Center for Craft, Creativity & Design Announces Dialogue in Clay: A Cross-Cultural Learning Experience

From August 4 to 18, the Center for Creativity, Craft & Design will host its fourth International Artist Residency with Magdalene Odundo, OBE. The residency will provide students and faculty from Western Carolina University, Appalachian State University, Warren Wilson College, Haywood Community College, and the University of North Carolina Asheville a meaningful opportunity to work closely with a preeminent scholar artist over the course of two weeks.

The residency is structured in a way that allows for thoughtful dialogue, for consideration of other perspectives, and for exploring cultural diversity. Learning will take place on a number of levels within an immersive context. The students will contribute to open dialogue in an informal, intimate setting with peers that are outside their current learning environment. During the evenings following dinner, students and faculty will share information about their interests. Each day, Odundo will task students with different exercises towards realizing one or many resulting works of art. The residency provides a participatory, exploratory experience through craft.

"I am extremely interested in the sharing of ideas, the transfer of knowledge for ceramics arts and crafts practice in general, the exchange of academic experience and collaborations with colleagues at other institutions, universities and communities with my emphasis on links with developing countries. The latter for me is important because for many years artists from Europe and Americas have been inspired by art from these countries but not shared their acquired wealth materially or in spirit with those artists." Magdalene Odundo