8 sessions: Saturdays, September 16, 23, 30; October 7, 14, 21, 28; and November 4
Have you ever been mesmerized watching a ceramic artist work at the pottery wheel turning lumps of clay into vessels? This class offers an opportunity to get hands-on experience developing the foundations of wheel-throwing. To start, you will learn how to center clay, pull walls and shape form at the wheel. The course will allow you to finish the wares in your own individual way — either sculpturally or functionally — via attachments like handles, appendages or decorative elements like embossing and reliefs. Surface color and decoration will be applied via glaze and the wares will be fired in the kiln to create a finished ceramic object which is food safe. No prior knowledge or experience working with clay is needed — all levels are welcome!
Instructor: Michael Dela Dika is a Ghanaian, a sculptor, and the current Artist-in-Residence at Tyler School of Art and Architecture in Philadelphia. Inspired by his experience working in Ghanaian markets, Michael Dika considers the interplay between tension and balance while emphasizing human fragility, vulnerability, and exhaustion in his sculptures. He traverses the complexities of political constructs of identity and states of double consciousness.
Dika has received numerous awards including the 2022 Multicultural Fellowship Award from National Council on Education for Ceramic Arts (NCECA), Jessie Ball duPont Fund-Partnership for Arts & Culture Grant Award 2022, and A. Magness Fellowship Award 2021 among others. His work has shown nationally and internationally: Germany, Turkey, Delaware (Biggs Museum), North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Oregon, Virginia, Florida, and New Jersey (Grounds For Sculpture); he had his first solo museum show at Berman Museum of Art, Pennsylvania.