Ceramics
Code: C1012-23
-
IV
Level IV
Students have advanced skills and knowledge of the ceramics field. Students are highly motivated, have a minimum of five years experience in the field and have a portfolio of their artwork. Typical students are academics and professional artists.
Master Class: Surface Treatment: Color and Glaze
Aug 7 - 11, 2023
9AM-5PM
Concept
Experienced ceramic artists are invited to explore the interplay between object, surface and glaze as a creative way to form a relationship between process, intent and effect. Emphasis is on an overview of glazing and its history, as well as the boundaries that have been pushed with the medium. We delve into surface manipulation and treatment with wet tiles, considering mark making and texture possibilities, and work with bisque tiles to allow for glaze experimentation and tests. Students discover different implements for applying and layering glaze, along with dipping, painting, spray booth, and basic glaze transfer techniques. We discuss a code system for labeling to create a physical library of glazes as we share in the discovery of endless combinations.
Portfolios will be accepted on a rolling basis. Instructions on how to submit your portfolio are as follows:
- Submit digital images of your work in one single PDF (as opposed to individual JPG attachments) via email directly to Ceramics Studio Coordinator Joanne Seongweon Lee at [email protected]
- The single PDF must be less than 10 MB to be considered.
- Include 5-10 images of your work with image identification that lists the title, media, dimensions and year of each image.
- While not required, it is helpful to see an artist statement addressing the images you send.
- Include “Advanced Portfolio Review” in the subject line of your email, as well as the title of the workshop for which you are applying.
- Please provide a phone number where you can be reached and a link to your website.
Submissions that do not follow the requested directions will not be reviewed.
If you are accepted, a deposit of $650 will be required within one week of notification of acceptance to hold your place. Housing will be assigned on a space-available basis upon enrollment.
Media & Techniques
Glazes, stoneware, porcelain, various implements for applying glazes, reduction gas firing, electric firing
Supply ListFaculty
Liz Larner
Liz Larner attended the California Institute of the Arts, where she received her BFA. An inventor of new forms, she explores and extends the conditions and possibilities of sculpture in her work, which has been presented in numerous solo museum exhibitions. Liz was recently the subject of two major exhibitions, Don’t put it back like it was, at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and Sculpture Center, Long Island City, and below above, at Kunsthalle Zürich.
Liz Larner, Gravity's Motion Detail
Join Waitlist for Master Class: Surface Treatment: Color and Glaze
Thank you for your interest in the waitlist. When space in a workshop or program becomes available, registration will open on the website. Everyone on the waitlist will be emailed to alert them of the opening. This ensures that everyone has an equal opportunity to register for the workshop or program.
Ceramics
In 1966, American ceramicist Paul Soldner selected the site for what is now Anderson Ranch Arts Center, forming the foundation for a thriving ceramics program. Then and now, Anderson Ranch is a place where students exchange ideas and examine ceramic art and pottery techniques. It has always been a place where seminal moments of growth happen in an artist’s creative and critical thinking. Here, both beginning and emerging artists gain strong fundamental support, while established artists achieve new perspectives and advance their techniques.
The Ranch Ceramics team provides support, feedback and technical problem-solving, giving each artist the freedom to experiment and grow. Our primary focus is on personal advancement through a process of creative discovery.
The Soldner Ceramics Center makes up more than 10,000 square feet in three buildings with 3 studio spaces and 1 kiln yard; Soldner Studio, Long Studio, Sorenson Studio and Lyeth/Lyon Kiln Building. Soldner and Long studios are used for wheel-throwing, hand-building, or general ceramics creativity. Sorenson studio is equipped with five PotterBot 3d clay printers. The Lyeth/Lyon kiln building is equipped with gas, electric, soda and wood kilns for both oxidation and reduction firing at all temperature ranges. The Ranch offers three wood kilns including a gas/wood hybrid kiln, three gas reduction kilns, one soda kiln and eleven high-temperature electric kilns.
Anderson Ranch is happy to extend a tuition discount* in summer one- or two-week adult ceramics workshops** for NCECA members at the student membership level or above. Please email reg@
Workshop Details
Workshop Supplies
For general information about studio access, shipping, and more, please visit our info page.
If you have any questions regarding your supplies for your workshop, please contact Joanne Seongweon Lee, [email protected].
