Artist Talk: The Creative Process from Inspiration to Fruition with Artist Beth Shook
Join us for a conversation with artist Beth Shook. We will meet in the classroom at the Ceramics Research Center, feel free to bring your lunch!
ASU Art Museum Ceramics Research Center is located at the Brickyard on the northeast corner of Mill Ave. and 7th street in Downtown Tempe, three blocks north of ASU Art Museum's primary location at the Nelson Fine Arts Center. Metered street parking is available adjacent to the Brickyard as is paid underground parking (enter on 7th street). Park on level B1 and take the elevator to PL (plaza). The ASU Art Museum Ceramics Research Center is in the east end of the building, near the courtyard fountains.
Beth Shook was born on Christmas Eve in Jeannette, Pennsylvania. Still, she considers herself a native of the southwest, having lived her most reckless and influential years in El Paso, Texas. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Texas at El Paso in 1985. Under the instruction of her most accomplished professors, she developed her skills as a craftsman, discovered her love of clay and her near-obsession with the drawn line.
After graduation, Ms. Shook attended Arizona State University as an unclassified graduate student for a year; out-of-state tuition kept her out of the classroom, but briefly. Though frustrating, the delay proved a blessing as she weighed the artistic direction she would pursue. Clay or drawing…drawing or clay? Soon, she was simply drawing on clay. That drawing obsession turned to compulsion as the clay became the canvas. In 1990, she received her Master of Fine Arts degree in ceramics from Arizona State University.
She recently stepped away from the classroom after thirty years of teaching; first at ASU as a graduate student then with the Maricopa Community College District. Ms. Shook is making good use of her time in the studio exploring the ceramic surface, particularly with drawn lines. Together with her husband, Steve, and their quirky Australian Shepherd, Waco, they live, work and play in Gilbert, Arizona.