Debra Disman

Artist

Clay

The Work of Our Hands: Hand Building with Clay 4

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Hand Building with Clay class at Will Rogers School with the CREST Enrichment program has been a joy to teach.

Students learned pinch, coil and slab techniques, creating functional and fanciful items, and enjoying plenty of time to create their own personal visions after completing each class project.

After learning slab (flattening) technique, students created masks from slabs shaped over newspaper armatures/supports.

Both the Kindergarten and grades 1-5 classes let their inventiveness loose!


Employing the heart shape in different ways when class fell on February 14th!


Combining use of coils with use of slab technique.


Cutting out and incising (etching lines and texture into the clay) yields expressive results.


This young maker used a pencil to twist these star shapes into his mask. Big smile!


Cut out eyes, added teeth incising texture and puncturing the clay’s surface to create small round shapes enhance this piece.


This very talented young artist wanted to create Harry Potter in clay…


She succeeded. Her use of acrylic paint pulled the whole piece together into a stunner.

BRAVO to All Our Students!

The Work of Our Hands: Hand Building with Clay 3

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Hand Building with Clay class at Will Rogers Elementary School with the CREST Enrichment program has been a joy to teach.

Here behold first – fifth grade students get their hands in the “earth”…

 

The Work of Our Hands: Hand Building with Clay 2

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Hand Building with Clay class at Will Rogers Elementary School with the CREST Enrichment program has been a joy to teach.

Below behold students aged 5-6 get their hands in the “earth”.


We had class on Valentine’s Day, which proved to be an inspiration.

From the heart.

The Work of Our Hands: Hand Building with Clay 1

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Creating masks in our Hand Building with Clay class at McKinley Elementary after school with the CREST Enrichment program has been a joy. With majority boys in the class, the tempo had to be high energy.

Students learned how to “pound out” slabs (flat) pieces of clay the week before, then created “armatures” (support structures) of newspaper, over which they stretched their slabs, so that their masks would be three dimensional.

It was exciting to watch the students develop their mask characters, inevitably thinking in terms of story…inspired by characters from film, television, and books, but always their own. Students used coil, scoring, incising and even pinch pot techniques to create their mask characters.


Creating detail.

 


Two faces, in one?


Creating texture!


Inspired by the zombie craze.


Our one young girl in class that day created…a self-portrait?


Creative use of coils…


Figuring it out…


A very coherent expression.


Tattoo?


What is going on here? Perhaps this young maker is working out his feelings through creating.

It would not be the first time…

All hail, the healing powers of Art.

The (Clay)Work of Our Hands

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Transitional Kindergarten and Kindergarten students attend their last (for this session) clay class through the City of Santa Monica’s CREST Enrichment program…after school classes held at a variety of Public Elementary Schools in Santa Monica.

Next week, we paint!

I have taught the students the basics: Pinch, coil and slab techniques. They have created vessels, masks, animals, and more. During this class I demonstrated how to create a small plate, platter or candle holder that could be given as a gift for the holidays, and beyond.

And then, these talented tykes took off with their own ideas!


Small hands are developing the strength and dexterity to form rough balls of clay and roll out coils from them. Sometimes i help this age group along by breaking up clay (air dry in this case) into sections for them to work with.


This little artist with a big personality has really progressed in her coil making. She created a piece by putting together numerous tiny coils.


This young maker recently turned five, and is mastering the coil technique!


Almost there!


This piece is growing….


Mark making in the clay using various tools. These kids amaze me. She saw a brief demo and then just took off creating these textures and designs herself.

Our tools are sourced from simple household items…popsicle sticks, pencils, plastic cutlery, and wood clothespins and toothpicks do the job, and teach the students how the simplest object can be transformed into a tool that becomes and performs magic!

It has been magical to watch these students learn and grow,

Much talent abounds in them.

It is a joy to see, encourage and develop their skills and artistic voices, even, and especially, at this age!

Story Time

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Story Time: BedTime Story I

I am repeating a bit in this post, lingering in my Studio Residency and show of work at Camera Obscura Art Lab at 1450 Ocean in Santa Monica.

I showed a work titled “BedTime Story I“, featuring, or shall I say employing tiny masks; faces of clay, made by my Mother, the ceramicist  Judy Disman.

My Mom had made these tiny faces of clay expressly for me to use in and on my artists’ books, even making tiny holes in them so they could be sewed  into and onto the book structures and become integral to them.

The faces were a natural for a piece about “bed”,  and made the book into a more literal narrative then I had originally intended. I work fairly abstractly, though still in a loose book format, and the addition of representational elements changed the feeling of the piece. It could then be “read” more literally.

The faces even became interactive, with two of them contemplating each other.

Others became sentinels, gazing benevolently out from their “beds”.

Far from creating an image of sleep, the faces express the experience of being wide awake, perhaps listening to, creating, or becoming a story. A bed time story.

The faces become the actors in the story, played out through the pages of the book. Each viewer will read the story in their own way, and reach their own conclusions about it.

We may wonder what the beings or characters expressed or indicated by the faces are thinking, and if they are having sleepless nights. Perhaps they are worried under their smiling visages. Perhaps they are presenting to us a mask, and there are dreams and roiling emotions, even nightmares, underneath.

Perhaps formal, textural,  decorative, haptic or totemic qualities of the work will prevail for some. In any event, BedTime Story I was a pleasure to make.

Again, Mom, thank you for the collaboration, and for creating these tiny pieces for me.
It was great to work with you. Sweet dreams.