Margaret Bohls

Expressive Slab-Built Pottery

Course Description
In this class participants will learn how to build functional yet inventive forms using clay slabs. The class will explore a breadth of possibilities for form, using both soft and stiff slabs to create forms ranging from organic and gestural to clean and architectural. Demonstrations will include ways to create and use paper patterns and textured slabs, alternate ways of making spouts, lids, and handles, and making and using stamps and sprigs. Discussions will provide ideas about how to develop one’s own expressive form language and surface decoration and different ways to conceptualize functional forms. Margaret will share a collection of glazes she has gathered and developed for rich color and depth of surface. For inspiration, we will look at images of a wide range of historical and contemporary pottery forms.

Skill Level
Students should have had some clay experience and be comfortable working with clay.

Artist's Biography
Margaret Bohls is a studio potter and educator who lives and works in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She has been teaching ceramics at the University of Minnesota since 1998, during which time she has also been visiting faculty at Ohio University, Penn State University, and NSCAD University in Halifax. Margaret has also taught many community classes and workshops at art centers and universities across the country. In her studio, Margaret makes hand-built porcelain pottery which she shows and sells both locally and nationally. For more information about Margeret, visit her web site at http://www.margaretbohls.com.

Artist's Statement
Interior volume is a key element in functional forms. It defines the potential for containment. My work combines a strong sense of interior volume with a net- or grid-like surface of textural lines that contain and shape that volume, creating buoyant, full, yet architectural forms. These seemingly upholstered forms are draped with a series of rich, complex glaze surfaces, many of them crystalline, lustrous, or having deep visual texture. These surfaces are sometimes further adorned with sprigs, floral glaze decals, or metallic lustres. Porcelain forms are often placed in or on earthenware baskets or trays. The result is a layering of disparate and complex elements that become integral. These pieces, in form and in the details of form, are created to visually communicate their use or function. Their complex shapes and rich surfaces embellish and enhance their use.