Ceramics Area

CSULB Ceramics – Area, Program, Center

The Ceramics Area at CSULB represents a special intersection, coalescence, and synergy of ceramics-related facilities, instruction, production, programming, and community, and is home to both the Ceramic Arts Studies Program and the Center for Contemporary Ceramics (CCC). 

The Ceramics Area is a communal, creative ecosystem and complex with attributes of a studio environment, an instructional environment, and a light industry environment. First and foremost, it is a working environment. It is busy, bustling, fluid, shape-shifting environment. It is nimble and scrappy, and somehow strikes a balance of harmony, synchronicity, and cacophony. It is not a retreat. It is not private or sheltered or secluded. It is within this context that the Ceramic Arts Studies Program and the Center for Contemporary Ceramics coexist, co-operate, and collaborate. The pairing of this innovative center with an instructional studio program long known for excellence is the basis of a dynamic learning and making community, and positions CSULB as a force and a destination in the fields of contemporary ceramic arts and ceramic arts education.

The CSULB Ceramic Arts Studies Program is a large and highly active instructional component of the CSULB School of Art committed to providing equitable, accessible, inclusive, and expansive instruction in the ceramic arts for a highly diverse student population of undergraduate BFA Ceramics majors, Studio Art majors, and Ceramics Minors; graduate MFA students focusing on ceramic media and process and their intersection with the full breath of contemporary art genres, practices, and discourse; and students from across our campus and community taking ceramics courses. Our first and guiding commitment is to our students.

The CSULB Center for Contemporary Ceramics is a combined entity and site committed to the mission of fostering exchange, inquiry, creative production, and learning beyond the curriculum among CSULB Ceramic Arts faculty and a highly diverse group of students, visiting artists and scholars, and Guest Artists who work on site as volunteer participants in our learning/making community, with a goal of inspiring and empowering all participants to expand the limits of their own practice and work to the benefit of both the participants in our community and the broader community and field of contemporary ceramics.

Administratively, the CCC is designated as a CSULB Academic Center or Institute (“ACI”) and is an ancillary unit housed within the CSULB School of Art, which is an instructional unit within the CSULB College of the Arts. At CSULB, an Academic Center is an ancillary unit within an existing department or college established and recognized for significant contributions to the academic units of which they are a part, and for furthering scholarly and creative, instructional, and/or service activities in a designated field. As such, the CCC is groundbreaking in our school and college, on our university campus and in our CSU system, and in our field. The CCC is one out of just twenty-seven authorized Academic Centers and Institutes on the entire CSULB campus. The CCC is the first and only ACI to be established in the CSULB School of Art, and in the College of the Arts. The CCC is one among just a handful of centers or institutes in the entire twenty-three-campus CSU system related to the visual or performing arts, and is the first center or institute focusing on ceramics in the CSU system.