Ensights Magazine
Teaching Endowment Visiting Artist: Susan Beiner
Renowned ceramics artist Susan Beiner was on campus for a week in March working with high school students as a visiting artist. The Teaching Artist Endowment at Ensworth enriches the study of the arts on the High School Campus by bringing in celebrated artists in the fields of music, theater, and the visual arts.
Beiner’s award-winning work has been featured in numerous exhibitions and publications, most recently the cover of the December 2018 issue of Ceramics Monthly. When she is not working on or coordinating showings of her creations, Beiner serves as a professor of Art at the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona. Ensworth art instructor Cati Blitz became familiar with Beiner through workshops at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.
Under Beiner’s guidance, students worked on a ceramic pot project using clay casts of everyday objects. She cites the value in ceramics projects to aid in problem-solving. “The students’ experiences in the studio can translate into something else,” Susan explains. “Even if they don’t do anything related to ceramics, at some point in their life, they’ll remember what they did with this group and they’ll know how to make something or they’ll have an idea of how to approach a problem.”
Beiner also recognizes how the Ensworth Teaching Artist Endowment benefits those who are not artistically-inclined. “It’s an opportunity to get students exposed to contemporary art,” Susan observes, “Because art now has completely evolved. It’s not how it was in the past, about having a patron to make paintings or making money on an object. It’s more about the engagement and collaboration between disciplines. It’s the connection between the two that makes the object relevant or the conceptual approach to something. Everybody lends some kind of voice to art and presents that to students in some way.”
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Red Gables Campus (K–8)
Frist Campus (9–12)
Ensworth is a coeducational, kindergarten through twelfth grade, independent day school.