<p>ooh claysoul, your parents must have beautiful plates and bowls! your stuff is great!!!</p>
<p>Claysoul, </p>
<p>btw, how much freedom, would you say, Brown's Sculpture I class gives you? and did you make those pots at Brown? (very interesting glazes, but might I suggest raku?)</p>
<p>Thank you!</p>
<p>I made those paticular pots at RISD. Brown itself does not have a ceramics program. However, you can cross-register at RISD. RISD has a very good albeit small ceramics department. It's rather underpopulated by RISD students, and the department head is really nice and laid back, so getting into classes has been easy so far. I'm a little wary of senior year though because of the way their program works and what the VA major here requires (and what I want to do myself). I also want to go abroad to the Sydney College of Art to do ceramics and glass and really get an art school immersion. But I have to get in first!!</p>
<p>If ceramics is for sure your main thing I probably wouldn't recommend Brown as the school for you unless you have other specific criteria that make it work. As for me, when I transferred here, I was looking for neuroscience (though I later dropped this major), ceramics, and women's rugby (we're the number one team in the nation. what what). Not at lot of schools have that (along with a liberal arts curriculum -- i.e. not a big state school), so I had to compromise a little. So far it's working out just fine and I love it here. But it is of course harder to do the ceramics thing here than at a school that has its own program, so if that is your one and only (or close to it) priority, don't go to Brown. If you want to dabble in ceramics (or glass or furniture or fashion design etc) or double in art/ceramics and something else, then it's a great place. </p>
<p>I'm not too into Raku. The extreme unpredictability of it, much more so than salt or wood or reduction, steers me away. You can get a great glaze on one side and ugly ash on the other quite often. Of course, the more you do Raku the better you are at controlling your results. But the thing about the other firing techniques I mentioned is that it can be unpredictable, but you can still get great results. You can get something totally unexpected but beautiful, whereas with my experience in Raku, the unexpected tends to be dissapointing. Also, my work is mostly functional, and you can't eat/drink out of Raku. I do definitely want to explore salt and wood. I've done a little salt, and really like it. </p>
<p>I haven't taken Sculpture I so I wouldn't know. But the VA10 (art foundations) class I took was very flexible, and the overall impression I get from the VA program here is that there is a lot of freedom. I really like the art program here. </p>
<p>ocd_ness, you're being extremely closed-minded in your assessment of pottery / ceramic art as a mode of expression. You have to look at and appreciate the subtlety. I'm going to take a guess and say that you don't appreciate the subtletly because you don't know much about pottery. Pick up a ceramics monthly sometimes. You'd be amazed. </p>
<p>Take the tea set, for instance (and I apologize if this sounds braggy, but I 1. really like this set, and 2. feel a need to defend pottery as a form of expression). Look at the liveliness and organic nature of the curves and indents on the pots. Look at the explosion of the red color underneath the light yellow. Look at the way structural and decorative themes are repeated to make the set a unit, yet still individual pieces. it pops. It moves. Does that not express a sense of liveliness? A sense of vitality and vigor? You mentioned paintings of scenery. Does a painting of a mountainside do that any better?</p>
<p>The portfolio I sent into Brown did not include the pieces on the website (those were made once I was here). It included a wide variety of styles of pots, because I hadn't gotten my "thing" down yet (still don't). Different looks and different aesthetic all from very the same medium. Does that not express a desire to try new things? To explore, and to experiment? To push something to it's limit? </p>
<p>Furthermore, ceramics is not limited to wheel thrown functional pieces. There is a ton of "conceptual" pottery out there. </p>
<p>meh</p>
<p>ashlee -- I'm not sure what a photoshop or masterwork illustrator work actually consists of. if you could explain, or even email them to me (pm me), maybe, just maybe I could answer your question. </p>
<p>And it's better to send something and have throw it aside than not send something they would have deemed valuable, imho.</p>