christa assad

This weekend my show at Red Star Gallery opened – as did Chris Gustin’s show at Sherry Leedy Gallery, right here in Kansas City! It was a beautiful spring evening (never mind the tornado warnings and screaming sirens the night before) and the First Friday turn-out was great, complete with guest stars, Victor Babu, and my colleagues Cary Esser and George TImock. My beloved friends and students came out to see what I’ve been hiding in my studio all this time.

It was exciting to see the culmination of my efforts to keep up the studio practice during this intense year of teaching at the Kansas City Art Institute – there were definitely moments when I wondered if I would, in fact,have a new body of work ready in time for the opening.

The new glazes I’ve been working with this year include a yummy satin pink, electric orange, and powder blue, along with a testy crystalline glaze that either fired out gorgeous…or dunted! 

Saturday I taught a workshop at Red Star – great crowd, delicious Bison burger at Bluebird café for lunch! – and was most impressed by how sparking-clean my tools were after Nathan got his hands on them! Nathan and Andrew kept the show running all day Saturday, and afterwards I wondered why I didn’t hang out with these guys more this year!

Oh! I forgot to mention that I had the pleasure of hanging out with the legendary Val Cushing a few weeks ago during his visit to KCAI. Val is undeniably one of the kindest Ceramic Superstars I’ve ever met, and one of the easiest to engage in conversation. I took him to my favorite local coffee shop, The Filling Station, and was very amused by his reaction to this sophisticated “hipster” café: he LOVED it, maybe as much as I do! I learned a lot about Mr. Cushing that week – like how he was an athlete in school, as well as a musician (both things we have in common), and that Bauhaus potter Marguerite Wildenhain was an early and significant influence. The stories he told about Marguerite were fantastic…and to top it all off, Val gave a most memorable throwing demonstration of his new-improved apple-core drop-lid technique! Amazing!

One of KCAI’s beloved former painting and drawing professors, Lester Goldman, was featured in a mind-boggling retrospective exhibition here in Kansas City last month. A staggering amount of works on paper and paintings are still held on display in an unleased warehouse space on at 1619 Walnut Street downtown. Goldman, now deceased, was prolific during his months off between teaching semesters at KCAI - and apparently used every spare moment during the semester to paint and create works on everything from canvas to brown grocery bags! My good friend Sam Harvey of Aspen, CO, came to KC to snatch up a masterpiece for himself. He and Kathrin Goldman, Lester’s wife and keeper of this grand estate of artworks, lifted drawing after drawing from one stack to another, while a group of us art-whore-voyeurs peered over their shoulders…   Occasionally I dragged myself away from the huddle to view the bright, abstract paintings on the walls around us. The entire space reminded me of Pee Wee’s playhouse - oversized, neon-green plastic spheres clustered in one area, tubular squiggles of some unidentifiable material in another - it was a virtual playground for the eyes! I looked at these two paintings the longest…      

On Saturday, March 1, 2008, we celebrated the grand opening of the brand-new Ken Ferguson Teaching Collection Room at KCAI. After the “ribbon-cutting” ceremony (no real ribbon or over-sized scissors!) and remarks by school president, Kathleen Collins, Ceramics Professor and Chair, Cary Esser, and Ken’s wife, Gertrude, we moved on to lunch at the Kemper Museum’s Cafe Sebastian. Lucky for me, assigned seating (always scary) landed me right next to Victor Babu, my pottery hero, and we shared two entrees like an old married couple. What a blast! Victor is so charismatic and engaging, I didn’t even notice that most everyone behind me had finished lunch and left - while Victor and I were yakking it up!  

None of us are ready for it, but the clay mixers are already maxed out!

p.s. this faux ice cream lamp was made by my dad in his Lighting class (he’s an MFA candidate in interior design right now!) how cool…

Last Saturday a bunch of us KCAI clay enthusiasts attended Jun Kaneko’s amazing kiln opening of a project he’s spent nearly 3 years completing. In collaboration with Mission Clay of Pittsburg, Kansas - a manufaturer of commercial sewage pipes - Kaneko and his team built large-scale Dangos and Heads that were fired on-site in these gigantic beehive kilns. All of these photos were taken by Gabriel Reed of Kansas City.
The Heads were some of the largest of their kind, and part of the intensity was entering the kiln interior to mingle with these incredible creations. I really loved viewing them in their “natural habitat”, so to speak.
Jun Kaneko was a very generous host, providing a gorgeous barbeque banquet, live classical music, libations, and a setting for it all that couldn’t be beat. It was a beautiful day, perfect weather actually, and the kiln yard bricks, pipes, and other industrial jewels provided an inspiring landscape. Here is a shot of some of my students from the Art Institute - I think it is fair to say we all had a fantastic time!
Thanks, Jun, for a very memorable day…

We’re about to start week 5 of the fall semester here at the Kansas City Art Institute, and I realize I’ve fallen behind on my own blog a bit - after assigning my students to update their new blogs at least once a week! You see, in our Professional Practice class I’ve required the seniors I teach to put up their own blog sites (for free) at WordPress.com.
I think it’s a fun and very useful assignment, and a great way for me to check on their writing assignments, too - resumes, artist statements, article reviews, etc. Plus they get to see the fruits of their labor organized and up on the web - and can make updates to these sites easily themselves. I thought I’d list the links to all of my students’ sites in case you are curious about what KCAI students are up to! And to the students - if you guys happen to read this and DON’T want your blog site linked here just send me an email or comment and i’ll take you out of here.

www.tarapolansky.wordpress.com
www.rubytapp.wordpress.com
www.amazinglarry.wordpress.com
www.tyraforker.wordpress.com
www.bryanmorris.wordpress.com
www.kroesger.wordpress.com
www.edwardross3.wordpress.com
www.albertoveronica.wordpress.com
www.caseywhittier.wordpress.com
www.ceramicsuperstar.wordpress.com
www.bowiecroisant.wordpress.com
www.stevennichols.wordpress.com
www.gabrielreed.wordpress.com

…and just because i love to post images, here’s a cup and saucer by Molly Hatch. She’s a fabulous grad at CU Boulder - met her at Anderson Ranch this summer and thought her work was beautiful: