Father and Son Dialogue through Clay

February 13th & 14th, 2011
at Kemp Pottery

Kemp Pottery was established in Orleans by Steven Kemp in 1978. Steven's son, Matthew Kemp joined the pottery in 2002. 

"The great hope of an artist is to have others care about our obsessions." Steve's obsession is the Cape Cod environment, especially its birds and marine life. He's explored its many facets through sumi-e brushwork, sculpture, stained-glass and the potter's wheel. Steve will explore animal themes demonstrating several unique construction techniques. 

Utilizing wheel thrown and hand pulled components he will construct a full scale Great Blue Heron. This will facilitate a talk on sculpture bases.

Through altering and sculpture techniques he'll throw frog and turtle jars, a fish bowl and a box turtle teapot. 

Using sonotubes as a basic building block, Steve constructed a Horse. This technique has many possibilities for building large vessels, figures, etc.

Matthew received his BA from Skidmore College in 2000 and his passion has always been cartooning, developing unique ways of incorporating graphic storytelling into his clay work.

Matthew demonstrated a unique slab technique creating a mask with the limiting exercise of utilizing a single slab of clay and without adding or subtracting clay creating a 3-D mask through a series of calculating cuts and connections.

While demonstrating in their own limited space, they were able to show how the space was organized. They share formulas, talk about there basic philosophy, sales techniques and most importantly how a father and son share a dialogue through clay.