One Tough B*tch
Break Like a Girl, 2021. Porcelain, synthetic hair, clear acrylic shelf, wall brackets, 12” x 9” x 9” each pot / shelf 36” x 11.5.” Photo credit: Houston Center for Contemporary Craft.
Porcelain is one tough b*tch, as this material can be both fragile and resilient and can tell powerful stories. This workshop will disentangle personal and historical histories to find empowerment through handbuilt porcelain vessels, adornment, documentation, and performance-based works. We will explore how ceramic pots share the language descriptors of the body—lip, neck, shoulder, and foot while our physical body keeps the score. Basic clay and handbuilding experience required.
Jennifer Ling Datchuk’s (she/her) work is an exploration of her layered identity—as a woman, a Chinese woman, as an “American,” as a third culture kid. Trained in ceramics, Datchuk works with porcelain and other materials often associated with traditional women’s work to discuss fragility, beauty, intersectionality, identity, and personal history. In 2017, she received the Emerging Voices award from the American Craft Council, and in 2020 was named a United States Artist Fellow in Craft. She is an Assistant Professor of Ceramics at Arizona State University and lives and maintains a studio practice in Phoenix, AZ.