Lodging & Meals
Housing is limited and includes shared and private lodging options. Reservations will be managed on a first-come, first-served basis. The earlier you reserve housing, the better your chance of receiving your preferred option. Please note: Workshop costs do not include accommodations.
NEW: Tuition includes a welcome dinner and lunches. In our effort to foster a stronger sense of community and accessibility at Anderson Ranch, we include the welcome dinner and all lunches as part of the tuition for summer workshop students. Our hope is that this adjustment will encourage all students to come together to share meals and engage in meaningful conversations. The Ranch Café Meal Plan, which is included with Room and Board fees, strives to provide healthy, creative meals that will nourish your artistic creativity. Learn more.
We have established a Business Safety Plan with added layers of precaution that prioritize the health and safety of our staff, students, faculty and guests while continuing to provide you with the Anderson Ranch experience that you know and enjoy.
Scholarships, College Credit & Discounts
Making Art Accessible
Applications for scholarship support are encouraged. Specific scholarships are funded by Ranch supporters, either through endowed funds or special gifts.
Many colleges and universities offer college credit for workshops taken at Anderson Ranch. Discounts are available for students and teachers.
You Might Also Be Interested In
-
IV
Level IV
Students have advanced skills and knowledge of the ceramics field. Students are highly motivated, have a minimum of five years experience in the field and have a portfolio of their artwork. Typical students are academics and professional artists.
Aug 4 - 15, 2025
9AM - 5PM
Advanced Mentored Studies: The Mold and Matrix: Ceramic Process and Narrative Form
Ebitenyefa Baralaye, Del Harrow
Tuition $2,510
Code C1001-25
This three-year mentorship program is intended for ceramic artists interested in critical feedback and immersion in a creative community and who are at a point of transition in their lives, careers, or artistic practices. Emphasis is placed on seeking connections, metaphors, and symmetries between processes for forming clay and developing ways of generating meaning. The objects we make tell stories and propose worlds; a coil and a mold are both techniques for forming clay and also propositions about the meaningful interface of material, body, mind, economy, and culture. We focus on ways stories emerge from physical objects and how narratives give structure to physical form. We welcome participants from many different backgrounds and experiences, centering on work in clay but with the potential for different outcomes, including work in other materials, writing, sculpture, and design. 2025 is the third year of this three-year intensive program. For more information about our next session of this Advanced Mentored Studies program, which begins in 2026, please contact Betsy Alwin, Visiting Director of Ceramics and Expanded Media at [email protected].
-
I
Level I
Students are new to ceramics and have no formal training.
-
II
Level II
Students have a basic understanding of forming techniques, such as throwing and hand building. Students have taken one or two ceramics classes or workshops.
Aug 11 - 22, 2025
9AM-5PM
Patterned Expressions: Sculpting Your Memories into Vessels
YoonJee Kwak
Tuition $1,910
Code C1114-25
This course focuses on artist Yoonjee Kwak’s unique hand building technique in which clay coils and bits are accumulated outward and upward, in a technique similar to fiber weaving but in clay. Demonstrations cover a range of sculptural vessels from functional cups to larger moon jars. Over the course of two weeks, participants investigate the beauty of progressive, meditative growth of building one coil at a time.
-
III
Level III
Students have some formal training in digital fabrication, experience with a variety of materials and fabrication processes, and know how to use CNC, 3-D printers, or laser cutters competently and safely. Students have a portfolio of their work.
-
IV
Level IV
Students have advanced skill and knowledge of digital fabrication. Students are highly motivated and have multiple portfolios of their artwork.
Aug 11 - 15, 2025
9AM-5PM
Master Class: Career Momentum: Professional Practices for Artists
Jasmine Wahi
Tuition $1,630
Code D1122-25
Artists at all stages of their careers often wish they could have more guidance when approaching galleries, making sales, navigating and choosing exhibitions in which to participate, and even writing off sales and donations. This nuts-and-bolts workshop gets to the core of these questions, while at the same time mentoring artists to consider their goals within the art world and find the tools to achieve them. Every artist has a different trajectory, but there are many common struggles and questions along the way, several of which form the content of this course designed to inform, energize, and empower. This workshop takes place in the painting building but invites artists of all disciplines to apply.