Decorative Ceramic Stamp Workshop
**Events may have been canceled or postponed. Please contact the venue to confirm the event.
Date & Time
Sat, Apr 17 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM
Sat, Apr 24 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM
Address (map)
1351 Holiday Hill Rd., Goleta
Date: Saturday, April 17 and Saturday, April 24th (meets two Saturdays in a row)
Time: 1–3pm
Levels: All levels welcome
Price: $150
Teacher: Addison Woolsey
Location: Outdoors under the oak at Clay Studio
Description: Stamps are a creative and fun way to develop patterns, transmit information, and produce visually and haptically interesting surfaces on pots. In this two-day workshop, students will look at art historical examples of stamps and impressions on clay, develop their own sets of stamps, and practice using them on slabs that can then be turned into mugs, vases, or used as decorative tiles.
On the first day of the workshop, Addison will share his personal set of stamps and show different techniques for making stamps and seals with slabs, coils, and a variety of tools. Students will get to experiment and make 15-20 of their own stamps, which will be bisque fired for the second session, during which we will test our stamps on clay slabs. We will also discuss glazing our work, thinking about how different glazes will interact with these embellished surfaces.
Students will take home their own set of clay stamps (including a maker’s mark) and one to two pieces made from slabs. You will choose from a selection of glazes and Clay Studio will fire and glaze the piece for you. All items will be finished and ready to pick up two weeks after the workshop.
About the instructor: Addison Woolsey is a ceramic artist, writer and translator who lives and works between Mexico City and Los Angeles. Since 2016, he has been a member of the artist-run studio Taller Mono Rojo in Mexico City, and he has been a visiting artist at studios in Oaxaca, Seattle, and Medellín. In addition to his work as a ceramic artist, Addison translates poetry and art criticism from Spanish and French to English. He is currently in the second year of a Master’s Program in Latin American Studies at UCLA, where his research concerns the ethnographic legacy of Maud Oakes, an American painter, anthropologist, and Jungian psychoanalytic scholar. His ceramic work explores materiality and non-linguistic communicative practices, drawing from diverse ceramic histories and contemporary scholarship in anthropology and the environmental humanities.