The Center for Contemporary Ceramics

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Center for Contemporary Ceramics
Guests Over the Years
Guest Artist Program
Applying to the Guest Artist Program
Additional Information
CCC Gallery

Center for Contemporary Ceramics

Formally established in 2017 based upon activities stretching back decades, the Center for Contemporary Ceramics at CSULB is a combined entity and site committed to the mission of fostering exchange, inquiry, creative production, and learning beyond the curriculum among CSULB Ceramic Arts faculty and a highly diverse group of students, visiting artists and scholars, and Guest Artists who work on site as volunteer participants in our learning/making community, with a goal of inspiring and empowering all participants to expand the limits of their own practice and work to the benefit of both the participants in our community and the broader community and field of contemporary ceramics.

Though the formal establishment of the CCC is recent, the kinds of activities that define the center have been going on in the CSULB Ceramic Arts area for decades as part of a culture of exchange and experience beyond the curriculum cultivated by CSULB faculty. Over the years, our guest artists and scholars have participated in collaboration and exchange with our students and faculty in a variety of ways:

• Giving lectures and demonstrations;
• Participating in critiques and studio visits, conducting special short-term classes, and leading experimental workshops;
• Working in both short-term and long-term residencies alongside our students;
• Participating in special work-intensive programs in which multiple guest artists work as a group in our studios for a few weeks to a few months alongside our students;
• Working both on- and off-site on ceramic projects with the consultation, assistance, and/or collaboration of CSULB Ceramic Arts students and faculty.

These activities both benefit students with life-changing exposure to intellectual, creative, and professional role models, and benefit the broader field of contemporary ceramic arts by providing a hub of community, a forum for expanded discourse, and a site for advanced creative production. 
On November 15, 2017, in recognition of these important contributions, CSULB President Jane Close Conoley approved a comprehensive proposal from Professors Jay Kvapil, Tony Marsh, and Christopher Miles, and authorized the establishment of the Center for Contemporary Ceramics, one of just twenty-seven Academic Centers and Institutes (ACIs) at CSULB.

The origins of the CCC date to the early years of ceramic instruction at CSULB when faculty began inviting guest artists and scholars to enhance the student experience. There is no full record of such guests in the early years, but among them was Tatsuzo Shimaoka. Designated a Japanese National Living Treasure later in his career, Shimaoka visited CSULB in 1966 at the invitation of Professor Ward Youry and demonstrated his pottery techniques for students. Visiting again in the mid 1970s, Shimaoka became acquainted an eager and hard-working undergraduate student, who Shimaoka invited to apprentice at his pottery in Mashiko. The student’s three years as an apprentice, and his friendship with Shimaoka that endured until the master’s passing in 2007, exemplify the special connections and opportunities often resulting from students coming into contact with Guest Artists. The student was Tony Marsh.

The full momentum leading to the establishment of the CCC begins with Tony Marsh, who, following in a tradition from which he benefitted while a student, first began inviting guest artists and scholars to visit the CSULB ceramics area in 1985 when he was hired on as an adjunct instructor. After leaving to earn his MFA at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, Tony returned to CSULB, hired on a tenure track, and continued his efforts to bring visitors and guests into our learning and making community, working with no formal programming structure and sporadic resources, and working mostly by himself, consulting when possible with other faculty including professors Jay Kvapil, Christopher Miles, and Kristen Morgin. These efforts were driven by the same basic intentions that continue to underly the activities of the CCC: to help artists, to expand the field, and to bring into our community visitors and guests who provide interesting and inspiring examples for and exchanges with our students, staff, and faculty. Now an internationally celebrated artist, an expert teacher who has lectured and led classes and workshops across the country and abroad, a distinguished professor who served as head of the CSULB Ceramic Arts Studies Program for nearly three decades, and a highly respected professional in the field whose network of affiliations has helped bring some of the most interesting and influential artists and scholars working today to our campus, Tony, who was named a United States Artists Fellow in 2018, served as the inaugural CCC Director. The establishment of the CCC cemented the enduring legacy of the long-existing culture of creative and scholarly activity fostered by Tony, who continues to work on behalf of the center while having stepped out of the role of director to focus on his studio practice.

