Class Title: Ceramic Tic Tac Toe
Instructor: Laken Bridges
Date/Time Tuesday, November 24th from 4:30PM-7:30PM
Cost: $45 per person
Location: Art Lab’s Ceramic Studio
Skill level: Any
Audience: 12-adult
Description: In this class, you’ll learn simple hand building techniques to make your very own physical tic-tac-toe game set. Keep your design classic or personalize it (bacon and eggs? PB &J? Birds and fish? Couples monograms? It’s up to you!) Show it off on your coffee table or gift it this holiday season. Finish early in class? There will be enough supplies for a second round!
Fun facts: Tic-tac-toe traces its earliest roots back to ancient Egypt and the Roman Empire. Archaeologists have discovered 3×3 grids carved into Egyptian roofing tiles dating to 1300 BCE, while ancient Romans played a popular variant called Terni Lapilli (three pebbles at a time) using movable pieces on a grid. The modern paper-and-pencil version we play today solidified in 19th-century England under the name “Noughts and Crosses,” with the first written record appearing in 1858. In the 20th century, the game became widely known in the United States as “tic-tac-toe,” a name derived from an older, unrelated 16th-century English counting game called “tit-tat-toe.”
About the instructor:
Laken Bridges (any pronouns) is an artist-educator with an MFA from Clemson University. They have exhibited in solo, juried, and invitational shows at both a national and international level. Bridges is the recipient of awards including the George R. McDonald Research Fellowship, Cecelia Voelker Award in Art History, and an Arts Achievement Award (Arts Alliance Mountain Empire). They have presented at Southeastern College Art Conference (SECAC), regularly attend the Creative Placemaking Consortium’s conferences, and are a member of Virginia Association of Museums. Prior to joining WKMA in 2018 as Director of Higher Education, they taught undergraduate art. Bridges’ personal art practice engages media ranging from collage, drawing, books, sculpture, and printmaking, to costuming and performance. They reside in Northeast Tennessee surrounded by cats, boxes of art supplies and bins of strange bits and bobs destined to one day become “art”.