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. . . keeping contact with the ceramic community

First let me wish you all our best wishes for a happy and creative 2012.

In this issue we are beginning a new series featuring works from the extensive ceramics collection and also features on Hungarian and international ceramists who have worked in the studio over the years. You have all helped to make this centre truly international and earn its deserved international reputation that we now enjoy. This issue we feature works by Sergei Isupov.

We resume our focus on the ceramic symposium - its history in Hungary and its continuing importance for international ceramists.

The studio is pleased to welcome back Masakazu Kusakabe again this summer after his successful kiln building workshop in 2011. This year he is leading a three week worshop to experiment with glazes specially designed to enhance the effects of this wood firing, smokeless kiln. Places are now available and details are on our website.

Our Mastercourses are continuing to prove popular and applications have been steady. If you would like to participate in any of these courses, led by internationally acknowledged artists, then please email for an application form as soon as possible.

If you are considering a residency

with us then please email us for further information and an application form. We accept applications at any time but to ensure your preferred time slot please apply as early as possible.

Many of you will have read the recent articles about the proposed changes at the studio. We are pleased to tell you that the studio is still open and its near future is not in doubt. The Contemporary Ceramics Collection will continue to be housed in the studio and open for artists, participants and students to study. On page nine there is a report on the current status of the studio.

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2012Wishing you all aHAPPY and CREATIVEnew year

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Working exchanges of local ceramists with visiting artists are bound to lead to new insights into the process of creation and to foster influences in a communal spiritual energy. We always hope this collaboration will further lead to deeper mutual understanding between cultures in the field of contemporary ceramics.

In 1965 a new experience was gained at the ceramic workshop in Gmunden, Austria inspiring

ceramic artists who participated in the event to give impulse to the founding of symposia in many East European countries. In 1966 the Czech Symposium was founded at Bechyne was founded and in 1969 the symposium at Siklos was established in Hungary.

By the mid-seventies the desire for all year round working facilities were finally established in Kecskemét with the opening of the International Ceramics Studio.

Our symposia continue to bring together artists, many who have never met, and allow an extended exchange of ideas and philosophy. Stretching our creative imagination can lead us to appreciate the artistic use of clay in dynamic new ways.

Some artists will make good work, others will be less satisfied with what they achieve but all will gain something from the experience, expanding their practice in terms of materials, process and style.

“Already in the nineteen nineties people all over Europe were talking about contemporary Hungarian ceramic artists as if they were founding a new school. So the ice is broken.

Scarcely a year went by in which we were not able to reap international or national acclaim. With its systematically and highly professional developed conditions the studio more than just assures the artists of creative work”.

- Orban Katalin

Members of the 1985 working symposium with their communal sculpture “The Gate of Culture”. This piece still stands in the main garden of the studio, a much photographed icon.

standing:Klari, János Probstner, Vaclav Serak (CZ), Maria Geszler, Kis Ildiko, Jona Gudvardardottir (IS), Delan Cookson (GB), Kecskemeti Sándor, Grazina Plochica (PL), Warren Mather (USA), Gerder Gruber (MX), Fusz Györgysitting: Erzsébet Szücs, Toth Lajos, Korompai Péter, Kadasi Éva, Benedek Olga, Nancy Selvage (USA), Juta Rindina (LV), Rosario Guillermo (MX), Hideo Matsumoto (JP)

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image left: Experimental firing symposium. right: Maria Geszler

International Ceramics Studio. . . the early days

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PAPERCLAY Firing Fibres II

“I have been thinking recently about the importance of working with ceramics and how, time after time, I have been influenced by old traditional techniques in the craft.  I find it ironic that I have found major influence in the traditions of pit-firing, and recently the use of paper clay.

Paper clay has many advantages for the modern clay artist including; increased pre-firing strength, reduction in warping, increased joining capacity in both wet-to-wet joints and dry-to-dry joining.  Paper clay has made a whole array of techniques available to me that I could not have thought of even a year ago.  Super thin building techniques, translucent porcelain, and a very fast working style are all of the opportunities I have experienced.”

Jerry Bennet, USA

The 1st International Paperclay Symposium was held at the ICS in August 2004. This international ceramic workshop featured acknowledged masters using paper and fibre clay from 13 countries.

This important gathering featured some of the worlds leading paperclay artists. During the three week symposium, workshop participants created new works, shared information and learned new techniques through the formal and informal sessions, discussed the advances and developments in this relatively new and expanding field of ceramics through the series of slide shows and lectures from all the participants.

Ceramic paperclays, a balanced blend of clay with paper pulp, can be adapted for low, mid or high fire kilns, oxidation, reduction, wood fire, electric, raku, terra-cotta earthenware, stoneware, porcelain and more. Unlike traditional clay, if your properly balanced blend paperclay project cracks or breaks while you are working with it, or after it hardens, dries out, you get to repair and/or rebuild over your project again, until satisfied. When fired the glazed vitreous ceramic finish result is nearly impossible to tell from a traditional piece.

