About the summer course
In this course, you will create ceramic pieces for outdoor gardens and windowsills, including sculptures, plant pots, and other garden-inspired forms.
The studio is ours for the whole week, and you are welcome to come with your own ideas. You may choose to focus on one piece over five days, create a series of smaller works, or make functional ceramics such as cups, bowls, or teapots for your home. Everything is welcome.
Throughout the week, we will explore many ceramic techniques, including a variety of hand-building and sculpting methods. You will learn practical approaches to shaping, joining, texturing, refining surfaces, and developing form, building a strong technical foundation through hands-on work.
We will work with different clays textures, taking inspiration from botanical elements to enrich the surfaces. The Wackers Academie has a beautiful garden with more than 300 plants, where we will gather inspiration for our ceramic work. You’ll also have access to a wide range of ceramic underglaze and over glaze pigments to paint and finish your pieces.
We will spend the week fully immersed in studio practice, working on pieces during all class hours. There is no rigid day-by-day structure, so you can develop one larger sculpture in depth or create several smaller works, depending on your personal process and goals.
All pieces need to dry before they can be fired. After the firing, in a few weeks, we will meet again for a dedicated glazing session on Saturday, 26 September.
For who?
Both beginners and experienced students.
About the teacher
Vika Mitrichenko, born in Minsk, studied at the Belarusian Academy of Arts and subsequently at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, where she graduated in Ceramics in 2004. She also attended the Sandberg Institute for a year and was a resident artist at the Rijksacademie for two years. Between 2008 and 2015, she taught at the Rietveld Academy. She has exhibited her work at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Prinsessehof in Leeuwarden, and the Museum of Arts & Design in New York, among others.
