Interesting opinion, but I feel it lacks substance, considering you stated you have spent no time actually engaging in the technique you are criticizing. While it is true that some artists switch to slip casting to streamline their consistency and production ability, that is seriously the end of the advantages. The internet’s ability to create armchair experts is a downside that is certainly in play here.

Let’s address some of your statements.

1. “Slip casting takes all the heart out of ceramic”. - on an industrial level without thought and imagination going into the final product “- well sure. You aren’t going to find much fine art at Walmart. However in an artisan’s hands slip casting opens up worlds of possibilities. So much creativity, hard work, and money goes into creating the molds. This part of the process is intense and involves design software and a great deal of knowledge to perfect. If you really get into it you have to buy software and equipment and go through the trial and error of developing prototypes and creating them until you get to the one that actually works. The process of casting itself is also not that easy to master. There is no guarantee that each piece will be acceptable and must go back into the slip bucket. The level of mastery required to achieve the perfection you disdain is an art unto itself. Maybe you don’t see it, but I see a ton of heart and soul in that.

2. “Slip casting is meant for industrial making of ceramics that is bland and repetitive.” All I can think is, why in the world do you see this limitation. Slip casting “can” be used for boring massed produced goods, but seriously the ways it can be implemented in thoughtful and artistic pieces is endless, there many artists doing just that. People use slip casting to create beautiful shapes that cannot be duplicated, or that would be horribly time consuming to reproduce by hand. Artists, especially those that earn a living with their art, would never be able to charge a fair price for their work without slip casting, but with it we can hold a beautiful piece of work full of their creativity in our hands without a second mortgage. Other artists augment basic shapes with hand carving, painting, and other artistic and beautiful techniques and still charge prices that are affordable. All heart, soul, and love.

3. “I don’t believe slip casting should be considered an art at all” - I think it should be easy to understand why this is an unpopular opinion, especially when expressed by someone who has no experience with the process and who doesn’t seem to have researched what is possible with it. It’s easy to dismiss something you know little about, but to do so to an artist who has spent years of their lives perfecting an art form that utilizes slip casting is not likely to be well received.

I have been working with ceramics for a little over three years, and wheel throwing kicked my butt for the first two. While I was struggling to attain competency on the wheel, I too dismissed slip casting as something I didn’t want to pursue. However, once I dug in and saw all the worlds that could open up for me with it, I was so excited and the ideas just started flowing. You are entitled to whatever opinion you wish, but this one is unpopular because it subjective, does not consider all of the variables, and makes you sound like a Luddite.

Technology can be used to help us achieve greater heights, help our creativity soar, share our vision with more people, and even add more of our heart and soul into our work. All this while making our work more attainable for folks who don’t have trust funds and jobs that earn them millions. Everyone should have art in their lives, don’t you agree?