ceramics Archives - Page 2 of 2

March 13, 2017March 21, 2017

Meet Jim Bridgeman – Ceramic Artist

Jim Bridgeman of Bridgeman Studios is a ceramic artist from Georgia. While his ceramic work is minimal in color and finish, his creations are functional works of art that beg to be displayed.

Jim Bridgeman Ceramic Artist – Ceramic Chess Set

Please Introduce Yourself:

Hi, I’m Jim Bridgeman. A retired air traffic controller, husband and father and now ceramic artist? (I struggle calling myself an artist/potter)

Jim Bridgeman Ceramic Artist – Handbuilt Vase

How did clay hook you?

In 2006 I was forced to take an early retirement from my job as an air traffic controller due to some health issues. Unsure what I was going to do with the rest of my life, my wife found a pottery wheel throwing class offered at the local rec department. I was hooked day one.

I’ve “known” you since about 2007/2008 when we were both members of the Etsy Mud Team. Your work has taken a fairly dramatic stylistic shift since then. Can you pinpoint when this happened or was it gradual?

Yep, dramatic is correct, but not unexpected to me. In May 2012, I discovered Neil Gaiman’s graduation speech to The University of the Arts. A month later I spent 10 days in Uganda helping out in a remote village and spending time with two kids we sponsor there. I listened to Neil Gaiman’s speech over 50 times during the two weeks in Uganda and travel time to and from. Upon returning from Uganda, due to budget cuts, I was let go from a job I held as a contract air traffic control instructor for the FAA. This allowed me to begin handbuilding where much of the work is both very time consuming and time critical.

Jim Bridgeman Ceramic Artist – Ceramic Dream Bottle

The “dream” bottle is one of the first pieces I made after being let go and was greatly inspired by the portion of Neil Gaiman’s speech where he says:

“A freelance life, a life in the arts, is sometimes like putting messages in bottles, on a desert island, and hoping that someone will find one of your bottles and open it and read it, and put something in a bottle that will wash its way back to you: appreciation, or a commission, or money, or love. And you have to accept that you may put out a hundred things for every bottle that winds up coming back.”

Jim Bridgeman Ceramic Artist – Horizontal Nail Vase

Your current ceramic work is very architectural, where do you find your inspiration?

Well, I actually went through 3 1/2 years of VA Tech’s 5 year architecture program before changing my major. Clay allows me to pursue and explore forms without getting caught up in the minutiae.

Jim Bridgeman Ceramic Artist – Inserting Nails into Pot

Do you still sell online, or mostly at in person events? Why?

Almost all of my work is sold in person at art shows for a couple reasons. The first is the time consuming aspect of the type of work I make. I haven’t reached a point where I feel I can safely set aside work to list online and still feel comfortable with the amount of work I am bringing to shows. The second reason is that every piece is unique as well as every side of each piece. The time needed to photograph, edit, upload and list images of all sides of a piece wasn’t making business sense in terms of time spent vs sales from those listings.

Jim Bridgeman – “Punny” Pot(tery) t-shirt

I love your new t-shirts – they’re very pottery “punny”. How did you come up with the idea and why did you decide to get into the t-shirt business?

The Pot[tery] Makes Me Happy!!! shirt was a design I submitted for a yearly pottery show I participate in here in GA called Perspectives. The intent of the design was to grab people’s attention from a distance with Pot Makes Me Happy!!!, then when they got closer they would see it actually said “Pottery” as well as the name of the show which had been on the bottom of the design.

The show went with a more traditional design than the one that I submitted. I can’t say I was surprised.

(Author’s note – check out Jim’s t-shirts in his Etsy shop – only $24.95 with FREE shipping! I plan on wearing mine to my next in person event.)

What do you do for fun outside of pottery?

I volunteer at the elementary school where (my now) high school aged kids attended to help kids with reading and math – I love it! I also like to take the dogs to a nearby nature area to hike a few miles a day. Feed the chipmunks that live around my studio.

