Tanner Studio C
Ronald Gruzinsky
Tanner GillmanGeneralPhysicalSocialBiographical InformationDate of BirthMarch 1, 1995Marital StatusSingleAffiliationStudio CPhysical DescriptionHair ColorBrownEye ColorHazelSocial MediaTwitter@TannerGillmanInstagramtannergillman
Tanner grew up in St. George, Utah, quickly starring in musicals during high school. After his graduation, he has appeared in a number of theatrical productions and television project, among those of Paramount, Hallmark, Pizza Hut, and Hyundai. Having Tourette's Syndrome, it allowed him to further enhance his acting abilities, furthering encouraging youth to pursue their dreams. In his free time, he likes to play the drums, play with his dog, work on screenplays, and draw cartoons.
My dad would drag me to his jazz television show that he produced for the PBS station WGBH-Boston in the 60's. I would always get in trouble for playing in Julia Child's kitchen set that shared the same studio. I think he gave me a camera to keep me out of trouble. That's where my interest began, and once I started working in a darkroom I fell in love with the magic of seeing prints appear in the developer. I was also looking for an escape from high school so I started photographing musicians in NYC.
I started with live rock and roll bands in the late 70's, then enrolled in Parsons School of Design NYC and took some fabulous classes from well known working professionals. The most influential was with Phillipe Halsman, the famed portrait photographer with over 100 covers of Life Magazine. He would hold a very small class in his studio and deconstruct all his famous portraits for us, and then give us assignments to do the same lighting with a bare blub and reflector. The way he spoke about his subjects and how he was able to get emotion out of them and into the camera made me fall in love with portraiture.
When I consult with my models/clients I ask them to bring multiple tops and accessories. What they think looks good on them may not be what I'm envisioning for the look I'm trying to create, or the backgrounds I have in mind. Always better to have lots of options.
I enjoy finding funky areas of town by driving around location scouting. I look for textures, color and shapes, noting where the sun is in relationship to the location at that specific time of day. I will snap a few reference shots to remind me of what I've found. Some of these portraits we shot down by the Navel Shipyards in San Diego.
I like long focal lengths for portraits, so I add the telephoto glass over the soft focus. For portraits where I want the background to have negative space or be a prominent element in the portrait I choose the Composer Pro and Double Glass, so I can be selective in where I choose to place the Sweet Spot.
"Contemplation In The Studio" depicts one of my favorite themes, that of artists at work in their studios. The props seen in the painting are all materials I use in my own work, and the location is my studio space. The model was a painting student of mine at the time it was painted (2010).
The painting received awards from the Portrait Society of America, The RayMar Fine Art Competition, and PleinAir Salon.
Today on Tales of a Red Clay Rambler I have an interview with Joy Tanner and Will Baker. Together they operate Wood Song Pottery in Bakersville, NC, making individual bodies of atmospheric-fired ceramics. In the interview we talk about being resident artists at the Odyssey Center, striking out to start their own studio, and leaning on the ceramic process for inspiration. For more information on Joy visit www.joytannerpottery.com. For more information on Will visit www.williambakerpottery.com.
Ben Carter is a ceramic professional based in Howell, NJ. He maintains a studio, teaches workshops and exhibits nationally. He is the creator and host of the Tales of a Red Clay Rambler podcast. www.carterpottery.com.
Being the youngest of six children, I was encouraged to use my imagination as my main source of entertainment, and out of that imagination came a strong desire to be more and more creative. I was heavily influenced by my father, who himself was not an artist, but was very confident that he could make, fix, build, or create just about anything. Although my father is no longer with us, his influence is still a big part of my ability to create new work.
My experience over the years includes shooting everything from fine jewelry to large interiors and room sets for clients in both the advertising and editorial fields. I have extensive experience shooting both in studio and on location and pride myself on my lighting and composition abilities.
Summary: The papers of the expatriate African American painter Henry Ossawa Tanner measure 2.3 linear feet and date from the 1860s to 1978, with the bulk of the material dating from 1890 to 1937. Found in the papers are scattered biographical, family, and legal materials; twenty-seven folders of correspondence with family, friends, patrons, and galleries; writings and notes by Tanner and others; a small amount of printed material; numerous photographs of Tanner, his studio in Paris and home in Trepied, Normandy, his family, friends, fellow artists, and his artwork. Additional photographs include a circa 1890 shot of Tanner with fellow students at the Acadmie Julian and another depicting Tanner with members of the American Art Club in Paris, circa 1900. Also found are a few sketches and drawings.
