $200
free to watch!

Register
This amazing post-reduction firing workshop is for those who have bisque-fired stoneware pieces ready for a raku firing. Working with a variety of ceramic materials, including crackle, metallic and luster glazes, participants will experience one-of-a-kind results. Using combustible materials such as pine needles, seaweed, and sawdust, each dramatic hands-on firing offers an array of results that will intrigue participants. Students should realize that this workshop involves direct fire and smoke and it is important to dress appropriate to these concerns. Bring bisque ware; we will supply glazes. Remember that the kiln space is limited.

Wood Kiln Firing at Highlands Center

June 1, 2, 3
load Mon, Tues, Wed
unload Saturday
$325
highlands
center

Glaze your pots and then be part of the exhilarating firing of Castle
Hill’s Wood Fired Train Kiln. The wood-fired kiln is a great way to build
community . Firings are typically 42 hours long and use 2 to 3 cords of a mixture of hard and soft wood.

Handbuilding Andrea Gill

June 15 - 19
Mon - Fri
9am - 1pm
Castle Hill
5 sessions $375
For academic
credit $400

Explore diverse approaches to making hand-built functional and decorative ceramic forms. This class will cover use of a slab roller and extruder, moldmaking, and a variety of approaches to construction. Aspects of surface decoration will also be discussed.

Andrea Gill received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, and her MFA from the New York College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 1976. She's been teaching at Alfred since 1984. Gill has won fellowships from the NEA and the New York Foundation for the Arts, as well as the Ohio Arts Council. Her works are in the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Rhode Island School of Design.

Intermediate Throwing Keith Kreeger

June 22 - 26
Mon - Fri
9am - 1pm
Castle Hill
5 sessions $375
For academic
credit $450

Register
Using the wheel as a starting point we will focus on altering and enhancing the form with a variety of methods. The point is to see the wheel as a tool, like any other in the studio, to start our work. We will manipulate the clay at various stages in the drying process into squares, ovals and more. We will also explore some decorative techniques with slips, incising, carving to give our work another layer of depth.

Basic throwing skills are requested in order to fully take advantage of some of the advanced techniques we will be working with.

Keith Kreeger is a potter/designer/maker who has operated Kreeger Pottery in Harwich Port since 1998. His work has been exhibited at a variety of juried exhibitions and he often attends some of the most prestigious craft shows in the country. After more than a decade on the Cape, Keith is off to Austin, TX to start a new studio and see what's next.

Covered Jars: Aysha Peltz

June 29, 30, July 1
Mon - Weds
9am - 3pm
3 Sessions $375
Castle Hill
For academic
credit $400

Register
In this three-day workshop we will explore different ways of making lidded jars. Clues about these closed volumes can be found in many things that we see around us in daily life, a pumpkin, stacked rocks and architecture. We will discuss how we can visually dissect these objects to help us think of new form solutions for covered jars. Aysha will demonstrate some traditional flange solutions as well some not-so-traditional techniques that she uses in making her own jars. During the workshop we will talk about inspiration, sources and developing ideas. Students should have throwing skills and are encouraged to bring in a covered jar or other pot of their own that they would like to have a discussion about.

Aysha Peltz and her husband Todd Wahlstrom work as studio potters in rural Whitingham, VT. Part of the year Aysha teaches ceramics at Bennington College. She has also taught at many schools and craft centers including The Kansas City Art Institute, Alfred University and Peters Valley Craft Center. Aysha received her BFA and MFA from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. Her work has been published in The Masters: Porcelain, The Art of Contemporary Ceramics, Ceramics Monthly and Studio Potter. Her work is in numerous collections including the Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute in Jingdezhen, China and the Shein-Joseph International Museum of Ceramic Art in Alfred, NY. www.ayshapeltz.com.

Handbuilding Lois Hirshberg

July 2, 3
Thurs, Fri
9am - 3pm
2 sessions $300
Castle Hill
For academic
credit $400

Register
Gain a solid foundation or stretch your abilities in the hand building process! . Learn how to get the most out of slab rollers, and all kinds of tools and textures. Demonstration participation is encouraged, though experienced students may work independently. Pinch pots, coils, slabs and more will be taught. Build and renew your flair for clay whether you're a beginner or have lots of experience.

