Zemer Peled

The thing about a Google image search is that sometimes it does not turn out so well but sometimes you get lucky, find exactly what you need, and become inspired. Last night Amanda and I were working on coming up with a lesson to do with the class for our "Mark Making: Making a Mark" unit. We started out with the notion of thinking big. We wanted to do something that would excite the class. Originally we had come up with a lesson, which would in fact be a useful lesson for studio art high school students to explore, but after discussion with Aaron we thought that we may need to change our direction for what we are presenting to our class of students on the first day of the unit. Thinking about this, we decided that we wanted to open with something quite attention grabbing, breaking notions of your typical "mark" and what that means in the artistic process. We thought about ways we could consider action, chance, mark making and more typical elements such as composition all at the same time. Amanda brought up possibly doing something with clay. I thought what about throwing clay?
So- Google image search: "Throwing clay at wall" Result: Zemer Peled.
Zemer Peled is a contemporary ceramic artist who works with shards and globs of clay rather than what one would consider a traditional ceramic work. Even her "still lifes" consist of warped and droppy vessels. Her piece that popped up in the Google search, "Throwing clay on the wall (2012)" (pictured below), demonstrates contemporary themes of action and chance that we had been exploring with other artists along with truly testing what a "mark" is. Peled stands at a distance and throws globs of clay onto a white cement wall. The pieces stick where they may, in whatever shape they happen to form.
Amanda and I were very excited about this work. Not only would this be fun for potential high school students but we know that it will be for us. As students are exploring what it really means to make a mark or an impression, they can also be taking into consideration chance, action, and class collaboration. I hope this version of mark making will allow for students explore "mark" through some unique play.