Karlien van Rooyen – How To Build Fragile Ceramic Structures

This workshop gives you direct access to Karlien van Rooyen’s design and making process for large-scale, intricate cut-out ceramic sculptures. You will learn how ideas become forms, and how those fragile structures are built to survive through a deep understanding of clay plasticity and humidity control.

The focus is not on surface decoration or glazing, but on how clay behaves while it is still alive – how it moves, dries, and holds itself together during complex construction.

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What You’ll Walk Away With

By the end of this workshop, you will:

✔ Understand how to build delicate, cut-out ceramic forms without structural failure
✔ Be able to read clay by touch, not by guesswork
✔ Know how to keep work alive while it dries
✔ Design sculptures that are ambitious, light, and technically achievable
✔ Gain knowledge most ceramic artists usually learn after years of destruction

This is the difference between fighting clay and collaborating with it.

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Who This Workshop Is For:

• Ceramic artists ready to move beyond small forms
• Sculptors working with fragility and complexity
• Artists frustrated by cracking, collapsing, or warping
• Anyone wanting to build work that feels impossible but survives

Workshop Structure

Step 1 – Finding Your Voice
Karlien introduces her background, how she came to ceramics, and how she developed a distinct visual language.

Step 2 – Design & Inspiration
You will see how her creative process works and how she draws from unusual sources to generate futuristic, sculptural forms.

Step 3 – Sketching for Structure
Learn how to sketch designs that are both ambitious and buildable, and how to recognise which ideas are worth making.

Step 4 – Tools & Simplicity
An introduction to Karlien’s core tools and her preference for unglazed (nude) surfaces, and how simplicity supports precision.

Step 5 – Clay, Plasticity & Drying
The core technical knowledge of how clay changes as it dries, how to keep working through these changes, and how to avoid structural failure.

Step 6 – Controlling the Humidity Window
How to extend the ideal working time for delicate and complex forms so they can be built without cracking or collapse.

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Materials Needed

You only need:

• Clay
• A banding wheel
• A sponge
• A sharp carving tool

Everything else is about timing and touch.

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Meet Your Instructor: Karlien van Rooyen

Karlien van Rooyen is a Cape Town-based ceramic sculptor whose work explores resilience, trauma, and transformation through intricate cut-out forms.

Originally trained in neuroscience, Karlien spent six years as a frontline environmental activist fighting mining corporations through legal resistance. After leaving activism, she turned to sculpture as a form of healing and meaning-making.

She completed a degree in Contemporary Art at the University of South Australia, receiving the Minter Ellison Award for Outstanding Creative Potential, and later undertook a seven-week ceramic residency in Jingdezhen, China – the historic heart of porcelain.

Her work is deeply informed by science, wild landscapes, and the tension between fragility and strength – the same tension you will learn to harness in this workshop.

Website: www.karlienvanrooyen.com
Instagram: @karlien_vanrooyen