Lois Hirshberg began working in clay in 1976 at Mudflat Studios in Cambridge. She holds a M.Ed in community counseling, and a M. A. in Art Therapy from Leslie University. She has studied ceramics at the Bezalel School of Design in Jerusalem, and in Japan while spending a summer there through the Parsons School of Design, where she was greatly influenced. This is her third summer teaching with Castle Hill. www.potterybylois.com.

Evening Throwing Linden Gray

July 8, 15, 22, 29, August 5, 12, 19, 26
Weds 6:30 - 8:30pm
$50 drop in, or register for all 8 for $300
castle hill
For academic
credit $400

Register
This is a pottery course for beginners and ideal for those who would like to refresh their skills. We will cover the basic throwing techniques for creating functional forms like bowls, cups and vases. Work produced in class will be bisque fired only.

Linden Gray has been one of our studio managers here for the past year and has been very involved in the building and firing of our new wood kiln. She has been throwing pots for 8 year and holds her BFA for Alfred University. In her work, Linden is interested in the material nature of clay, which is often reflected in her wet altered work. Primarily working with functional forms she is interested in further exploring notions of use.

Making Better Pots Mark Shapiro

July 8, 9, 10
Wed - Fri
9am - 3pm
3 Sessions $375
Castle Hill
For academic
credit $400

We'll make functional pots together in the studio focusing on developing our visual and technical skills. Mark will show a range of forms and techniques in daily wheel and table demonstrations that students can apply to their own work. The goal is making clearer, better executed, and more compelling pots, eliminating the weak parts and adding details that strengthen the overall piece. Students will leave with plenty of ideas to work on in the months that follow.

Mark Shapiro has made wood fired pots in Western Massachusetts for the past twenty years. He is a frequent workshop leader, panelist, writer, and curator. He is interested in early American stoneware as a source of inspiration for contemporary potters, apprenticeship, and documentation of the field. His work was recently featured in the 4th World Ceramic Biennale in Korea and is shown by the Ferrin and Lacoste Galleries in Massachusetts and is in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian Institution, the Racine Art Museum, the Mint Museum (NC), and the International Museum of Ceramic at Alfred, (NY), among others.

Beginning Throwing Paul Wisotzky

July 13 - 17
Mon - Fri
9am - noon
5 Sessions $375
castle hill
For academic
credit $425

This workshop is designed for individuals who have never touched clay or would like to review and refresh basic skills in a fun and creative environment. We will start at the very beginning from wedging and centering to learning how to throw basic forms such as bowls, cups and vases. Work from this class will be bisque fired only. If you are interested in glaze firing your work, please discuss options with a studio manager.

Paul Wisotzky has been working in clay for nearly thirty years and began his early ceramic arts education at Castle Hill as a teenager. Paul's ceramics studio is Blueberry Lane Pottery in Truro. He also has a seasonal working studio and exhibition space on MacMillan Pier in Provincetown. Paul works primarily in porcelain and stoneware firing to cone 10 in reduction and salt/soda. Most of his work begins on the wheel and often includes altering, surface decoration, and hand-built elements.
www.blueberrylanepottery.com.

Making Lively Pots Gay Smith

July 20 - 24
Mon - Fri
9am - 1pm
5 Sessions $375
castle hill
For academic
credit $425

Register
Altering the forms and surfaces of freshly thrown pots enlivens the work with a spontaneity reflective of working with soft clay. We'll work with methods of squaring, ovaling, fluting, and faceting. We'll look to finishing touches like attachments, lids, spouts, handles and feet, and trimming an oval to enhance and complete our pots. The possibilities presented are exciting and easily utilized, especially if you love working on the potter's wheel. Demonstrations and exercises are designed to meet participants' interests. Topics for discussion include raw glazing, single firing, firing a soda kiln, aesthetics, and most anything that's of interest.

Gay Smith aka Gertrude Graham Smith, is a studio potter educated at Harvard University, the Findhorn Foundation, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, and Penland School. She single fires porcelain ware in a soda kiln near Penland School in the Appalachian Mountains in Western North Carolina. She held artist-in-residencies at the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, Montana and at Penland School in Penland, NC. Her teaching credits include workshops at Penland School, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, the Harvard Ceramics Studio, and the Findhorn Foundation in Northern Scotland. Her work is shown internationally, and can be viewed in publications including Functional Pottery and Mark Making by Robin Hopper, Working with Clay by Susan Peterson, and was featured in the April 2007 issue of Ceramics Monthly. She was selected as a recipient of a North Carolina Arts Council Visual Artist Fellowship award for 2006-7.

Throwing for Wood Kevin Crowe
July 27, 28, 29
Mon – Weds
9am - 3pm
3 sessions $375
Castle Hill
for academic
credit $400

Register
This workshop will focus on the pots we've had hunches about, risky pots that we've put off approaching , the ones just outside our comfort zone...where the sparks are. We'll work on various forms, bowls, teapots, pitcher, tea bowls...scrutinizing the nuances that give pots a tension that allow them to dance. Part sweat, part grace. While working we'll explore why we work, the paradox of making objects in a world all shopped out ...How do we as potters become part of environmental healing ? I'll discuss the influence that my wood kiln has on the forms I make and the surfaces I explore, including the advantages and challenges of raw glazing and single firing. Participants are asked to bring a poem, any poem, a pot that has inspired, and a sense of humor.

Kevin Crowe is the founder of Tye River Pottery in Virginia. He has 28 years of experience as a studio potter, and conducts workshops throughout the United States on throwing large pots, and on the design and construction of wood-fired kilns.
www.kevincrowepottery.com

Wood Kiln Firing at Highlands Center

July 31 - Aug 5
load friday, fire sat, sun, mon
unload weds
$325
highlands
center

Glaze your pots and then be part of the exhilarating firing of Castle Hill’s Wood Fired Train Kiln. The
wood-fired kiln is a great way to build
community .

Firings are typically 42
hours long and use 2 to 3 cords of a
mixture of hard and soft wood.

Ceramic Sounds Washington Ledesma

August 10 - 14
Mon – Fri
9am - 1pm
5 sessions $375
castle hill
for academic
credit $400

Register
In this course we will explore the relationship of different shapes and forms in clay to our ability to produce sound and conceivably make music.
We will experiment with ceramic pieces such as flutes, rattles, whistles, didgeridoos, and fantasy shapes to form our own ceramic orchestra.

Washington Ledesma is one of the most significant Latin American artists living in the United States today. His visionary work continues the legacy of Joaquin Torres Garcia and the Mexican muralists. His path began as a child who happily fashioned animal forms from barnyard mud in his native Uruguay. An athletic youth, he trained to teach physical education before attending Montevideo's Bauhaus inspired School of Fine Arts. There he studied architecture and became interested in painting, and printmaking. He also worked with the Engraver's Club, a talented group of politically aware, socially conscious printmakers with whom he exhibited work throughout Latin America and Europe. The troubled political situation in Uruguay forced him to leave his country on short notice and Washington arrived in New York City in the early Seventies and lives on Martha's Vineyard.

Focus on Form - Low Tech Ceramics Mikhail Zakin
this year’s Joyce Johnson chair

August 17 - 21
Mon - Fri
9am - 1pm
5 sessions $375
castle Hill
for academic credit $425

Register
From the beginning of recorded time, humans have worked with clay to solve life's problems: for shelter, cooking, storage, and record keeping as well as the pursuit of beauty and to make real the spirit world. Wonderful things can be done with just clay and fire. This course refers to the aesthetics of low-tech ceramics. We will work with clay with a focus on form and fire for smoking with saw-dust.

Mikhail Zakin is co-founder of OCCCm the Art School. She studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, and the Art Students League. She has taught at the Brooklyn Museum Art School, Greenwich House Pottery, Sarah Lawrence College, Castle Hill, Mendocino Art Center, and Harvard University. Awards include National Endowment for the Arts and New Jersey State Council on the Arts grants. She has led seminars in England, Japan, Mexico, Scotland, Italy, China, Korea, Holland, and Morocco. Her work is included in major collections nationally and internationally.

High Fire Glaze Day Ceramics Studio Managers

August 19
Weds
12:30 - 4:30pm

$140

Register
A chance to get stoneware prepared for the finish, this workshop will cover the essentials of selecting and applying cone 10 reduction glazes and the loading of the big gas kiln. Whatever fits in the load will be fired next day, so come with bisqued pots and be prepared to work hard and fast!.