Where can people find you?

Bridgemanstudios.com forwards to a mostly empty etsy shop (aforementioned tshirts are there)

Instagram.com/bridgemanstudios

Instagram.com/munkslife

Upcoming events:

Winter Park, FL 3/17-19
Dogwood, Atlanta 4/7-9
Fired Works, Macon, GA 4/21-30
Artisphere, Greenville, SC 5/12-14
Reston, VA 5/20-21
Decatur, GA 5/27-28

I publish interviews with artists whose primary medium is clay once a week, every Friday. This regular segment is named “Feature Fridays” which can be found when searching the Ceramicscapes Blog using the category search function on the right hand sidebar. Interested in being featured? Visit the Apply for Feature Fridays page for more information.

February 27, 2017March 13, 2017

Stacked Ceramic Totem Sculptures

During the month of February, I’ve been making some more experimental work. I’ve felt drawn to stacked ceramic totem sculptures as a form and method of arranging components which is entirely new for me.

Since I’m not quite sure how to execute larger ceramic totem sculptures, I decided to repurpose some table lamps that my husband and I were going to donate to our local thrift shop. The size and shape of the lamp base is perfect for a table top ceramic totem sculpture.

Table lamp base - repurposed for my stacked ceramic totem sculptures — Table lamp base – repurposed for my stacked ceramic totem sculptures

My husband kindly removed the electrical bits of the lamps and yesterday, I started to play with the placement of the ceramic bits that will make up the pair of sculptures.

While, the minimal white of the components in the video is beautiful, I envision a more graphic composition. I’ll be working on the decoration today. Stay tuned.

After this firing cycle, I plan to work on a ceramic totem for my garden and think I have figured out how I will anchor it in the ground. There just doesn’t seem to be a ton of info out there, so I’m drawing on my experience in landscape design to figure out how to anchor the sculpture so that it does not topple during weather events.

Meanwhile, check out my Pinterest board where I’ve been collecting images of ceramic totems.

What is a totem?

“A totem (Ojibwe dodaem) is a spirit being, sacred object, or symbol that serves as an emblem of a group of people, such as a family, clan, lineage, or tribe.”

While it is somewhat controversial for me to use the cultural term “totem” to describe my sculpture, it’s descriptive of a tall stacked sculpture and easily understood. I will need to really think about the language that I use as I finish my pieces in the future.

More appropriate terms include stacked ceramic sculpture, columnar sculpture, garden tower or garden stacks. Ultimately, I want to be thoughtful, respectful and deliberate.

October 31, 2016November 13, 2016

My first Skillshare class is live!

I’m super please to announce that I have published my first online Skillshare class! This class is for beginning students and is adapted from one I teach in person.

What is Skillshare? Skillshare is a subscription based learning community where anyone can discover, take, or even teach a class. Class topics include everything from crafts, illustration, fitness, software applications, photography, tech classes, gaming, culinary and more. The wonderful aspect of taking a class on Skillshare is that you do it at your own pace. Classes are broken up into short segments that you can pause and resume anytime you’d like from the comfort of your home.

If you’d like to try Skillshare without committing to a full blown subscription, you can sign up for a three month trial of a premium subscription for $0.99 after which time you can subscribe for a full year or cancel if it’s not for you. Use this link for your free trial.

Class Details:

Skill lever: Beginner

Pottery has never been more popular and now you can make easy clay dishes at home without having a pottery wheel or any other pottery specific equipment*.

Join me in my home studio where I will demonstrate how to make slab built dishes in different shapes that can be impressed with texture, personalized text, special dates and more.

When I was a beginning clay student, the pottery wheel was super frustrating to me. After learning a few hand building techniques and best practices for working with wet clay, I had instant success. It was just enough to keep me going to enable me to graduate with a degree in ceramics.