In August 2020, Professor Christopher Miles, co-founder of the CCC, was appointed by the Dean of the College of the Arts to serve as the center’s second director. A member of the School of Art faculty since 1998, Chris is a 2019 recipient of the CSULB President’s Award for Outstanding Faculty Achievement. Having served many years on the CSULB Academic Senate, involved deeply in campus governance including the development of guidelines for CSULB Academic Centers and Institutes (ACIs), Chris served as the primary author of the CCC proposal and guided the proposal through the multiple levels of campus review culminating in the president’s approval. Chris has served in multiple administrative roles at CSULB. As chair of the Art Department, he launched the effort to redesignate the department as the School of Art and served as the School’s first director. He created and staffed the School of Art Student Services Center and was instrumental in restructuring the MFA curriculum and expanding the MFA studios. As interim dean of the College of the Arts, he oversaw planning, fundraising, and construction for the first University Art Museum expansion and the Museum Plaza; worked with colleagues to develop the college’s first college-wide articulation of mission, vision, and core values; and launched the first initiative to proactively incorporate equity, diversity, and inclusion considerations directly into faculty search processes. An award-winning curator and critic, and an exhibiting artist, Chris returned to the classroom and studio in 2014 after multiple years in administrative roles and has served as Program Head for Ceramic Arts since 2016. The son of a ceramic glaze chemist and manufacturing consultant, Chris grew up surrounded by the family ceramics business and immersed in the ceramics industry that proliferated in Southern California. He brings to his leadership in the Ceramics Area a perspective informed by a life as an artist, curator, writer, and teacher, as well as long experience in academic administration and service, and a life-long immersion in ceramic process, production, and problem-solving.

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CCC Guests Over the Years

As is the case with so many things that later became more structured, more formal, that became an entity, the CCC began spontaneously, occasionally, casually. It began as a collection of essences, of spirits, of impulses, of opportunities that knocked and doors that were opened.

We will never have a full record of the artists and scholars who came our way in the years when the foundations of the CCC were laid, or in the years since the CCC was established (though we’re working at being better about our record keeping).

Over 240 artists and scholars have participated in our programming over the years, delivering guest lectures and demonstrations, working in residence as Guest Artists, and working on projects, both on and off campus, with the assistance of Ceramics Area students, staff, and faculty.

What follows is a work in progress, drawn from the recollections of Professors Kvapil, Marsh, and Miles, and from the ongoing efforts of Professor Miles to sift through documents in the CSULB University Archives and other archival information.

Ceramic Arts Studies Program / Center for Contemporary Ceramics Guest Artists

Artists and Scholars Who Have Given Lectures and/or Demonstrations at CSULB at the invitation of the Ceramic Arts Studies Program and Center for Contemporary Ceramics

Artists Who Have Worked on Projects with Collaboration, Consultation, and/or Assistance from CSULB Ceramic Arts Students and Faculty

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CCC Guest Artist Program

CCC Guest Artists are selected based upon a review of submitted proposals.  Those selected are invited under the auspices of the CCC to work in residence in the Ceramics Area as volunteer participants and are assigned to work areas in communal or semiprivate spaces alongside faculty and students. 

Durations of residency for Guest Artists range from a few weeks to a few months, are approved based up on a proposal, may span any dates of the year as approved and as subject to scheduling limitations, and once approved are agreed to in writing by the Guest Artist.

What the CCC Does and Does Not Provide Guest Artists

The CCC Guest Artist Program provides a unique opportunity for artists to immerse themselves in a dynamic learning and making community, exchange ideas, and form collaborative personal and working relationships with other artists, and CSULB administrators, faculty, staff, and students, as well as other guests. 

We don’t provide housing or funding for housing.  

We do not provide assistance in arranging housing or travel, or in dealing with visa issues for those coming from outside the United States. Once an artist-in-residence proposal has been approved and scheduled, we can provide a letter of invitation that may be helpful to Guest Artists in securing visas and applying for external funding.

We don’t provide most materials and services, or funding for these materials and services. We routinely direct Guest Artists to suppliers and other services in our area.

We provide workspace, access to facilities and equipment including the use of kilns, assistance when we can provide it, and as much free advice as anyone wants.

What the CCC is Not

The CCC is not a service bureau, an editioning house, a fabrication service, a firing service, or otherwise an entity that produces products for artists or does their work for them. 

We are not a warehouse or a logistics provider. 

