Talking Craft, Making Identity, Ceramics: How Do Craft and "Making" Affect the Construction of Who We Are?

Presented on January 26, 2017, 10:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. at the Technology Square Research Building, room 125, Georgia Tech.10:00am - Ehren Tool talk + crafting session 11:30am - Panel Discussion: Identity and Craft? Darien Oliver Arikoski-Johnson (GSU) Rick Berman John A Burrison (GSU)TITLE OF PRESENTATION: "What's Sex Got To Do With It? Gender and Southern Folk Crafts". John A. Burrison is Regents Professor of English and Director of the Folklore Curriculum at Georgia State University. He also serves as curator of the Atlanta History Museum’s Folklife Gallery and of the Folk Pottery Museum of Northeast Georgia at Sautee Nacoochee. His publications include Brothers in Clay: The Story of Georgia Folk Pottery, From Mud to Jug: The Folk Potters and Pottery ofNortheast Georgia, Shaping Traditions: Folk Arts in a Changing South, Roots of a Region: Southern Folk Culture, and the forthcoming Global Clay: Themes in World Ceramic Traditions.Known for incorporating the “glitch” aesthetic into ceramic vernacular, Darien A-Johnson’s work address thoughts of memory, technological integration, mark making, and the significance of rendering. He found clay to be a relevant medium to explore the relationship of illusion and form, thought and physicality. A-Johnson has continued the exploration of these ideas and processes through multiple relocations, including time spent as a visiting artist at the College of Creative Studies in Detroit, and an Assistant Professor at Buffalo State College. He most recently transitioned from being a full time studio artist in Copenhagen, Denmark to join Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA as an Assistant Professor. A-Johnson’s work has been recognized nationally and internationally through awarded grants, exhibitions, and residencies. In 2012 he was awarded the Emerging Artist Award through NCECA, and most recently received an exhibition grant from the Danish Cultural Ministry to complete a residency and exhibition opportunity through C.R.E.T.A. Rome.Michael Nitsche is the Director of Graduate Studies for the Digital Media program in the School of LMCat the Georgia Institute of Technology where he teaches mainly on issues of hybrid spaces and what we do in them. He uses Performance Studies, craft research, HCI, and media studies as critical approaches and applies them to interaction design for digital media, mobile technology, and digital performances. He directs the Digital World and Image Group, which has received funding from the NSF, Alcatel Lucent, Turner Broadcasting, and GCATT, among others. Nitsche’s publications include the books Video Game Spaces (Cambridge, 2009) and The Machinima Reader (Cambridge, 2011) (co-edited with Henry Lowood, both MIT Press)TITLE OF PRESENTATION: "I Just Make Cups." Ehren Tool is a ceramic artist and Senior Laboratory Mechanician in the Ceramic Department at University of California, Berkeley, and Marine Veteran of the 1991 Gulf War. Tool received his MFA from the University of California, Berkeley and BFA from the University of Southern California and has exhibited his vessels at the Oakland Museum of California, the Craft and Folk Art Museum, the Berkeley Art Center, the Bellevue Arts Museum, and The Clay Studio among others.Runtime: 86:40 minute