Clay and the Open Door
with Stacy Jo Scott / October 2021
About the Studio Session
How can we bring the soft, embodied processes of inner visioning and meditative inquiry into our hand and digital making? In this Studio Session we will experiment with various approaches of contemplation, deep observation, and visioning practices to open up potential images, forms, and methods we can explore in clay. These processes may include embodied meditations, digitally-guided chance operations, freeform writing, and inner journey exercises. Our inquiry will be rooted in experimental clay practices and digital wayfinding, focusing on exercises that can inspire new ways of thinking and making, rather than finishing a completed work.
While grounded in clay work, we will bring some digital methods into our discussion. Any digital applications used will be open-source or accessible through a web browser. No previous clay or digital media experience necessary.
About the Lead Artist
Stacy Jo Scott is an artist and educator based in Eugene, Oregon. In both artwork and writing she uses ceramic objects and digital processes as anchors from which to navigate shifting landscapes of queerness, embodiment, and spectrality. These objects emerge from research and speculation, digital processes, trance practices, and chance operations.
Her artwork has been exhibited nationally and internationally including at Ditch Projects, Springfield, OR; Rockelman & Partner, Berlin, Germany; Thomas Hunter Projects in New York, NY; Center for Craft Creativity and Design, Asheville, NC; Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, Houston, TX; Pewabic Pottery, Detroit, MI; Museum of Contemporary Craft, Portland, OR; Paul Kotula Projects, Ferndale, MI; Roots & Culture Contemporary Art Center, Chicago, IL; and The Sculpture Center, Cleveland, OH. She co-curated New Morphologies: Studio Ceramics and Digital Practices at the Schein-Joseph International Museum of Ceramic Art at Alfred University in Alfred, NY and was a Franzen Teaching Fellow for Digital Craft at Colorado State University.
Her writing has been published in numerous publications online and in books and periodicals. Publications include Bad at Sports, The Studio Potter, and Crafts: Today’s Anthology for Tomorrow’s Crafts.
She received an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art, and is a founding member of the Craft Mystery Cult. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Art at the University of Oregon.