The Northern Clay Center

The Northern Clay Center in Minneapolis is a place where ceramic artists use the spaces at Northern Clay Center to exhibit, sell, and create their ceramic artworks. Classes, workshops, and programs are offered to adults and children to learn about clay and ceramic art.
When I walked through the entrance, I saw lots of ceramic artworks displayed on shelves, windows, and floors. Some were for sale. To the right, past the receptionist desk, was the Regis Masters Ron Meyers and Patti Warashina exhibits.
Ron Meyers artworks are mostly made out of earthenware which is a ceramic material. His earthenware artworks are of plates, bowls, baskets, yunomis or teacups, jars with covers, and platters. Ron Meyers paints birds, bulls, frogs, chickens, pigs, dogs, and a woman onto his ceramic artworks. The colors he uses are brown, red, yellow, black, light blues, and whites to give color to his artworks. Most of his work are painted and glazed. The rest are either wood-fired stoneware or salt-fired stoneware. Although these stoneware artworks are brown and less colorful, they have the same expressionism as his painted ceramic artworks. Ron Meyer's expressionism is to make the animals faces look humanly alive. The animals each have their own facial expression which shows what the animal is feeling at the moment. Ron Meyers paints facial expressions especially focusing on the eyes and mouth of the animals. Some of the mouths of the animals is curved up or down. Some showing teeth, some not. It's the same with the eyes, the eyes are slanted or straight. Depending on the shape of the eyes and mouth makes the animals look angry, sly, happy, shy, serious, and or scared.
He also has drawings in charcoal and pastel of farm animals grouped together, grouped fishes, chickens, teapots, bowls, and other pottery tableware. He doesn't use much color in his drawings. The colors he mostly uses in his drawings are black and white. The other colors he uses are red, brown, yellow, blue, and green. Again, his drawings focuses on the facial expressions which looks humanly alive. Some animals are looking at us and some are looking at other animals. The animals either look angry, sly, happy, shy, serious, and or scared.

To the right of the room are the artworks of Patti Warashina. Her ceramic sculptures are all made of white ware with underglaze and glaze. Her artworks are humorous and sarcastic. She expresses humor and sarcasm through mini human sculptures, birds, dogs, shapes, facial expressions, and colors. Her sculptures have very human like expressions on their faces that after you read the title you can easily understand what Patti Warashina is portraying. Her ceramic sculptures are about two to three feet tall that looks like little people but with a large head, shorter arms, hand, legs, and feet. The mini human like sculptures are naked with protruding chests. Most of them have oval like shapes and triangular cones on top of their heads. For her naked sculptures she uses a whitish pink color for skin tone. She paints shapes and patterns onto the bodies using mainly the colors black, red, and blue. The sculptures are mostly underglazed but only some parts of the shapes on the sculptures are glazed such as parts on the arm, legs, and certain shapes on the body.
Patti has four framed drawings, that uses monoprints, drypoint etching, and copperplate etching. Her colors, again she sticks with red, black, and white. Both in her drawings and sculptures, she is using surrealism art showing how people think and showing certain forms of problems in life that people have. I noticed that the eyelids of her mini human sculptures are thick. They look like they are sleepy or tired. I believe she is depicting humor and sarcasm by putting her sculptures in imaginary environments like in a lucid dream states.
Before Patti starts to make her sculptures, she puts her ideas and images in a drawing or painting first. Patti always likes to try different ways in ceramics because she liked the challenges in ceramic sculpting and that is why she made her paintings in solid forms by sculpting 3D figures.

Patti Warashina's work at the Northern Clay Center reflects her background because she learned a lot about ceramics technologically from schools like the Northern Clay Center that does workshops and tours around the country. It also affected her work as an emerging ceramic artist because she was able to see a lot of artists that influenced her artworks. Back then, during her times as an emerging ceramic artist, ceramic was not considered an art. It's because of schools like the Northern Clay Center that helped make ceramics part of the art culture.
Patti Warashina's artistic philosophy is that art or clay can be anything you want it to be. She has a unique way of looking and seeing things. Especially, the way she is able to bring humor to faux pas and tragedies in real life. That's where she usually get her ideas from. She has a strong independence where she believes that artists should be able to say what they want to say or express it however they desire in their artworks.

In the College Bowl II/09 exhibition, the first ceramic object I like was the artist Emily Bardwell from Macalester College. The artwork titled, "Lace 1 & 2." The artwork was made of earthenware. I liked it because they were rounded perfectly like a ball but with beautiful patterns. One ceramic pot was a pretty light blue in color with white flowered pattern that had a texture that reminded me of clam shells. The other ceramic pot background was white with navy blue colored flower pattern that was stamped or carved into the surface. Looking at both pots far or near was still beautiful.
The second ceramic object I like was the artist Anne Scott Plummer from Winona State University. The artwork titled, "Reclining Couple." The artwork was made of stoneware. I liked it because it has a curvy woman sitting on top of a man in a loving reclining position. The color is orangy white, the arms and legs of the couple are angled, and the woman's got her hand in the man's hair like they are in love. I think the artist's is portraying the sculpted couple as having a "sensual" moment. Anyways, I think it's a great gift for couples who are still in love on their anniversaries.