Interested in taking some art electives during your time at Grove City College? If so, ART 207 might be an interesting opportunity for you. ART 207, also known as advanced ceramics, is a course for students who either have already taken a ceramics course at Grove City College or who have experience outside of the College working in the art setting with clay. Why this course requires such qualifications is due to the fact that it takes the basic concepts of both hand building and wheel throwing and elaborates and expands on technique, use of equipment, and creativity involved in each type of art production. In doing this it allows you to truly test your ceramics skills and to improve your knowledge and abilities to create different and more complex pieces of art with clay.
How this is accomplished is through the use of assignments that focus on different aspects of improvement. One example of this can be seen in the first assignment given to the wheel throwing section of the class. Students are asked to perform the basic task of producing cylinders while not focusing on the creation of the cylinder itself, but rather on the space inside the cylinder. Such an exercise takes a skill learned in Beginning Wheel Throwing (making a cylinder) and elaborates on it by providing the artist the opportunity to envision the use of the piece and its effectiveness in accomplishing its end goal of holding something. This provokes a different thought process in creating the cylinder. This assignment and various others (the hand-building and wheel throwing sections of the class receive different assignments simultaneously) provide students the ability to not just maintain and improve their ceramics skills, but to also learn new skills and thought processes when thinking of the art.
If this sounds interesting to you be sure to check out ART 207 when scheduling your next semester of classes, or during your meeting with your advisor as an incoming freshman at Grove City College!
