In the lower level of the Bedford Building there is a glass workroom. Inside, an artist works hard sanding down his large and elaborate sculpture. Numerous tools and other pieces in progress lay about on the table.
Dan Molyneux is currently the ceramist Working Artist in the Bedford Building. He has been a professional ceramist since 2007, and was first introduced to the world of clay in 1997. After traveling around the country, and the globe, he attended graduate school at UC Berkeley. Through many residency programs, including Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts where he met Longwood University’s Assistant Professor Adam Paulek, he has found his comfort zone in the art.
“I work with slabs,” he explains, the technique also known as slab building. “I roll clay out into flat pieces and start assembling them.” These forms range in many sizes and shapes and tend to take geometrical and modern appearances. After challenging himself and straying away from the “very traditional pottery [methods]” he was taught, Molyneux has become an in-demand slab builder. Unlike other artists who may gain influence from specific areas, Molyneux says his ideas sprout from a “mental environment.” His pieces are not extraordinary colors, but use the colorful glazes as a way to “highlight line” and accentuate the forms themselves. “I was taught that form is everything,” he says.
As he works in the glass studio, his work is all in preparation for the nine shows he is in during the spring. One of these shows will be exhibited at The Longwood Center for the Visual Arts. During this work period, Molyneux wants to challenge himself and create large-scale pieces, taller than a scale he normally works under. His usual scale, typically thirty to forty inches, generally stand at the viewer’s eye level so that “you’re forced to engage with [the piece].”
Molyneux has been to Farmville before, living close by during an eighteen-month residency program with Cub Creek Foundation. When he first came to Farmville, the program hadn’t transformed into the facility it is now. “[Longwood has] a really competitive facility,” he said. He feels that not many people outside the surrounding community “know about this” and hopes that in the future students and professional artists will consider it an option. The facilities and the surrounding town allow him to be intense with his work. “I’m so focused.”
Adam Paulek, the ceramics professor, encouraged Molyneux to apply to the Working Artist program he created. The program was established last year with its previous artists doing well after participating. “[The program’s] mission is time and space,” he explains, “that’s what an artist really needs.” By allowing the working artist to use the studio, along with materials when requested, the artist in turn assists Paulek with technical aspects such as firing kilns as a part of their hours. Working artists are not teaching assistants; they do not teach classes. “They help out with mentorship.”
Though the design of the glass studio was not Paulek’s, the room allows for students walking by to look in at Molyneux’s work, as well as be able to ask him for advice. “The whole thing is about community,” Paulek says, as the working artist gets involved with the community around them. With the “mid-career” experience and different technique utilized by Molyneux, students can be encouraged to have discussions and have higher expectation levels. The working artists are not students and are typically post-grad school artists or later in career artists. Along with using the space, the working artist receives advice from Paulek through critiques and discussions. “[The program’s] benefits are two fold.”
August Oster (his artistic pen name) is a painting and drawing art major, finds Molyneux presence around the ceramics department “fantastic.” With having a working artist around, “you constantly can get feedback on your work.” Oster uses ceramics as a canvas for his paintings, and enjoys that Molyneux is around for guidance. However, he doesn’t fully enjoy the glass studio that Molyneux is using for the year. He feels that, “the artist is kinda on display.” Molyneux explains that he has participated in “open room residencies” before and has become at ease with students walking by and watching him craft. “I’m just really happy to be here,” Molyneux said.
Whether it’s paying Molyneux a visit to the glass studio in the basement level of Bedford, or viewing his work when it is on display, take a chance to get to know Longwood’s current working artist.
