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Tondos & Shields Revisited: A Sculptural Tile Workshop

$120 Purchase required to enroll

"Panta Rhei" means everything flows, everything changes, said the Greek philosopher Heraclitus.

But the circle stays unbroken... and is still a powerful vehicle for narrative.

The Tondo, or Tondi/Tondos, is a renaissance term for a circular work. The Circle is one of the most enduring forms in Art. We will explore this form starting with circular tiles, working small and large-scale and in series.

Watch as the work grows from a narrative to a Shield prototype, echoing the great shield of Achilles in Homer's Iliad.


For this workshop students will create two mid-sized sculptural shields with accompanying painted designs on paper. All materials provided.

No experience required. All levels.

What’s Included:

Laguna Stoneware clay, Glazes and oxides, water-based paint and paper, as well as Bisque and Glaze Firings (cone 6).


Instructor Bios

Visiting NY Artist: Ed Smith

Currently professor of art and gallery director at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, NY, Ed Smith has taught in many places, including American University, Bard, Brandeis, BU, Clark U., Dartmouth, Dia Art Center, the New York Studio School, Parsons, Pratt, Swarthmore, SVA, Yale, the Vermont Studio Center, in Tel Aviv as well as the Glasgow School of Art.

Ed Smith is a sculptor whose work revolves around the mythic and heroic aspects of the Artist as archetype, as well as an iterative and expressionistic process focused on the human form in a range of sculptural media, including ceramics and cast bronze.

A Guggenheim Fellow, a member of the National Academy and of the Royal British Society of Sculptors, an Associate Fellow Trumbull College, Yale University, he has received awards from the Ford Foundation, Fulbright and the NY State Council on the Arts for his sculptures.. His work has been exhibited throughout the world, at such places as the Brooklyn Museum, The Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh Scotland, Fleming Museum, Queens Museum, The Albright Knox Museum, the Albrecht- Kemper Museum, and The Arkell Museum and has been placed in the permanent collections of The British Museum, The Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp Belgium, Ministry of the Flemish Community, The Hood Museum, the Davis Museum, Yale University, the National Academy Museum.

But, more than anything, he is known for his encouraging, passionate teaching style and memorable workshop experiences and being a lifelong champion of the students and artists he mentors.


Monadnock Artist: Kimberly Kersey-Asbury

Kimberly Kersey-Asbury is a founding member and educational director at MAxT Ceramic Center in Dublin. She is a mixed media artist who enjoys creating figurative ceramic sculpture and sculptural artist books as well as painting and drawing. Kimberly has exhibited her work both nationally and internationally and is a recipient of a Fulbright Award and two Summer Research Grants to Botswana and she is an associate professor at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, NH, where she teaches a range of studio art classes, including sculpture, illustration, painting and drawing and directs department galleries.


No upcoming schedule