Nicole Gugliotti, (MFA Ceramics ‘14) is in her second year as the technical art specialist at South Puget Sound Community College. She recently coordinated a “Clay Fest” where four local ceramic artists presented their two-week glazing and building procedure to ceramics students.
According to Gugliotti, the “Clay Fest” was created because their program has a large, beautiful kiln that was not being used to its full extent.
“We wanted to create an opportunity for students to work with visiting artists in a way that was interactive, hopefully resulting in lots of work to fill the kiln, giving the students more exposure to that tool,” Gugliotti said.
Gugliotti found pleasure in seeing students and employees alike make lasting connections with professional artists. She also enjoyed the fact that students, faculty and staff from different departments had the opportunity to witness what ceramic artists do in the ceramics lab.
Gugliotti also attended, thanks to funding from South Puget Sound Community College, the four-day John Britt glaze formulation workshop. She said she learned a lot from the experience because Britt directed everyone’s hands-on glaze testing.
One of the most memorable takeaways from the weekend was that Britt brought hundreds of test tiles to the workshop for all of the attendees stated Gugliotti.
“Basically he has taken 30 or so well known glazes, stripped them to their base recipe and then run 10 or so variations on each glaze,” Gugliotti recounted. “By laying them all out, in order, next to each other, one has the opportunity to compare and contrast the effect that each base glaze has on those 10 variables.”
Gugliotti and other ceramic artists recently launched the Socially Engaged Craft Collective at the 2016 National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) Conference, and will have an exhibition at 2017 NCECA Conference in Portland, Oregon.
Keep up with Gugliotti and her work on her website: nicolegugliotti.com.
