Learn how to develop a material vocabulary of color and surface that can evoke emotion, deliver poetic metaphor, make connections to cultural histories, and resonate sentiment. Getting to know ceramic raw materials can be a direct and personal experience. This workshop will help you find an approach that is comfortable and that fits your natural ways of working. Starting from your artistic intentions, you will learn to develop a unique voice in your artwork by experimenting with raw materials in an intuitive, open-ended and creative way. This live three-hour workshop will offer a playful and personal approach to developing ceramic color and surface, with a grounding in scientific methodologies and concepts. We will cover various techniques for testing glazes, slips and clay bodies, focusing on traditional and nontraditional volumetric blends such as color runs, line blends, equal part blends, triaxial and quadraxial blends, and individually-designed nonlinear blends. We will give special attention to the use of rare earth oxides for intriguing color-shifting and fluorescent results.