Keep in mind, that a degree isn’t necessary – just a willingness to try and you can be on your way making pottery to keep for yourself, gift and even sell.

Warning: Clay is very addicting!

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* I use a cone 6 white stoneware clay body that needs to be fired in a kiln to approximately 2232 degrees F for durability. If you do not have access to a kiln, many community pottery studios and/or private studios will often fire work for you for a small fee. Alternately, you may use air dry clay and acrylic paint or polymer clay, but these materials are not food or dishwasher safe.

I really look forward to developing more online classes in the future! I really learned a lot about formatting a class and also how to film and edit for clarity.

March 23, 2015

New Direction and Creative Explorations

Getting ready to carve rubber stamps — Mixing it up

Shortly after New Years, I didn’t have much going on in the studio…it was quiet after the holidays and a couple of online classes popped up on my radar and I thought, “Why not?”

I signed up for Molly Hatch’s/Ben Carter’s “Think Big” class and enrolled in Diana Fayt’s “The Clayer – Surfacing” class which ran concurrently for a bit. Why? I had been humming along just fine, but felt a bit bored creatively towards the end of 2014 and decided that learning something new would be a good jump start for the new year – a way to make some creative leaps with external motivation in the form of a class. I had already started the process of mixing things up in the studio, but then stalled once the holidays crept up.

I’m typically the type of person that jumps in head first and gives 110% to whatever it is I’m doing. It was no different for these e-courses. Emotionally, I was all over the place in the Think Big class. We were asked to do some real soul searching about the direction we wanted to move towards creatively, spiritually and financially. I am really inspired by Molly Hatch’s multi-faceted career as a maker and designer and I always look forward to Ben Carter’s interviews with “artists and culture makers” on The Tales of a Red Clay Rambler. At first, I didn’t think that I was interested in expanding outside of clay, but now I’m rethinking the possibilities.

I have always been a Jill of all trades, mistress of none. Yet, I have worked hard to focus on clay in the past two years in an effort to craft a career in ceramics. I have not dabbled in other mediums – I have concentrated on clay. The effort has not been for naught. I lost momentum in 2009 when I decided to go to graduate school for landscape architecture. I returned to clay in earnest late 2013. I also returned to making and working like I used to do before taking a clay sabbatical. In essence, I found it necessary to relearn how to work with the material, to understand the work flow, the making cycle and more. Going back to what I knew was easy. Switching gears is hard, but I’ve done my homework.

Graduate school was both a blessing and a curse for me. I loved stretching myself mentally and physically – accomplishing things that I never thought possible. It was a bust in that I adopted a more contemporary aesthetic that wasn’t totally authentic to me and I decided that I didn’t want to practice landscape architecture. The gifts that graduate school gave me are endurance, thick skin, humility and an ability to think bigger. Did I need to go to school to learn that? Probably not, but I can’t change the past.

Making handmade rubber stamps and testing on paper

The Clayer – Surfacing class was great! Diana is a fantastic instructor and was very encouraging to everyone. I wasn’t sure if I was interested in many of the techniques that she was teaching, but I love her work and have followed her on social media for years. We were given assignments every week and shared our efforts with each other and sometimes the world via social media. I have learned that I like Mishima (or the art of slip inlay) as a technique. I love creating my own patterns through the use of hand carved rubber stamps. Mono-printing on clay is cool. AND I really like hand building with clay.

I found joy again in creating, trying new things and working in multiple mediums. It was almost as if I were given permission to play and to go back to what I was doing before I went to graduate school. It’s the freedom to do what I want with no expectation of a particular outcome. I also know that I am throwing my whole business plan out of the window.

Working out ideas on paper - seeing how they translate to a 3 dimensional object — Working out ideas on paper – seeing how they translate to a 3 dimensional object

Between these two classes, I have discovered that I actually have something to say and that I want to share these creative explorations out loud. Instagram, Twitter and Facebook just don’t have enough space to delve deeper.