Sonoma Community Center

Enriching lives through education and the arts — for Sonoma Valley and beyond

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On Clay and Holding; Lessons and Exercises with Dan clauson and Meg Billingham

February 2 @ 10:00 am – 1:00 pm

Date: Fridays, February 2nd – March 22nd
Time: 10:00 AM – 1:00 PM 
Total Sessions: 8
Instructor: Resident Alumni Dan Clauson & Director Meg Billingham
Location: Room 117
Ages: Adults, 18+
Skill Level: All Levels
Sliding Scale: $190 / $275 / $350

Financial Aid Register Here

About the class

In this 8 week course, students will engage with clay in thoughtful exercises that reflect on our body’s connection to ceramics and objects. This course is a focus on what it means for us to hold clay, and for clay to hold the body. 

We will go into the history of the figure in clay, functional objects, and contemporary somatic experiences and artwork. There will be a lecture, a demo, and a clay exercise in each of the 8 classes. Each class is a concentrated theme on “Holding”, with the lecture, demo, and exercise focusing on that theme. Through this class, students will be reinvigorated with ideas around clay, the body, and the intentionality of object making. There will be experiments and tests that each student will craft, but there is no expectation of production or end product through this course. It is a course on thinking, playing, and refinding joy and curiosity in the making process.

When you register for a class, you’ll be offered three price tiers. The middle tier comes closest to what our registration fees used to be, and covers about 50% of the full cost of your participation in the class – with the other 50% covered by community donations. The first tier creates accessibility for people with limited income, while the third tier covers the full cost of participation – so that we can use community donations to support other people’s registration costs. When you choose to register at the third tier, you directly help support the Center’s efforts to remove financial barriers for others.

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The Sonoma Community Center (the Center) strives to create an inclusive, safe community where everyone is treated with dignity and respect. The Center is committed to creating such an environment because it brings out the fullest potential in each of us, which, in turn, contributes directly to creating a community of belonging. In order to ensure a positive, safe, and welcoming experience for everyone, all program participants are asked to abide by the following policies, community agreements, and restorative safety protocol.

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About the instructor Instructors

Dan Clauson

Instructor / Artist

Daniel is a Queer and Trans Artist focusing mostly in ceramics. Dan utilizes their past experiences of gender dysphoria, relationships, and ‘home’ to influence their work. Connecting contradicting ideas of love and pain, trauma and acceptance, intimacy and ambiguity. From the University of Washington, Daniel received a Bachelors in Art in the 3D4M department, as well as a minor in Art History. Daniel has attended both the University of Colorado (Boulder) and the University of Arkansas (Fayetteville) as a Post Baccalaureate in ceramics. This past Fall, they were one of the 2022 artists in residences at Anderson Ranch Arts Center.

    Meg Billingham

    Instructor / Artist

    Meg Billingham is an artist and clayworker based in Northern California. They use experiential methods of creating, substantiated by therapeutic arts to facilitate simple, accessible interactions that foster practices in collective care and communal intimacy. They received their BFA in Ceramics with minors in Performance and Art Therapy from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2020. They work mainly with self-harvested wild clays and atmospheric firings, with multiple years of wood and wood-salt firing experience. In their work, they seek to expand the notion of function, making both traditionally functional as well as performative wares inspired by historical concepts of movement, transition, and portability. Megan is deeply invested in facilitating communal practices and group learning environments, believing that sharing is one of our most fundamental acts of conscious loving.

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