by TASI Executive Director, Greg Busceme, Sr.
Born in 1955 I’ve lived in Beaumont most of my life save for two years in graduate school. Raised by great parents and sharing a life with two brothers and a sister, we spent half of our lives living at Crystal Beach where I was highly influenced by the coast and all the life that swam in the water. The shape of shells and rocks and later shark teeth on the shore had a particular beauty that influences my forms still.
I began my career in clay at Lamar University under the influence of Jerry Newman in the summer of 1975. Completely smitten, I bought a kiln and a wheel and set up a studio in my kitchen where I began to practice my art. Ultimately, I returned to Lamar to study under Meredith Jack for two years, where I gained a true understanding of what it took to be an artist.
In 1980 I started graduate school at Washington University under Professor David Hershey, where I spent two years working in clay and glass blowing.
Returning to Beaumont, it was my desire to open a studio where other artists could share space and work together. Along with my then wife Angela, we co-founded The Art Studio, Inc. in late 1983 at 1076 Neches St. in downtown Beaumont. We later moved to the building of the former White House department store, where we stayed for four years and raised funds to buy our present location at 720 Franklin St.
I remain Executive Director and Studio resident.
“Save these dates – July 11, 12, 13 – for the triumphal return of the GUMBO CLAYFEST. This festival is all about the clay and the people who love it. Highly knowledgeable ceramists from across the nation will descend on Southeast Texas and will share their ideas and special techniques to participants along with clay activities, panel discussions, presentations, and parties! Great for anyone who has an interest in clay and for artists from other disciplines. For any young or beginning aspirant it is a must do! De rigueur! You will advance your knowledge years ahead of where you are! Some of these artists I have known for many years and others are more recent friends; all are eager to come to our community and I hope hope hope you want to meet them too. It will mean a lot to me to have everyone come meet and learn from these generous ceramists and friends.”
Gary “Greeny” Greenberg
I spent most of my formative years in the principal’s office, as my teachers didn’t appreciate nor
understand the process in which I actualized my philosophy. Ceramics was pretty much the only thing I didn’t get sent to the office for doing, and since my parents met at the Chicago Art institute, my chances of being paleontologist or fireman were rather slim.
I have been involved with ceramics for more than 52 years. This led me to pursue a BFA from Northern Illinois University, an MFA from Arizona State, and has resulted in my current position as Ass. Prof. Art/Ceramics and former department chair at Clarion University of Pennsylvania, where I have been working quietly for the last 30 years on a variety of foil-fired, low-fired and wood-fired, art objects and vessels. My work has been featured in several publications, among these are “Alternative Kilns and Firing Techniques”, Lark Books, 2004, “The Extruder Book”, American Ceramics Society, “The 2005 NCECA Clay National Catalog and “American Style” Magazine.
Although I am very serious about producing work, I feel strongly that it should contain an element of humor, reflecting the absurdities of life in general and of art in particular. In that regard, all the time I spent in the principal’s office and all the time I spent watching the Three Stooges and The Marx Brothers wasn’t really wasted. I noted a strong component of “slapstick” all those endeavors.
Stephen Wolochowicz was born and raised near Trenton, New Jersey. He holds a BFA from the University of Delaware (2000) and a MFA from Miami University of Ohio (2005). He has taught ceramics at institutions including The University of Notre Dame, The University of Central Missouri, and Central Michigan University. He currently lives, works, and maintains a studio in Ogden, Utah, where he is an Associate Professor of Art in Ceramics at Weber State University. Wolochowicz is recognized nationally from his exhibitions of artwork, conducting workshops, and presenting lectures at galleries, art centers and colleges around the country.
