Artist Talk by Rebekah Bogard: Engineering your Ceramic Sculptures for Survival

Article Vincent Johnson

Rebekah Bogard is currently an Associate Professor in Ceramics at the University of Nevada, Reno as well as a studio artist. She acquired a BFA from the University of Wyoming in Laramie in 2000, and her MFA from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in 2003. Her talk was about her personal studio practice, with its difficulties and precarious travelling methods. Since she has a home studio, but no kiln access, she seatbelts her bone-dry work into her truck seats and drives a handful of miles on the freeway, where she unloads and moves her work. It was kind of sad to see how much time was spent on travel and unloading, time that could have been used to create or teach. I hope that she somehow gains access to a kiln on her studio property that could make this situation less stressful. 

Bogard also discussed heavily about building modular sculptures for ease of installation and firing. Bogard really values individuality and being able to transport pieces by herself (though her husband helps frequently). Since they are modular pieces, she uses various metal tubing to stack pieces safely, avoiding broken work. The metal tubing she uses is square, so she can precisely get the angles and proper orientation for installation. The use of epoxy/JB Weld for fixing pieces or putting tubing inside of them works well with her preferred cold finish method. Even without the tubing, however, her method of tapered insertable pieces and flanges for stacking was very informative. Bogard’s talk was humorous and inspirational – I’m glad I attended the talk. The lecture hall where she spoke was almost at capacity with how many attended to listen.  

Since I haven’t been making sculptural work for a long time, I wasn’t originally going to attend. Especially since I have time and studio constraints, I typically don’t make work that is large enough to require these methods of building, but for the future, I would love to incorporate these techniques to build larger sculptures.