McConnell, Brian E.

Iran’s long history of pottery making goes back ten thousand years, and it is as diverse as
the country’s geography and ethnic composition. Clay as a material connects contemporary
Iranian society to its ancient roots, and it permeates daily life in terms of the economy,
technology and even gender roles. This presentation focuses on the lives of three women potters
in northern and western Iran, one in the village of Jirdeh Central Gillan province, another in the
village of khomar Mahaleh East Gillan, and the third outside of the City of Marand West
Azerbaijan province. Each woman represents a particular genre of handmade pottery from
functional to sculptural work, and she establishes a unique identity in terms of production,
commercial distribution and her personal relationship to the social and geographic environment.
A selection of interviews, photographs and video clips taken during the summer of 2012
illustrate how these women work and thrive in their leadership, independence and creative
artistry. Key concepts include: 1 Land place, home, 2 Technique and work process, 3 Gender
roles, 4 Tradition and why their works are considered traditional, and 5 Authenticity and what
makes their works authentic. The solitude that separates and yet connects these women offers a
contrast to the nature of ceramics in the contemporary art world of Tehran and also opens a
dialog for gender and feminist issues that are relevant to study of art technology, design and the
roles of women in Iranian society today.

Absence is the thesis exhibition resulting from the culmination of my three years in the graduate program. In this documentation, I outline historical and contextual influences that shape my ceramic practice. I specify that my work is centered on my life and describe how my work has evolved since I first started in the program. In the process I have gathered source material and have explored key points in the theory and history of Minimalism. As I developed the work, I was able to discuss how my work applied to these sources, and where it differed. I ended with introspective installation work that paralleled the themes I was working with at the start of my graduate experience that shows my evolution from being a child continually bounced around from one family member to another, to being the confidant of my mother and holding her darkest secrets, to feeling alone and unloved, to finally beginning to heal and accept who I am.

We each experience the world through the prism of our upbringing, our traditions
and the familiar sights and sounds embedded deep within our soul. Only Sound Remains
is an installation in which I explore and share those experiences through objects, sounds
and video. Ceramic vessels inspired by the traditions of my ancestors hide and shape
sounds that narrate simple and complex experiences, which are the stories of my life.
The sounds relate to the world that I came from and that still can be heard now. The
sounds are not clear until one gets close to the vessels and lifts the lid-- a bazaar, praying,
marching, an explosion, a woman telling a story, traditional Iranian music. The
installation is a metaphor for the way in which we experience the world. The vessels
represent a selection of personal and cultural experiences through sounds that may or
may not be fully understood.

The main focus of this dissertation is a discussion of how an artist uses her dance
bodily knowledge to develop in a static art form a more bodily sense of movement. For
this purpose this dissertation examines four clay sculptures by contemporary artist Mary
Frank. The analysis suggests that the uncharacteristic sense of movement displayed in
these works derives from her experiential knowledge of dance. This sense of movement
is achieved through the considered assemblage and inextricable relationship between
Frank’s dance bodily knowledge (body knowledge a dancer acquires through years of
dance practice) and the manipulation of clay, the plastic medium she uses to create these
forms. The study reveals that Frank’s ceramic assemblages of organic shapes resembling
a figure could be related to somatic awareness of arms, legs, torso, hips, and head that
dancers experience while dancing. Similarly, the fluid quality of her ceramic assemblages
and their seamless coexistence with the environment can be correlated to the proprioceptic sensibilities (the reception of stimuli produced within the organism by
movement or tension) that a dancer’s body senses as it navigates through the air and
across the ground managing the pull of gravity. These findings are developed through a
discussion of the philosophic theories on bodily knowledge (knowing in and through the
body) by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michael Polanyi, Edward Casey, Pierre Bourdieu, and
Richard Shusterman, as well as the philosophic theories on dance bodily knowledge (my
own term) developed by Barbara Mettler, Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, and Jaana
Parviainen. In addition, Mary’s sculptures are compared to traditionally built sculptures
to illustrate the bodily sensory quality of the sense of movement of her structures.
Although the scope of this study is limited to the application of dance bodily
knowledge onto sculpture, perceived through the clay sculptures of Mary Frank, this
research adds to the debate on the interrelationships between dance education and the
arts, the body and institutions of learning, and the body and society. It suggests that dance
practice and introspection of one’s body movement affects how one perceives the world
around us and therefore how one reacts and expresses oneself on to the world.