Ceramics Reenvisioned

A rich new database of contemporary ceramics images is now available online as a result of Lewis & Clark’s accessCeramics project.

Ted Vogel, assistant professor of art and program head of ceramics, together with Margo Ballantyne, visual resources curator at Watzek Library, initiated the project. They formed a curatorial board and invited established, professional artists to contribute images of their work to the website.

“High-quality images of the ceramic arts are among the least represented in licensed and open digital image databases,” says Mark Dahl, associate director for digital initiatives and collection management at Watzek Library. “AccessCeramicsis a unique collection that combines work by recognized ceramics artists with rich meta data to form an online database that can be used as a resource for education in the ceramic arts both at the college and K-12 levels.”

Technical designers Mark Dahl and Jeremy McWilliams, digital services coordinator at Watzek Library, chose the photo-sharing site Flickr as a database to store the ceramics images that appear on accessCeramics. The team has reached a milestone of 1,500 images from more than 100 artists, and they hope to reach 2,000 images and 150 artists by June.

The accessCeramics project is supported by an Instructional Innovation Fund grant from the National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education.

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