Back to All Events

Ceramics - Dylan Bowen - Making and decorating dynamic slip decorated earthenware.

Sunday, 10 November 2024 17:00
Friday, 15 November 2024 14:00

Coombe Farm Studios (map)

Google Calendar ICS

Dylan Bowen. Making and decorating dynamic slip decorated earthenware

EXPERIENCE LEVEL: Any level

COST: See below

RESIDENTIAL/NON RESIDENTIAL: Both options available. Residential option includes all accommodation & food non residential includes lunch.

SCHEDULE: Sunday residents arrival between 5pm-7.00pm > Drinks and dinner from 7pm open to all participants / Monday-Thursday - Tuition 9.30am-5.00pm / Friday - Tuition 9.,30am-1pm followed by lunch at and departure.

Dylan is back in 2023 after his sell out course with us in 2022. Dylan will demonstrate and teach various techniques based on his own work.

The course is really accessible for people of all abilities - from those with very little clay experience to those with a huge amount that want to free themselves up. During the week you will alternate between making and decorating, accompanied by regular demonstrations from Dylan on how he uses clay and slips. These will be simple hand building and decorating techniques which participants can use as a starting point to pursue their own interpretations on basic themes. The emphasis will be on working in the moment, focusing on the development of a loose and free way of using clay and slip. Dylan will concentrate more on the process than the end result. You will be encouragd to make with freedom and momentum whilst leaving space around the action of creating to consider what you have made and how that informs your next steps,. Working in terracotta clay with wires, knives, cutting harps, all manner of mark making tools as well as slip trailers. Brushes, sgraffito, and anything you can lay your hands on.

Renowned for his loosely thrown monochromatic work, Dylan Bowen is a well-established slipware potter. Having trained at the Shebbear Pottery in north Devon and Camberwell School of Art in London, Dylan and his partner Jane Bowen, who is also a potter, now work from their studio in Oxford. For Dylan, the making and decorating process blend together so that the spontaneity and energy invested in the creative process are embodied in the finished piece.

Dylan’s wheel thrown and hand-built works are a balance between traditional painting and ceramics. Inspired by music and abstract expressionism, he pours, trails and brushes slip – a liquid form of clay – onto his pieces. Each bottle is created using a combination of wheel thrown and hand-built elements. Dylan prefers to simplify his approach to applying slip and focus on gestural mark-making.

“The two biggest influences on my work are my Dad (Clive Bowen) and my wife (Jane Bowen). Both are slipware potters and I feel most of what I am able to do is built on the foundations of what they have already done. I think after a while you accumulate so many influences that they form a kind of stew in which it is harder to extract specific ingredients. I know I am constantly looking at marks, whatever the source, and sometimes that becomes distracting. Rather than enjoying the work, my first thought is, can I use this? Can this be mine? Can I use this emotion? Like a vampire!”

— Dylan Bowen

MATERIALS LIST FOR THIS COURSE

If you have them, bring pottery tools, an apron, drawing materials, a sketchbook.

There will be a charge of £5 per kilo of clay to include materials and firing to stoneware temperature in an electric kiln. Finished work can be sent on for a small charge.