We are a team that provides support, but we are not a personal support team or a team of personal assistants.

We are not a concierge service, and we do not provide a boutique or luxury experience.

What the CCC Generally Expects of Guest Artists

What we expect of our Guest Artists is that they make good use of the place, are very present, work hard, make work that will change and grow the field of contemporary ceramics, and participate informally and respectfully in our learning/making community.

Generally speaking, we’re less interested in having Guest Artists who are simply looking for a facility where they can do more of what they already do and know how to do and could do in a lot of places. We’re more interested in working with artists who are looking to push their own boundaries, and try something new, and who we believe we and our facilities can help toward such goals.

We are here to provide what assistance we can, but we expect self-sufficiency and self-direction from our Guest Artists.

What the CCC Asks of Guest Artists

The following are requests the CCC makes of its Guest Artists.

These are requests and are not provisions of the Volunteer Participant Agreement each artist completes and signs in advance of the residency.

1. Consider giving a formal or informal talk about your work, to a small or large group of students and maybe some invited guests, either while you are with us or sometime thereafter. We cannot pay you for this talk.
2. Consider, if and when you are able, maybe weeks or months or years in the future, making a donation to the CCC to benefit the program that has benefitted you, and/or to the Ceramic Arts Studies Program to benefit ceramics inquiry and instruction and ceramics students at CSULB.
3. Acknowledge that you are or were here, that work you made here was in fact made here, and that work made with our assistance was made with our assistance. We don’t want any credit for your work, and your story is your story, but your time with our community is part of our story too, and we hope you’ll help us share that story. 
4. If one of our awesome students assists you with your work, or if you have an interesting exchange with them, let them know how much you appreciate it, and let others know about their awesomeness.
    

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Applying to the Guest Artist Program

Who Should Apply for the CCC Guest Artist Program?

This residency is for visual artists who 

• are intent on committing a period of time to focused, intensive work in ceramic media; 
• are generally self-directed and self-sufficient;
• are ready and willing to be good-faith participants in a community;
• are willing to agree to a binding and non-negotiable detailed set of terms applying to all aspects of working in residence;
• have completed their formal training in visual arts at the post-secondary level; 
• have active ongoing practices as artists; and 
• have significant and growing records of exhibition, publication, and engagement and recognition in the field; or have significant equivalent experience and recognition in a related and relevant profession, discipline, or creative, research, or scholarly endeavor.

Collaborative teams may submit proposals; however, these collaborations need to be clearly worked out in advance. Additional collaborators may not be approved later.

The CCC welcomes artists who do not work exclusively or primarily in clay; however, Guest Artists must have experience and familiarity with ceramic media beyond casual interest or curiosity. The relationship of our faculty and staff, and our community, to our Guest Artists, is consultative, not instructional. We occasionally work with artists who have more limited experience with ceramics; however, these working relationships are strictly invitational and are built around highly specific and limited projects.

The CCC Guest Artist Program is not a postbaccalaureate, “postbac,” or pre-graduate-school program, and is not for students currently enrolled in or on break from undergraduate or graduate studies.

Agreements

All persons working in the Ceramics Area as volunteer participants—either as CCC Guest Artists or in assisting roles—must complete and sign a Volunteer Participant Agreement and other agreements and forms including Release of Liability, Promise Not to Sue, Assumption of Risk, and Agreement to Pay Claims.

Application by Proposal and Review Process

All of our Guest Artist selections begin with the review of proposals made by artists and sent by email to Center-for-Contemporary-Ceramics@csulb.edu. The process must start with a proposal.

Application/Proposal Deadlines

See section below on Proposal Review and Selection.

Proposal Review and Selection: Ethos and Process

Every Guest Artist is selected based upon a proposal.  Sometimes we invite proposals, but an invitation for a proposal does not guarantee selection, and we are open to unsolicited proposals, which may or may not result in selection. Every complete proposal submitted is reviewed and thoughtfully considered. Proposals are reviewed by the CCC Director in consultation with other Ceramic Arts faculty and staff, and other School of Art faculty.

Generally speaking, we’re less interested in potential Guest Artists who are simply looking for a facility where they can do more of what they already do and know how to do and could do in a lot of places.  We’re more interested in working with artists looking to push their own limits, try new things, and who we believe we and our facilities can help toward such goals.