Paperclay, whether it is based from low fire earthenware, high fire stoneware, raku, terracotta, or ultra thin translucent porcelain, makes it possible now to see forms that could never be accomplished before. And it saves time for classic forms because it does not have to be slow dried and is easier to transport. It can be adapted to small or scale projects such as murals and bas relief projects. It’s now also possible to construct large substantial looking sculptures that can be super light, but tough enough to stand outdoors through seasons. Another of its features is that a kiln fired finish is optional, but not required, because the air set greenware is nearly twice as strong as greenware of traditional clay.

This year we are organising the second Firing Fibres symposium. Building on the first event we hope to see and investigate the developments and advances in the artistic use of this material.

Participants are able to apply to work alongside soem of the world’s leading paperclay artists including Rosette Gault and Jerry Bennett. The symposium dates are 6 - 27 September, 2012 and more details are available on our website.

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images: Rosette Gault, Jerry Bennett

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Why artists in residence ?Working alongside other professionals makes one reconsider one’s own way of working and one’ own work, realising that there is much to explore in the expression of one technique. To relate to others working close by, spend time thinking through one’s own ideas, and find new ways of using the materials, highlighted the different individual approaches. Towards the end of the symposium we all had more understanding and were able to select ways of using these differences according to the concept of our work.

Janet Mansfield, Australia.

“To be pulled out of my artistic isolation and emerged in a multicultural creative effervescence is the best gift one could offer me.”

Theodora Chorafas, Greece

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“Ceramic symposia are a valuable event and an asset in three respects. First, they show that ceramic art is retaining its vitality. Secondly, They allow for the exchange of ideas and flights of creative thought and conception. And, finally, they widen the spectrum of ceramics and pave a way for broader and more objective considerations. So, what is so distinctive about a symposium?

It is the only venue for a gathering of professionals in a working environment where art is created. The event has clear-cut goals, an open programme, a potential for significant discoveries and, finally, an

atmosphere that leaves no room for monotony.

Original and interesting artists are invited to take part and interact at the symposium. The time spent among artists of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds provides an opportunity to understand principles and ideals, which is impossible to achieve through mass media or the written word.

Working together provides a way for sharing ideas and learning about artistic standards and philosophies from other countries of the world. The resulting influences will no doubt gain importance in the future”.

Jolante Lebednykiene is Director of the Panevezys City Art Gallery, Lithuania and a member of the International Academy of Ceramics.

Views on a ceramic symposium . . . Jolante Lebednykiene

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“I am a student of the universe and a participant in the harmonic chaos of contrasts and opposites: dark – light; male – female; good – evil. Working instinctually and using my observations, I create a new, intimate universe that reveals the relationships, connections and contradictions as I perceive them.For me, I find clay to be the most versatile material and it is well suited to the expression of my ideas. I consider my sculptures to be a canvas for my paintings. All the plastic, graphic and painting elements of a piece function as complementary parts of the work.”

Sergei Isupov comes from a creative family.  His mother, Nelli Isupova, is a folk artist working in ceramics and his father, Vladimir Isupov, and younger brother, Ilya, are painters.  All  three are well known artists in their home city of Kiev, Ukraine. Ceramic artist Sergei Isupov received his art education first from the Ukrainian State Art School, Kiev and later at the Art

Institute of Tallinn, Estonia where he was awarded both a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Fine Arts.

In 1992 Latvian professor and ceramic artist Peteris Martinsons was working in the ICS and one evening made a presentation about the young artist Isupov’s works. The following year Isupov was invited as a participant in the East and West Symposium. This first visit in 1993 saw his innovative works added to the collection. Beautifully painted surfaces on surrealistic, porcelain forms.  

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Two of Sergei Isupov’s works from his first visit in 1993

a new series featuring international artists who have worked at the studio and created important works to enrich theICS CONTEMPORARY CERAMICS COLLECTION

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above:Isupov working on his piece for the ICS collection and the completed work.

right:Sergei poses alongside the largest piece of Androgyny in the ICS photography room. This piece, along with three other large heads were shipped back to his studio in USA for his 4th solo show in the Ferrin Gallery in August 2008

Isupov's porcelain sculptures are figurative, surreal, and often autobiographical. The facial expressions on each of the pieces reveal individual character traits. The heads, about 1 metre high, also feature small, hand-painted vignettes, as well as hidden surrealist and dream-like vignettes on the bottom of every piece.

In the winter of 2007/8 Sergei Isupov returned to the ICS for a two month residency. During this visit he created the first of the large works for his Androgyny series.

“Art builds me; I don’t build art. I see that each work is a small world, yet once it’s done, it’s over. My relationship with it is over, and I start a new work. I have a relationship with the work only in the process, which is made up of so many logical steps.

So this is the truth: in building work, it’s a small world. In life, it’s the same thing, only over a longer period of time. And being in the studio is like being God.

All artists are egocentric, because you yourself are the artist, the director, the worker – everything. Maybe this is not something that is popular to say, yet it is my privilege to see the world this way.”

