Ceramics III and Lab

Course Description

Ceramics III and Lab builds on ART2754C, emphasizing creativity and conceptual problem solving through ceramic hand-building techniques.

Within the SCNS taxonomy, ART is the Art prefix. Daytona State publishes this at 3 credits with a $45.00 lab fee, prerequisite ART2754C, offered fall and spring, giving approximately 90 contact hours consistent with the published ART2754C.

Hand-building is the older and more open of the two ceramic approaches. Where the wheel imposes radial symmetry, hand-building imposes almost nothing — pinch, coil, slab, and press-moulded construction can produce any form the material will support. That freedom is why this course is framed around conceptual problem solving rather than around technique acquisition: at the third level the constraint is no longer what you can make but what you decide to make.

Learning Outcomes

Required Outcomes

• Apply pinch, coil, and slab construction techniques with control.
• Construct large-scale and structurally complex hand-built forms.
• Join clay sections reliably using appropriate scoring, slip, and compression.
• Use armatures, supports, and internal structure where required.
• Construct and use press moulds and slump or hump moulds.
• Apply slip casting at an introductory level where the programme covers it.
• Apply surface development techniques: texture, carving, sprigging, inlay, and terra sigillata.
• Select a clay body appropriate to scale, technique, and firing intention.
• Manage drying and shrinkage in complex forms to prevent cracking and warping.
• Apply glazes and slips deliberately to serve the form and the concept.
• Describe firing processes, temperature ranges, and atmospheric effects.
• Load and unload kilns safely where permitted, and describe kiln operation.
• Diagnose defects and identify their causes.
• Develop work from concept through sketch, maquette, and construction.
• Develop a coherent body of work exploring a sustained problem.
• Articulate the intent and context of one's own work.
• Describe historical and contemporary ceramic practice relevant to the work.
• Participate constructively in critique.
• Apply studio safety practices, including dust, glaze material, and kiln safety.
• Document, install, and present finished work professionally.

Optional Outcomes

• Mix and test glazes and record results systematically.
• Work with alternative firing processes such as raku, pit, or soda.
• Combine ceramics with other materials.
• Produce work for a specific site or installation.
• Write an artist statement.
• Prepare work for exhibition submission.

Major Topics

Required Topics

• Pinch, coil, and slab construction
• Large-scale and complex construction
• Joining technique and structural integrity
• Armatures and internal support
• Press, slump, and hump moulds
• Slip casting
• Surface development: texture, carving, inlay, sigillata
• Clay body selection
• Drying and shrinkage in complex forms
• Glaze and slip application
• Firing processes and atmosphere
• Kiln loading and operation
• Defect diagnosis
• Concept development: sketch and maquette
• Developing a body of work
• Articulating intent and context
• Historical and contemporary practice
• Critique
• Studio safety
• Documentation, installation, and presentation

Optional Topics

• Glaze mixing and testing
• Alternative firing processes
• Mixed media
• Site-specific and installation work
• Artist statements
• Exhibition preparation

Resources & Tools

• The Craft and Art of Clay (Susan Peterson) — the standard comprehensive text.
• Hand-Built Ceramics and Ceramics: Mastering the Craft (Richard Zakin) — technique references for the construction methods this course covers.
• Digitalfire (digitalfire.com) — free and technically rigorous on clay bodies, glaze chemistry, drying, and defect diagnosis.
• Ceramic Arts Network (ceramicartsnetwork.org) — substantial free technical articles and troubleshooting.
• Safety Data Sheets for every material in the studio — required to be available and worth reading; see the safety flag.
• NCECA (nceca.net) — the professional organization, with student membership.
• Museum collections online — the Met, the Victoria and Albert, and the Smithsonian all publish extensive ceramic collections free; ceramics has a deep and global history worth using.
• A sketchbook. Hand-building rewards planning — drawing a form and making a small maquette before committing clay prevents structural failures.
• A camera and a plain backdrop for documentation; three-dimensional work photographs badly without care.
• Open studio time — the scheduled hours will not be enough for work at this scale.

Career Pathways

• Ceramic artist — exhibition and gallery practice, usually alongside teaching or other income.
• Studio potter — production and functional work.
• Sculptor — ceramics is a sculptural medium and this course is sculpture as much as craft.
• Teaching — community studios, art centres, K-12 with certification, college with an M.F.A.
• Studio technician — managing clay, glazes, and kilns for a college or art centre.
• Mould making and model making — a transferable specialization into product design, themed entertainment, and film.
• Themed entertainment and scenic fabrication — Orlando's attraction industry employs sculptors and mould makers with real salaried positions.
• Architectural ceramics and tile — commissioned and production work.
• Art therapy — with graduate study and credentialing.
• Transfer to a B.A. or B.F.A. — portfolio review governs admission.
• SOC codes 27-1013 Fine Artists and 51-9195 Molders, Shapers, and Casters.

Special Information

⚠⚠ Silica dust is the ceramics hazard that matters — and it is cumulative and irreversible

The safety content every ceramics student needs, stated plainly because the risk is invisible, slow, and genuinely serious.

Clay contains crystalline silica. Inhaling respirable silica dust over time causes silicosis — an incurable, progressive scarring of the lungs — and is associated with increased risk of other respiratory disease. The exposure that matters is not the wet clay you are throwing; it is dry clay dust raised into the air, and the studio practices that generate it are exactly the ones that feel like tidying up.