His current work utilizes abstract industrial shapes with organic features. Through the use of vivid color and textures, he adds a playful aesthetic to his underlying concepts. They deal with the human invention, environment and progress through networks of industrial themes. You can view more of his artwork at StephenWolochowicz.com
Artist Statement
The artwork I create is entirely composed of ceramic material. My constructed forms are derived from abstractions and draw from an array of thoughts and objects that include themes of industrialization, humor, games, politics and the environment. While I have these specific areas of interest that shape and define my practice, I find it interesting how a viewer perceives and interprets my artwork.
Using these ideas, the sculptures I create have a carefully crafted ambiguous quality. They resemble or hint at notions of transport, storage, containment or transformation. Although there are no moving parts in my artwork, I do imply an internal tension or kineticism within my forms. The inclusion of pipes or piping suggest interconnectedness and connectivity. They signify the conduits that link humanity to my concepts.
It is intriguing to me how the use of color and texture in tandem with simplified forms can convey deeper meanings and retain aesthetic appeal. Incorporating vivid equiluminant colors with metallic surfaces seem to play off of each other in interesting ways. Notably, the contrasting tone of fun and serious.
I establish layers of content are through the surface treatment, construction process and form. While some are overt and others are buried, many clues are there for contextualization. For example, the post nuclear age green colored ooze in the pipes indicate what could possibly reside inside the forms. It can be positive or dangerous depending on one’s viewpoint. This is also true for the disk and bulb forms. They act as the storage or containment vessels of that substance. Some of the industrial shapes are derived and/or directly molded from things like clocks and smoke detectors- a reference to alarms and the concept of time or lack thereof. Additionally, many pieces have a white, black and clear dot within the field of color- a nod to a strategy game, like chess, but for me it is a metaphor for the human experience.
Chris Leonard was born in Des Moines, Iowa in 1962. He currently lives and works in McAllen, Texas where he serves as a ceramics instructor at South Texas College. Leonard earned a BFA in Painting with additional hours to complete the Art Education Sequence from the University of Northern Iowa in 1985. With work and dreams inspired by Chicago’s Hairy Who and most forms of expressionistic excess, unable to find firm grounding substitute teaching or delivering pizzas in the Des Moines area, he quickly departed for the Rio Grande Valley of Texas in 1987 after expanding his educational certification. In the borderlands of the late twentieth century, he quickly began to illustrate high school algebra test O’ funs, paint it up on the patio or garage, and make big plans while living life inch by inch. Time waits for no one. At the completion of his fourteenth year of public-school teaching at the dawn of the twenty first century, Mr. Leonard returned to school full-time at the University of Texas Pan American and dove into their fledgling MFA program, finishing studies in 2003.
Chris joined the South Texas College art faculty in 2009 following service as a sabbatical replacement in the UTPA ceramics department and a stint as a full-time lecturer there from 2006-2009. Leonard now teaches ceramics at the South Texas College’s Pecan Campus and has helped to coordinate their South Texas Ceramic Showdown for the past decade featuring collaborative talent shown from participating schools in and outside of the Lone Star State as well as workshops and exhibitions from established ceramic artists. As the twenty-first century rolls on, work that blends his Midwestern upbringing with media mixed in several directions continues to show fairly steadily on both sides of the Rio Grande where he has now spent over half of his life.
Artist Statement
Just what am I making? If I were decidedly effective in my artistic endeavors through action and energy I’d arrive at a sensation of elemental power. The twenty-first century in America, there are so many choices! But are these choices always clear? I seem to find myself meandering off into symbolic meaning, metaphysical speculation, technical tribulations, and contemplative moods. As soon as I answer one question and solve a problem another three or five invariably show up. What I want is a smile on the face, a twinkle in the eye, a healthy glow in the gut, and maybe even a friend to confide in. If I don’t have these things, I’ve decided to make them. Much of my current work seems to explore boundaries; when does the positive connotation of universal optimism morph into the over the top proud to be an American where at least I know I’m free to engage in the pursuit of more consumable short-term solutions? Who wouldn’t want all the time, all the money, all the power in the whole wide world? Whatever you’ve got, I want, and I’d like to hold on to it all too tightly, if only for a little while.