African American painter Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937) was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Benjamin Tucker Tanner, a college-educated teacher and minister, and Sarah Miller Tanner, who was formerly enslaved. Benjamin Tanner was very active in the African Methodist Episcopal (A. M. E.) Church, eventually becoming a bishop, and the family often moved while Henry was a small child. They settled in Philadelphia, and as a teenager, Tanner spent his free time painting, drawing, and visiting art galleries. In 1880 he enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he studied under several master art instructors, including Thomas Eakins who greatly influenced his early work.
What is your artistic background?
My childhood in eastern Tennessee was full of music lessons and exploring the natural world through hiking and camping with my family. I found my creative focus when I discovered working with clay in college in 2000, maintaining my interest in photography and exploring with my camera in hand. In 2004, I received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Ceramics at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Then I pursued a Resident Artist position at the Odyssey Center for the Ceramic Arts in Asheville, North Carolina. In 2007 I established my own clay studio near Penland School of Crafts in Bakersville, North Carolina. Immersing myself in the beautiful mountains has greatly inspired my work and my life. Reflections of detail and pattern are a distinctive element within my pottery, and I enjoy getting deep into the creative process with a material as responsive as clay. In the summer of 2010, I was awarded a summer residency at the Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts in Newcastle, Maine. I was also a Resident Artist at the EnergyXChange in Burnsville, North Carolina. In 2013, my husband and I established our own studio, Wood Song Pottery, in a beautiful valley surrounded by mountains in Bakersville, NC. I feel that the influences of my childhood filled with music and exploration of the outdoors fueled an intuitive sense of creativity, now seen through a precise attention to detail which started in my music playing and later moved into the clay studio. These experiences strengthened my inner tools of persistence and dedication, allowing me to practice and refine a skill, and ultimately allowed me to seamlessly combine my curiosity and awe for the beauty of nature to my ceramic work.
From where do you draw your inspiration?
While I pay equal attention to form, surface, and detail, my pottery is most noticed for its carved patterns inspired by nature. I enjoy finding these details in nature while hiking or gardening in the mountains near where I live in western North Carolina. I am just as interested in the way a leaf connects to its stem as I am the folds of a mountain range or bursts of color at sunrise. These reflections I find in nature weave their way into the surfaces of my pots, and accrue a rhythm all their own as they swirl and drape across surfaces, suggesting spider webs, ripples in a stream, or water
patterns in sand.
I have a regular yoga and meditation practice and recently I have become quite interested with the connection between our body and mind. Through strengthening my practice and going deeper, I have felt a connection with my body and mind to the forms I create out of clay, or the inspirations I find in nature. Often it feels like the form of the pot swells with breath, like my body during yoga poses, or my jar knobs resemble hands reaching up in a sun salutation. The bones of the body, such as the rib cage resemble the patterned lines and edges that drape over the form of the pot. These ideas and reflections have been a new awareness for me and I hope to continue delving deeper into these ideas as my work and practice grows further.
What is your creative process like?
I use both wheel thrown and hand built techniques for making my pots. I enjoy incorporating elements of texture and pattern into my work that I carve, impress or stamp into the clay at specific stages of the making. After each form is complete, when the clay is at a drying stage called leather-hard, the pieces are each dipped into flashing slips. These thin clay slips will flash warm earth tones from the soda or wood firing. Once the pots are bone dry, they are bisque fired, then glazed and decorated, wadded, and loaded into the kiln.
Most of my work is fired in a soda gas kiln to cone 10. During the end of the firing, a soda ash mixture is sprayed into the kiln. The soda ash vaporizes and travels throughout the kiln, landing on the pots stacked within the shelves. The soda acts as a glaze on the pots, creating variation and directional tones within the clay surfaces. After the firing, the kiln cools for two days before the unloading begins! We also have a train kiln that is fired with wood for 48 hours. I love exploring forms in this type of firing to see how the atmosphere and ash react to my patterns and forms.