In the Ceramics Area at CSULB, we deal with an interesting, ever-evolving, and fluctuating interrelation between the mission of the Ceramic Arts Studies Program, which is our primary mission, and the mission of the CCC and the CCC Guest Artist Program, which we love and are committed to (so much so that we set it in motion and keep it in motion), but that must be a secondary mission. Working with this interrelation in making selections for the CCC is something like a cross between managing reservations and cancellations at a motel, booking talent for a variety show, curating an exhibitions program, handling air-traffic control, and stewarding an ecosystem. Our concerns in selecting proposals and scheduling Guest Artists include (among an also ever-evolving set of factors) what is feasible in terms of working with and around or curriculum and our ongoing needs and obligations with students and faculty, the diversity of artists and practices we bring to our community for the benefit of our field and most importantly for the benefit of our students, the unique combination of Guest Artists we have at any given time, the demands on our facilities and faculty and staff, and the appropriateness of our facilities and expertise to the goals of a potential Guest Artist.  

We can work with artists who place heavy demands on our glaze lab, but not during semesters when we’re running our Material Formulation class. We can work with an artist who wants to use six potter’s wheels simultaneously, but not when school is in session and we’re running multiple sections of beginning, intermediate, and advanced wheel-based practice courses. We can work with artists who want to make really big things that fill our largest kilns, but we can’t work with three of them at the same time.  We can work with fewer artists when school is in session and more artists when school is not in session (if we’re in town), and we can work with more Guest Artists when we’re working with fewer graduate students and vice-versa. We can work with a bunch of artists who do really similar things at the same time, but only if that’s interesting, and sometimes that kind of thing is interesting and sometimes it isn’t. And, limited by both the laws of physics and the limits of our own needs for sleep and time to take care of other business, we can fit things in when we can, and we can’t when we can’t.

Our selection process is not capricious or arbitrary.  It is considered and nimble. In order to keep our selections and our operations nimble, and in order to keep the comings and goings and changing overlaps of Guest Artists evolving and interesting for our community, we do not have standard dates and durations, set deadlines, or set review dates. We review proposals a few times a year, generally mid-winter, mid-spring, and mid-fall.  These review periods do not correspond to a specific start date.  Sometimes when opportunities and interests align, we are able to make select Guest Artists and schedule durations of residency on short notice, but usually we are scheduling Guest Artists for start dates between six and twenty-four months after review and selection.

What We Need in a Proposal

At minimum, each proposal must contain the following:

• artist contact info including mailing address and phone;
• curriculum vitae;
• artist statement addressing current and recent work and practice;
• proposal text including specifics of planned project including
  • nature of work to be undertaken,
  • quantity and approximate size of works planned for the residency,
  • desired duration and dates, and any specifics about a schedule/calendar you intend to maintain,
  • materials and firing temperatures you plan to work with,
  • likely number of firings, timing of firings, volumes of firings, and firing preferences—natural gas (oxidation or reduction) or electric,
  • any kinds of practical assistance you might need in the studio,
  • any special needs,
• images, or links to websites with images, of recent and relevant work;
• contact information (name, affiliation, phone number, and email address) for three people who can speak to your qualifications as a potential Guest Artist (no reference letters please);
• documentation of COVID-19 vaccination and booster.

While experimentation is central to the ethos and purpose of the CCC, and it is understood that creative paths often wander in the course of artists developing new work, CCC Guest Artist residencies are based upon, and within reason are bound to the proposals originally submitted by artists. In general, Guest Artists are expected to follow through with their proposals, and because the approval of a proposal is directly linked to an assessment of our capacity to facilitate the proposal while meeting our operational and instructional obligations, as well as addressing the needs of all in our community, the CCC may not be able to accommodate significant changes in the nature or scope of a Guest Artist’s project.

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Additional CCC Guest Artist Information

Assistance and Assistants

While many participants in our community often will informally provide assistance to our Guest Artists in problem-solving or handling immediate brief tasks that require more than one person, we do not provide assistants as in people who work directly and dedicatedly with artists in the production of their work.

Guest Artists may bring assistants with them, or hire them in the area (sometimes they hire CSULB students); however, if you intend to work with assistants as part of your residency, please be aware of the following.

