Dear University
of ________ Ceramics Visiting Assistant Professor Review Committee,
First and foremost, thank you for
considering my application for the Ceramics Visiting Assistant Professor
position. I feel it is a timely next step for my artistic and professional
practices. I am very excited to have this opportunity to introduce myself to you
and your ceramic department, faculty and staff, of which I have the utmost
respect.
In 2011, I received my MFA in Applied Craft and Design from the Pacific Northwest College of Art and the Oregon
College of Art and Craft, a joint program between the two schools. As part of
the initiating class, I quickly learned how broad and spiraling the discussion between
art, craft and design could become. At times overwhelming, the experience
encouraged me to develop my own rhetoric, a confluence between all three
notions of ideas and perspectives concerning objects. Previous descriptions of
objects dissolved within the contemporary context of the virtual. At first,
language and associations surrounding form and space were rendered into two
categories, those of the physical and those of the virtual. I needed to make
this distinction in order to move forward with my understanding what an object
could become. By my second year of grad school, I began to formulate some
similarities between physical and virtual things, by acknowledging that our
senses are a constant in interpreting either relational experience. We perceive
the virtual bodily just as we do with the physical. My solo thesis exhibition
consisted of a singular moment, placing and asking the viewer to situate
themselves within one room consisting of virtual, digital and physical notions
of the same object simultaneously. Multiple monochromatic columns, produced in
wood as well as digitally in a projected animation reaching corner to corner
and top to ceiling of one wall of the room, visually merged together between
wall sized mirrors placed opposite to each other and adjacent to the projection
wall, created a nauseated infinity through reflection and shadow. By allowing
my research to transcend previous descriptions of objects, I have been able to
break through past ideological concepts and relationships to making, material,
form and space.
It’s been a few years
since my MFA and I have had time to let the brain fever that was my thesis
settle down a bit, thankfully. In a way, I have taken a more assured step back
into something more familiar, more grounding, although with greater insight and
openness to the medium of ceramics. I began my love affair with clay when I was
ten years old, nearly thirty years ago. I received my BFA in Ceramics from
Grand Valley State University in 1999. Clay, the philosophers stone if you
will, lends its amorphous nature to thinking ambiguously between the
disciplines of art, craft and design quite well. As it has for twenty thousand
years, it still continues to confound, excite and solve our human need for the
utilitarian as well as the psychological. It’s still around and it still temps
our curiosities. It’s the one thing that continues to drive my art practice and
has become the foundation to conceptual investigations in art regardless of the
other mediums I work with.
In the Fall of 2015,
after my first year of relocating to Philadelphia from Portland, Oregon, I
became a Resident Artist at The Clay Studio as well as the Ceramic Shop Supervisor
for the Craft & Materials Study program at the University of the Arts. I
have held both positions for three years now. In tandem, they have provided me
with a culture and community enabling me to take greater artistic risks in my
studio, to gain more assured confidence and expand my work formally as well as
conceptually. I feel connected to my work and its meaning more than I ever have
and I believe it’s starting to take on a unique voice of its own. Due to my
position as the Shop Supervisor at UArts, I have a stronger connection to the
entirety of the ceramic process. From tearing apart an electric wheel in order
to find the malfunctioning electrical component, to updating the end of fiscal
year inventory, I know how to run a ceramic shop and my work is better for it.
Maintaining a fully functioning ceramic studio has made me a more responsible
ceramic artist. The more I know about the facility and how it works, the more I
know about the process of my passion.
Both positions have
also provided me opportunities to teach, something I have longed to gain more
experience in. At The Clay Studio, I have taught adult classes in advanced
Hand-building and Surface Design since 2015. This past spring semester, James
Makins, head of the ceramics program at UArts, asked me to teach the Kiln Technologies
class to our junior undergraduate students. Due to firing schedules, I found
the time structure of the class to be challenging, but overall the experience was
very rewarding. Having completed the class, I now have full confidence that
next year’s seniors will be fully proficient in firing their own bisque and
glaze oxidation and reduction kilns.
This summer I will be
traveling to Iceland for a two-month research-based trip which includes an
artist residency at the Nes Foundation in Skagaströnd. Generous funding from
the Independence Grant Foundation, based here in Philadelphia, will provide for
the entirety of the project. During July and August, I will continue my interest
in Geomythology. A term coined by geologist Dorothy B. Vitaliano in
her book Legends of the Earth – Their
Geologic Origins written in 1968, geomythology looks to creation myths for
possible answers to confounding land formations. It is an interdisciplinary
study between real and imagined spaces, between material and cultural
substances. My nerdy interest in pop culture fantasy narratives such as Game of Thrones and Dungeons and Dragons, lead me to research the origins of Earth’s creation.
A concept that, in a grand way, expands on my interest in the origin of a
meaningful object. According to Nordic legend, our world, as well as a myriad
of mythical creatures, was created from the destruction of the first being, the
frost giant Ymir. Iceland, made of glacial and volcanic activity, is the
epicenter for Nordic mythology. My research there will be a confluence between
my interest in aesthetic land formation and the stories people ascribe to the
indescribable; the median between science and mystery. I will be visiting
sights first hand to document the rare landscapes of Iceland and their
associative creation myths. I also have made arrangements to visit with the
University of Iceland’s head of Earth Sciences department in order to learn
more about the reactions and formations volcanic fire and glacial ice make
together. Two natural opposites not unlike those transformative qualities of
clay into ceramic.
Over
the past few years I have been following the accomplishments of the ceramics department
at the University of _________ and have become increasingly curious. By far, the
level of graduate work shown at NCECA Pittsburgh was one of the most intriguing
exhibitions I saw during the conference. I perceive a strong focus on material
knowledge combined with rigorous conceptual investigation in line with deep
personal exploration and understanding, qualities I strive to achieve in my own
work. My graduate education in Design Thinking through the hand I credit to my
relentless search for meaningful form in my current body of work. What is
important to create? A consideration I can find no better to explore within our
contemporary notion of things and existence as we stand on the precipice of
alternate lives and worlds. Whether those
realities are coexisting or colliding, we are living in transformative and
exciting times. With my application for the Ceramics Visiting
Assistant Professor position, I am looking to join a community of thinkers and
makers who are open to these ideas. I’m looking to challenge and expand my
knowledge through conversation, critique and shared information. I believe a
ceramics studio is a classroom for all who share it, including the students,
staff and fellow faculty. With an appreciation and respect for tradition, I want
to continue pushing ceramics forwards into the future. I see that happening at _________ and I see myself contributing positively to that culture. Based on my broad
approach to creative making and thinking, I believe I am a highly viable
candidate for this position. An appointment as the Visiting Assistant Professor
would be a great leap forward in my artistic and educational practice and would
help to solidify my profession within the larger ceramic community. I would be
truly honored to have the experience and would greatly welcome an opportunity
to continue this conversation personally. I wish you the best in your search.
Sincerely,
Jason Lee
Starin
