Studio Sessions
Encountering Erasure
with Jasmine Baetz
May 2024
About the Studio Session
Clay flooded by water will dissolve, collapsing its form. This material dissolution perpetuates a cycle of reconstitution where endless new possibilities can be built. Erasure is the act of removing a presence, a mark, or an entity. Erasure is also itself a presence, a mark, an entity. Erasure can be a practice of harm (silencing, obfuscating, obliterating) and it can be a practice of creation (reconstructing, refiguring, and reinterpreting).
In this Studio Session, we will ask ourselves questions about our own relationships to erasure in our material practices, our geographic locations, our social positions, our cultural histories, and our daily lives. We will explore how the processes and materials of ceramics can help us name, interrogate, and counter harmful practices of erasure, and how they can help us explore, enact, and embody generative practices of erasure.
About the Lead Artist
Jasmine Baetz (she/her) has made things out of clay from a young age, and it remains her primary tool for making sense of the world. She holds a BA in religious studies from the University of Toronto, a diploma in Fine Arts from Langara College in Vancouver, a BFA in 3D Fine Arts from Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and an MFA in Ceramics from the University of Colorado, Boulder. She was Assistant Professor of Art at Coker University in Hartsville, SC, and is the Lincoln Visiting Professor in Ceramics at Scripps College and Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, CA.
The materiality and recyclability of clay makes is well suited for her methods of building: addition, experimentation, and revision. Her work includes clay objects that are fired, unfired, on pedestals, under ground, under water, joined with other materials in installation, and implemented in ritual or performance. Using her place in a materially-based craft discipline and community, she seeks to illuminate the systemic problems within it that create and perpetuate colonial, racist, and misogynistic assumptions, discourses, actions, and objects. Defining her work, practice, and teaching against these tendencies, she uses clay to investigate history, repetition, belief, and identity.
Logistics
This session took place in May 2024.