Primitive Vessels and Firings:
Jim Brunelle

August 24, 25, 27, 28
M on, Tues, Thurs, Fri
10am - 1pm
Mon, Tues
9am - 4pm
Thurs, Fri
4 sessions, $375
castle hill
for academic
credit $400

Register
Explore the many wonders of form and surface through a variety of hand building techniques by building a personal vessel. Take it further by building a pedestal that displays the vessel. Complete an archive that marks your time and presence with the piece then experience and witness its firing through Raku. Participate in the manifestation of a special piece and take part first hand with its creation through the fire. Build with clay and other materials for two days (Mon-Tues 10am-1pm), take a break while the pieces dry for bisque firing, and return to Castle Hill for glazing and firing (Thursday and Friday, 9am - 4pm).

Jim Brunelle returns to Castle Hill after consecutive years from Hartford, CT bringing his teaching and hands on techniques to a variety of interest levels. Experienced with many disciplines in clay his work involves wheel throwing, pinching, sculpting, and primarily Raku firing. His recent discoveries influencing his functional works using the kilns at Castle Hill include salt, reduction and oxidation firings.

Sculptural Clay Flutes Susan Rawcliffe

Aug 31 - Sept 4
Mon - Fri
10am - 2pm
5 sessions $425 castle hill
for academic
credit $450

Register

If it's hollow, it can be made to play! Join master craftswoman and flute maker Susan Rawcliffe. Explore the possibilities of hand building through creating sculptural clay flutes & whistles. Make ocarinas shaped like feet, fruit, or abstract follies; use your plumbing skills to make big harmonic flutes or didjeridus; stick whistles like birds on tree forms; combine hollow forms with whistles to make double chambered whistling bottles.
Come, pucker up & blow with us.

For over 25 years, Susan Rawcliffe has been making, playing and researching ceramic flutes, pipes, ocarinas, whistles, trumpets and sound sculptures. Her work evolves through a circular process of making acoustical studies of ancient and contemporary instruments, learning to play them, which then leads to the next generation of instruments and music. Ms. Rawcliffe has performed in countless venues in the United States, internationally in Scotland, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Israel, Canada and Mexico. Exhibitions include the American Museum of Ceramic Art, Pomona, CA; Yerba Buena, San Francisco; the Clay Studio, Philadelphia, PA; the California Craft Museum, SF; the Renwick Gallery, Wash. DC; and P.S. #1, NYC. Ms. Rawcliffe is a past recipient of NEA, California Arts Council, City of Los Angeles and McKnight Visiting Composer grants. Her work is featured in the book, From Mud to Music, Baird & Hall, American Ceramic Society, 2006.

This Year’s fall Clay intensive

A week of Pottery - Wood, Kilns, and Firing
Dan Finnegan

September 7 - 11
9 - 4
$450

Register

Join Dan Finnegan for an intensive one week workshop firing the new wood burning train kiln at Castle Hill this fall.

We will glaze, load and fire over the course of the first three days. While the kiln cools Dan will show slides and give demonstrations on wheel throwing and raw glazing. At the end of the week we will unload the kiln and take time to discuss the results. Students should expect to work hard and assist in all phases of the firing process. Wood firing is a true communal effort.

Dan Finnegan trained with Ray Finch at the Winchcombe Pottery in Gloucestershire, England in the late 1970s. He has run his own pottery in Fredericksburg, Virginia since 1980, making functional stoneware pots. Dan has led numerous workshops including the British Museum, the Penland School of Crafts, Savannah College of Art and Design , the Potters Council and the Cape Cod Potters Association. He also served on the faculty of the Art League at the Torpedo Factory in Alexandria, Virginia. He is the founder and director of LibertyTown Arts Workshop in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Dan has recently completed construction of a new studio and fires his work in a two chamber wood burning kiln. His bourrey box kiln is featured in an article in the fall 2007 issue of the Log Book.

© 2009 TRURO CENTER FOR THE ARTS AT CASTLE HILL
10 Meetinghouse Road, P.O. Box 756, Truro, MA 02666
www.castlehill.org | e-mail info@castlehill.org
tel. 508 349-7511 | fax 508 349-7513