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“Nagy’s work is characterized by the great variety of topic choice. She starts with one motif, works with it for a year or two, then sets it aside in favor of a new topic, on which she conducts intense experiments,only to switch again a while later, or return to an earlier theme, this time emphasizing different relationships.

Her career resembles a multiple spiral, in which the arcs are predictable to a certain extent, yet often incur a change where it is not apparent until after retrospective analysis from several years’ distance how the change fits organically into the system as a whole.”

Sárkány József 2002

“…where everything is noisily crackling, where rough emotions trundle rocks, where only extreme rage of fiendish laugh are awarded – to remain soft-spoken, subtle, honest and – I dare say –feminine is a brave engagement.”

Schrammel Imre 1990

“The earth has only a little color, the subsoil is nearly frozen, water barely seeps through the furrows… After the boisterous vertical color-festivals, this „horizontality” is Silence itself. A fine document of an introspective, purifiedartistic demeanor made wise.”

P. Szűcs Julianna 2004

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“Snake in the garden”, 20091st prize, 3rd International Triennial of Silicate Arts, 2011

3rd INTERNATIONAL TRIENNIAL OF SILICATE ARTS

In August 2011, Hungarian ceramist Márta Nagy was awarded the 1st Prize in this international competition. Here three contemporaries write about her work.

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Wood ash effects in Fast fire kilnsMarkus Böhm16 - 20 April, 2012

Fast fire wood kilns have their advantages but also their disadvantages, one being the amount of wood ash build up in the limited firing time. Markus will teach methods to achieve the effects of long firing ash deposits on the ceramic surfaces of work fired in the fast fire kiln.

Creative throwing and Soda glazeRuthanne Tudball3 - 9 May, 2012

For intermediate and advanced throwers with basic knowledge of the wheel. exercises which will stretch and challenge your approach to throwing and will offer an opportunity to practice stretching your imagination and originality in your approach to form and decoration. This will be combined with soda vapour glazing.

Figurative mouldmakingIlona Romule21 - 27 June, 2012

During this 5 day workshop, Ilona Romule will demonstrate her step-by-step approach to design, model and mould making, describing how she transfers factory technology to a studio environment to create unique porcelain figures.

Paperclay techniques for sculptorsRosette Gault29 August - 4 September, 2012

To gain expressive and technical freedom, I created an optimum balance of recycled paper pulp (cellulose fiber) and clay that allowed me to invent or rather “realize” a system of non-linear construction and mixtures that are impossible with traditional ceramic clay to be fired in kilns. I was first to introduce these so called “radical” and “revolutionary” technical and expressive freedoms.

Sculptural throwingShozo Michikawa9 - 15 May, 2012

Experience one of Japan's leading and most innovative ceramic artists in a five day master class. Shozo is an excellent teacher and and inspiring world class ceramic artist. Shozo will be demonstrating his unique process of cutting and faceting work that is then expanded on the wheel to produce his dynamic sculptural forms. Each student will have a wheel and will be able to explore these new techniques alongside Shozo.

MASTER CLASSES 2012Our popular series of short mastercourses continues in 2012 with six week long courses and one three week summer course.

Please visit our website for full details and prices of all our continuing education courses. Costs for the short courses are 150,000 Hungarian forints and include accommodation in single room, teaching, use of equipment and the materials.

www.icshu.org/programme.html

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ICS WEBSITEwww.icshu.org

MAILING LISTIf you would like to be added to our mailing list just email icshu@hotmail.comWe do not pass on your information to anyone else.

EMAIL ICS Steve Mattison Residencies and International Contacticshu@hotmail.comKormos Emese Hungarian and exchange student contacticshu@t-online.hu

FACEBOOK Photos and news are available on Facebook. Go to the link below and click “like”.http://www.facebook.com/pages/International-Ceramics-Studio-Kecskemet-Hungary/111911072158918

International Ceramics StudioH-6000 KecskemétKápolna u11.Hungary

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Due to government changes from the 1st January, 2012, the responsibilities and financial capabilities of county councils in Hungary have changed.

That is why in September 2011 the General Assembly of Bács-Kiskun County amalgamated its three, up to that time independently operating art institutions, each highly recognised in their own fields, into one single art organisation.

The operation of this newly established organisation was taken over by the City of Kecskemét in December 2011.

Within this new organisation the Forrás Publishing House

(publishers of Forrás, a literary, sociographic and art journal), the International Ceramics Studio and the International Studio of Enamel Art are under a joint financial management.

These three respected art organisations will still enjoy independence in defining their professional activities ensuring the continued future of the International Ceramics Studio as a world leading centre for ceramic art, education and research.

We look forward to welcoming new and returning resident

artists and students to the studio. The ICS continues its commitment to initiate, teach, preserve and disseminate quality allowing artists to create, grow and mature in a supportive environment.

Please contact us as usual to discuss our residencies, courses and symposia.

Latest news on the future of the ICS

the INTERNATIONAL CERAMICS STUDIO . . . keeping contact with the ceramic community