accessCeramics at College Art Association

Margo Ballantyne and I presented on accessCeramics at the College Art Association Annual Conference in Los Angeles yesterday to a crowd of about 75 people.



We told the story of the accessCeramics collection, explaining how the idea evolved from a conversation across a slide light table to a successful project. It was part of a panel presentation called "You can do it, we can help: building digital image collections together."

All of our co-presenters focused on collaboratively-sourced digital collections, and besides ours, all incorporated ARTstor.

We received many inquiries about the project following the presentation.

accessCeramics at College Art Association Conference

Members of the accessCeramics team were invited to the College Art Association's annual conference to participate in a session called You Can Do It, We Can Help: Building Digital-Image Collections Together. Margo Ballantyne and Mark Dahl will talk about our experiences creating accessCeramics with a little time, some freely available tools, a little grant money, and lots of help and cooperation from artists. Given the current economic climate, it's likely our low-cost approach to creating an image collection will generate some interest.

The session will take place at 12:30 on Thursday, February 26th, 2009.

AccessCeramics welcomes New Curatorial Members

AccessCeramics.org welcomes new members to the curatorial board. Richard Burkett, Thomas Orr and Namita Wiggers will join accessCeramics co-founders, Visual Resource Curator, Margo Ballantyne and Assistant Professor of Ceramics Ted Vogel in selecting new artists for the website.
Richard Burkett is Professor of Ceramics at San Diego State University and has exhibited, lectured and presented workshops internationally. He has been an early developer of online ceramic education tools and developed the “Ceramics Web”, co-developed the list-serve “ClayArt”, is the author of the “Hyper Glaze” a noted glaze and clay calculation software and is co-author of the 6th edition of “Ceramics: A Potter’s Handbook” one of the most popular ceramics text books. In addition, Richard has served on the board of the National Council on Education for the Ceramics Arts (NCECA) as 2003 San Diego Conference Liaison and most recently as the Director of Communications.
Thomas Orr is Professor of Art and Head of Ceramics at the Oregon College of Art Craft. He received his MFA in Ceramics from Claremont Graduate School in California. Thomas has taught at several universities and lectured and exhibited his work internationally. Most recently he presented a one-person exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Crafts in Portland, Oregon and was a resident artist at the International Ceramics Studio in Kecskemet, Hungary. Thomas has served on the Board of Directors for the Contemporary Crafts Gallery and Museum and the LH Project, a ceramic residency program in Joseph, Oregon and was co-liaison for the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) 2006 Portland, Oregon Conference.
Namita Gupta Wiggers, is the Curator of the Museum of Contemporary Crafts in Portland, Oregon. She received an MA in Art History from the University of Chicago, has conducted research for E-lab, a product design firm and has produced a line of sterling jewelry sold through galleries. Namita has published on museum education and art in journals such as “The Journal of Museum Education”, and she was instrumental in the creation of the 2008 catalog “Unpacking the Collection”, the first publication to focus on the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Craft. Since coming to the Museum of Contemporary Crafts, Namita has curated numerous ceramic exhibitions, such as the “Patty Warashina: Real Politique and Drunken Power Series” and Antonio Prieto: A Family Collection” exhibited during the 2006 Portland NCECA conference. Recently, she curated the “Generations: Ken Shores”, “The Ceramics of Gertrud and Otto Natzler”, “Toshiko Takaezu: Recent Gifts” exhibitions and hosted “ Eden Revisited: The Ceramic Work of Kurt Weiser” curated by Peter Held.
The curatorial board is responsible for selecting images for acessCeramics.org and will provide direction to improve the ongoing development of the web site. If you are interested in submitting images or know clay-based artists that you feel should be included, please send five or more (e-mail sized) images and a current resume and/or a portfolio link to Margo Ballantyne (margo@lclark.edu).
For questions concerning the curatorial process of accessCeramics.org, please feel free to contact Ted Vogel, Assistant Professor of Art, Program Head of Ceramics at vogel@lclark.edu or by calling 503-201-0400.

New Site Design Launch Today!

One of the major goals we hoped to achieve with the help of our NITLE grant was to improve the accessCeramics.org site design. Today we can cross that off the list, as we unveil our new site.

In addition to the clean new look, this site has a few additional features:

• a search box in the upper-right corner


• new browse lists, with the ability to view 'tag clouds' of field values


• a new "thumbnail/large image" view (here's an example)


• selected blog posts linked from this home page

We owe a big thanks to Zoe Anderson and Mike Lindsey for their help with the redesign, and to NITLE for the means to do this. And, of course, the site is nothing without the wonderful art images. Thanks artists!

Today is a big milestone, as we've reached 1000 images!

Thanks to all of you for your help and contributions. We truly appreciate your patience, and the time you’ve spent helping us build the collection.


Our new website design will be up and working by February 13. Check it out!

Thank you!