NELL GOTTLIEB

"I use variety of cone 5 clays, including B-3 Brown, porcelain, and nylon fiber clay."

Primary forming method?

"Hand bluilding"

Primary firing temperature?

"Cone 5"

Favorite surface treatment?

"I use a variety of surface treatments to create layers of meaning, including mishima, silk screen printing, photolithography, china paint, and decals."

How/Where do you market and sell your artwork?

"My main interest is in exhibition and social practice, so I am not actively marketing."

"I am drawn to the “materialization of memory” (Foucault) and to the expression of social narratives and concepts.  Clay, with its association with domestic life and many forms, can serve as a holder and canvas for this. 

I also work in social practice, with my material being social norms and interpersonal relationships."

Did you come to ceramics from a different career? Tell us about your journey to a ceramics career.

"I hold degrees in psychology and sociology and was a professor of public health education at the University of Texas at Austin for 30 years.  During this time, I often took evening painting classes.  I then enrolled in a ceramic class as a lark that shifted my art focus.  When I retired, I became a full-time student at the Glassell School of Art, majoring in ceramics.  While there, I broadened my practice to include other media for self-expression.  My shift to social practice in rural Alabama has created synergy between my first career in public health education and second one in art."

"My teaching and learning is informal, arising from the community of artists I belong to."

What’s the best advice you’ve been given by a fellow maker, mentor, or teacher?

"Francesca Fuchs, advisor to the Block Program, told me to take my ceramic sculpture home so that my new interdisciplinary work based on the South could develop.  Jeff Forster, my ceramics professor, agreed, thus allowing me to move in an entirely unexpected direction.  I thank them both.

The expectation of colleagues when I was new to the Glassell to join ClayHouston opened my life to an amazing community of makers, many of whom are close friends, as well as to workshop and travel experiences.  My advice to others: become active in your clay professional association to enlarge and strengthen your network and take advantage of exhibit and skill-building opportunities."