Steven Erickson received his BFA from Minnesota State University Mankato MN in 1995 Studying under Roy Strassberg and James Tanner. He received his MFA from the University of Delaware in 1997 where he studied with Victor Spinski. After receiving his MFA from Delaware Steven went on to become the Studio Manager at Greenwich House Pottery in New York, NY. His career in New York included running a non profit called Bodana, which focused on at risk youth. Bodana partnered with Friends of the Island, (Rikers Island), to identify teens who had artistic potential but were facing minor sentences for petty crimes. The mission of Bodana was to give at risk teens a chance to be mentored through a ceramics program.
He also taught classes at the Jewish Community Center and became an Adjunct Professor at City University of New York John Jay College. He is now retired from teaching and is a full-time studio artist living in Upstate New York. He has shown in Galleries in New York City and most recently was selected for the international Juried Exhibition Craft Forms 2018 at Wayne Center for the Arts, in Wayne Pennsylvania.
“I make art because I love magic. Making something appear out of thin air never gets boring to me. I love how art brings together all the things I love, the mental exploration of ideas, the solving of the puzzle, and then the physical work of making the final piece.”
Constant Albertson
I am white of European descent who grew up in inner city SE Washington, DC, which sits on the ancestral lands of the Anacostans, neighboring the Piscataway and Pamunkey peoples. I attended both black-majority DC public schools and white-majority Catholic parochial schools, benefitting enormously from both learning environments. What I learned from the juxtaposition of these two learning environments is that while I had problems, they were not made worse by my skin color, and that I sometimes was cut a break that wasn’t available to others through no fault of their own.
Currently I am an Associate Professor of Art at the University of Maine, teaching both art education and ceramics. I earned a PhD from Concordia University, Montréal (Art Education); a M.Ed (art, specialization ceramics) degree from McGill University, Montréal, Canada. I hold dual citizenship in Canada and the USA. My BFA, double degree in ceramics and sculpture, is from Washington University, St. Louis, Mo. USA.
My areas of research, teaching and service have in common the ceramic arts, storytelling, and social justice. My ceramic sculpture utilizes narrative as a means to explore bewildering personal, social and political issues, such as the environment, death, immigration, war, land, water, and healing. I am interested in how visual narratives can provide unexpected insight and empathy into our own and others’ realities. My doctoral thesis, Because Clay has a memory, which utilized oral history/story telling methodology,explored the interconnections between traditional instruction in the ceramic arts and teaching methodologies recommended by the Canadian Dyslexia Association for developing compensation for the specific learning disability, dyslexia. Taken from the positive psychology movement, my primary research question was, why do dyslexics succeed? Shortly after this, I became very interested in the intersections between useful teaching methodologies and environments for dyslexic students and other ‘minority’ identities. I am still asking, What conditions improve the odds for success? even when the cards are stacked.
John Eden studied ceramics at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts in London and Brighton College of Art in Brighton, England. He has taught at various colleges and universities in England, Canada and the United States. His work encompasses a range of functional vessels and sculptural work. He has shown his work internationally including China and Japan. In August 2023, he will retire from his teaching position at the University of Maine, Orono.
Tom Belden
I’ve always liked building things. Making things in clay has allowed me the opportunity to combine the processes of sculpture and the processes of drawing and painting. Being able to work 2 dimensionally on a 3-dimensional object is fundamental to my recent work. I have, most recently, worked in low temperature earthenware clay with handmade semi vitreous slips for surface decoration. These materials make it possible for me to utilize brighter colors, impasto textures and resulting dry matte and glossy surfaces. I try to utilize these processes in both functional pieces and large non-functional pieces. Historically, I have explored using various materials and processes and concepts in my work that include language, politics, raku, site specific locations, unfired materials, wood firing, self-portraiture, mold making and numerous other approaches to ceramic art.
