Clay Workshop

Think outside the glaze. This workshop will focus on forms and surfaces outside the everyday glazed vessel. Students will concentrate on enhancing their wheel-throwing skills as well as honing in on their own individual aesthetic interests. Make pots then inlay designs and compositions into the surfaces in a manner similar to tattooing. Alongside demos, exercises, and class discussions, students will add their personal touches to complete a new body of work.

About Bianka Groves

Bianka Groves is a potter in New Mexico and has studied ceramics all over the country, along with teaching pottery at Baltimore Clayworks, Northern Clay Center in Minneapolis, Santa Fe Clay, and is currently teaching at the University of New Mexico as a graduate student. Her work is thoughtfully functional and has the ability to complete the elegance of any interior space. The polished compositions of her designs are an ode to the simplistic repetition and studies of minimalist design, architecture, and landscapes. When she’s not making pots out of her backyard home studio, you can find her hiking in the desert with her dogs.

Working primarily in porcelain, throwing on the potter’s wheel, Bianka’s surface designs are part of an inlay technique similar to tattooing. A pattern is gently carved into the surface of the freshly made unred pot using acupuncture needles, tattoo needles, or Xacto blades. Once the outline is complete, a black slip is applied to the clay body and sinks into the cut drawings. Most of the excess slip is cleaned away, leaving the inlaid design. Once the pots are red to about 2350 degrees, the unglazed porcelain is polished to a silky smooth matte finish.

@bianka_groves