1. Intention to work with assistants must be included in your proposal.
2. Working with assistants is subject to CCC approval, and the assistants specifically are subject to CCC approval.
3. Assistants may be limited to different access hours and may be limited in their use of specific equipment or engagement with specific materials and processes.
4. All employment and other arrangements between Guest Artists and assistants are between them, and the University is not party to these arrangements.
5. Like Guest Artists, before beginning work, assistants must complete and sign a Volunteer Participant Agreement Inclusive of Release of Liability, Promise Not to Sue, Assumption of Risk, and Agreement to Pay Claims.

If you are likely to need occasional assistance with tasks, please include specifics and likely frequency in your proposal.

Guest Artist Access: Dates, Days, Hours (Subject to Change)

Though the activities of the CCC have to work around the operational calendars and needs of the University and its programs, the CCC maintains an evolving calendar, with Guest Artists beginning and ending residencies throughout the year, and with durations ranging from a few weeks to a few months, occasionally longer. Calendar issues inevitably become a factor in considering the feasibility of a proposal; however, if all other factors in the consideration of a proposal are favorable, we try to work with the artist to resolve calendar issues.

At present, and subject to change, access hours and days for Guest Artists generally are from 5:00 AM to 1:00 AM seven days a week.

NOTE: The campus is closed to volunteer participants, including Guest Artists, 
on dates designated as Campus Closure Days in the CSULB Academic Calendar, including:

• December 24 through January 1
• Martin Luther King Day
• Caesar Chavez Day
• Memorial Day
• July 4 and any additional day of observation
• Labor Day
• Veterans Day
• Thanksgiving Day and the Friday following

Photography, Recording, Documentation, Social Media, Distribution, Disclosure, Non-disclosure

In the Ceramics Area, we expect that no persons present in the area photograph or record other persons in the area, or any artwork in the area, without first asking and receiving permission from the other persons or the creators of the artworks.

Additionally, we expect that no persons currently or previously present in the area post or otherwise distribute photographs, recordings, or other information regarding other persons in the area, or any artwork in the area, without first asking and receiving permission from the other persons or the creators of the artworks.

With these expectations stated, we cannot further actively prevent such photography, recording, sharing, posting, or otherwise transferring, distributing, or publishing of such photographs, recordings, or information. Most of the spaces on the CSULB campus are public spaces, and with the proliferation of cameras, recording devices, and communication devices in public spaces, being present in these spaces comes with an assumption of the possibility of one’s self and property being photographed, recorded, or otherwise documented, and the possibility of such photographs, recordings, or documentation being distributed.

As with all matters of conduct, photographing other persons is subject to both university conduct policies and legal codes.

Our Volunteer Participant Agreement includes multiple clauses that allow CSULB to identify Guest Artists, publicize their participation and their work at CSULB, photograph them and their work, and use their names, stories, images, likenesses and artwork in promotional and other distributed and published materials and platforms including print material, websites, and social media. While contractually, these clauses broadly release CSULB for such use with or without consultation, it is our practice to be consultative with our artists about such use, and to be sensitive to how our Guest Artists want their stories, and their inclusion in our story, to be told.

We often get requests from Guest Artists and/or their associates to, for a specified period of time, minimize publicity about their participation in the residency, or about the creation or completion of work, or about plans for exhibition or other commitments or news regarding an upcoming award, publication, or exhibition, or other as yet unannounced events or accomplishments. We make every effort to honor such requests for a reasonable period; however, University personnel neither can enter into nondisclosure agreements on behalf of the University nor can as individuals enter into nondisclosure agreements regarding the business of the University inclusive of information about Guest Artists. Simply put, we’re really good at keeping a lid on things, but we can’t legally promise to do so. Additionally, because the Ceramics Area is accessed and used by many other people inclusive of students, other Guest Artists, guests, visitors, and CSULB personnel not assigned to the Ceramics Area, we cannot guarantee secrecy, confidentiality, or non-disclosure. Lastly, CSULB is a public university of the State of California, and under the California Public Records Act and McKee Transparency Act, all records (broadly defined), including any records regarding Guest Artists, are potentially subject to disclosure under the California Public Records Act, unless they fall into one or more narrow exemptions. With all this noted, however, we work closely with artists and with their associates to try to maintain confidentiality and prevent “spoilers” in advance of unveilings and announcements and have been very successful in doing so.

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Documentation of CCC Activity

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