• Never sweep a ceramics studio dry, and never use compressed air. Both aerosolize settled dust that would otherwise stay put. Wet mop and wet wipe — this single practice is the most important control in the room.
• Do not sand or grind dry greenware without protection and, ideally, without doing it wet. Dry-sanding bisqueware and grinding kiln shelves are high-exposure activities.
• Clean up as you go, wet. Wipe wheels, tables, and splash pans before the residue dries. Dry trimmings on a wheel head become airborne the moment anyone brushes them.
• Do not take clay-covered clothing home to shake out. Change or brush down wet, and wash studio clothes separately.
• A dust mask is not a respirator. Where dry processes are unavoidable, an N95 or better, properly fitted, is the minimum — and engineering controls come first.
• Reclaim clay wet rather than crushing dry scrap.

Glaze materials carry their own hazards. Raw glaze ingredients are finely divided minerals and metal compounds — barium, lithium, manganese, chrome, cobalt, and others — and mixing dry glaze is a significant exposure. Weigh and mix with ventilation and respiratory protection, never eat or drink in the glaze area, and wash hands thoroughly. Food-safe glaze formulation is a real technical question: some colourants and fluxes can leach from an improperly formulated or underfired glaze, and functional ware intended for food requires attention to it rather than assumption.

Kilns require ventilation. Firing releases carbon monoxide, sulphur compounds, and fluorides; kilns must be vented mechanically and never fired in an unventilated room. Kiln surfaces reach temperatures that burn instantly, and looking into a hot kiln without protective eyewear damages the eyes from infrared exposure.

⚠ Hand-building fails structurally — plan the construction, not just the form

The technical content that most distinguishes this course from wheel work, because the failures are different.

• Clay has no tensile strength and it shrinks. Every joint, every unsupported span, and every change in thickness is a potential failure point, and the failure usually appears during drying or firing rather than during making.
• Score, slip, and compress every joint. Joints that were merely pressed together separate later — this is the single most common structural failure in hand-built work, and it appears after the piece looks finished.
• Even wall thickness matters more than in throwing. Thick and thin sections dry and shrink at different rates, which cracks the piece. Hollow out heavy areas.
• Anything enclosed must be vented. A sealed hollow form will explode in the kiln as trapped air and steam expand. A small hole in an inconspicuous place is not optional.
• Support overhangs and spans during drying and firing. Clay softens before it vitrifies, so a form that stands green may slump at temperature. Props, wadding, and internal supports are part of the construction plan.
• Dry slowly and evenly. Cover with plastic, dry from the inside out where possible, and be patient. Rushed drying is the leading cause of cracking, and thin extremities dry faster than thick bases.
• Everything must be bone dry before bisque. Residual water becomes steam and breaks the piece — and frequently breaks its neighbours in the kiln.
• Plan the scale against the kiln. Measure the kiln before designing something that will not fit, and consider building in sections that assemble after firing.

The practical method: sketch it, then make a small maquette. A twenty-minute maquette reveals structural problems that a drawing conceals, and it costs almost nothing compared with losing a large piece.

⚠ Conceptual problem solving is the graded content at this level

The developmental expectation, stated plainly because students at the third level frequently continue making what they made at the second.

• Technique is assumed now. The course grants that you can build; it asks what you are building and why.
• Start from a problem or a question, not from a form you already know how to make. The comfortable form is the one that produces no development.
• Make series. A sustained investigation across several pieces is how ideas actually develop, and it is what makes a portfolio read as a body of work rather than a collection.
• Let the material argue back. Clay has properties — plasticity, memory, shrinkage, the way it takes a mark — and work that ignores them tends to look like it was made in the wrong material. Some of the best conceptual work in ceramics is about the material itself.
• Scale is a decision. Hand-building permits scale that throwing does not, and the change in scale changes what a form means. Making something large because you can is not the same as making it large for a reason.
• Know the field. Ceramics has a deep global history and an active contemporary practice spanning function, sculpture, and installation. Work made in ignorance of it tends to repeat solved problems.
• Be able to defend it. Articulating intent is assessed and it is what critique operates on — and "I just liked it" closes a conversation that should open one.

⚠ Firing is a shared, slow, unforgiving process — schedule backwards

• The pipeline is long. Build, dry slowly, bisque, glaze, glaze fire. For large hand-built work, drying alone can take weeks, and it cannot be rushed without cracking.
• Kilns fire on a shared schedule. Work that misses the last firing of the term does not get graded, and this is the most common way students lose marks in ceramics courses.
• Count backwards from the deadline at the start of term, and set your own internal cutoffs.
• Make more than you need. Losses are normal at every stage and a student with exactly enough finished pieces has a problem when one cracks.
• Glaze faults are diagnosable — crawling, pinholing, crazing, shivering, blistering, and running each trace to a specific cause in application, fit, contamination, or firing. Digitalfire is free and explains them properly.
• Test before committing. A glaze on a test tile at the right temperature on the right clay body tells you what will happen to the piece you spent three weeks building.
• Label everything and record what you did — clay body, glaze, thickness, firing. Without notes, a result you liked cannot be repeated and a failure cannot be diagnosed.

How Florida course levels affect transfer

The first digit of an SCNS number denotes the year of offering, not transferability. Courses at the 1000 and 2000 levels transfer transparently between Florida public institutions, and 3000 to 4000 is unproblematic since both are upper division. The boundary that actually matters is 2000 to 3000, where lower-division credit generally cannot satisfy an upper-division requirement.

ART2755C is 3 credits with an estimated 90 contact hours and a $45.00 lab fee, matching the published prerequisite ART2754C. Assessment is by portfolio and critique, weighted toward conceptual development and the coherence of the body of work as well as technical execution.

The course transfers on the ordinary lower-division basis, and as elsewhere in art, baccalaureate admission is normally by portfolio review. Note that contact hours vary within the DSC ART prefix — this course and ART2754C at 90, ART2752C and ART2753C at 60 — so the family ratio is not reliable and each number should be checked.