stripes and dots

Stephanie DeArmond: Text and Context By Molly Hatch

2010-06-07T12:12:00.003-06:00

BY MOLLY HATCH

Stephanie DeArmond’s work combines ceramics tradition with the ironic humor of appropriated text and kitsch imagery. Employing a wide range of influences from architecture, pop culture and art history, DeArmond is at the helm of an alternative craft movement revitalizing non-traditional materials in the art world. With an audience enamored with her work that ranges from subscribers of Elle and Ready-Made magazines to the readers of the popular blog: Design*Sponge, DeArmond’s sculptural and functional ceramics are not easily defined by the art-school limitations of sculpture, vessel and design.

At first glance DeArmond’s crisp letterforms appear to be factory made, cast from a plaster mold. This is in a large part thanks to her pointed reference to the exquisitely ornate 18^th century porcelain dinnerware of the French Sevres and Vincennes factories. The overt decorative surfaces of DeArmond’s work immediately evoke the preciousness of your grandmother’s china cabinet—stereotypically looked at and rarely used. Upon closer inspection, the decals that appeared to belong to a museum class object reveal themselves to be an odd mishmash of kitschy florals purchased on Ebay—no doubt scraps left over from a hobbyist collection. This is just one of several layers of the high/low contrast in DeArmond’s work. Capitalizing on our expectations, the decals create fields of negative space allowing the viewer to read the surprising messages hidden in the detailed script of the letterforms. Drawn to the work of artists like Margaret Killgallen, Jack Pierson and Jenny Holzer and their use of text, DeArmond takes advantage of our cultural familiarity with traditional porcelain by using it to humorously parade appropriated text from subcultures of song lyrics, street signs and supermarket tabloids. “Something interesting happens when craft interacts with other creative/pop-cultural forces. Like ‘beat-box’ plus ‘oil painting’ plus ‘pom-poms.’ I think about how and why different materials and cultural references get placed into this high/low hierarchy. I find a lot of humor playing with that juxtaposition. Like Clement Greenberg versus Snoop, not that one is better than the other. I don’t know where Greenberg fits into my work, but I do know where Snoop does.”

DeArmond came to ceramics as an undergraduate at the University of Washington in Seattle. The strength of the ceramics area with its focus on sculpture and a strong visiting artist program gave her a good foundation in hand building. DeArmond made an influential move in 2001 to Minneapolis, Minnesota where she worked at Northern Clay Center. Her time there was focused on learning how to throw with porcelain, adding a new skill to her repetoire. She fell in love with porcelain mainly as a material with rebellious potential: “I was looking at a lot of work that was wood-fired or made with dark, earthy colors and for me the work read as very masculine. I wanted to do the opposite, to make super feminine pottery. Some of the [masculine] work [in Minnesota] is thrown loosely on the wheel and very expressive. I wanted simple forms--I wanted something plain. I wanted a clean look that could reference royal china or commercially made objects instead of granola-type chunky tableware. If I could put something subversive in my work I was interested in that--something that related to my experiences with urban life, something rebellious.” She began hand painting her cups with juxtapositions of text and image. “I thought text made the work more interesting than an image alone. I could show a different level of detail--a different line quality than the images I was making. I thought it made a nice visual contrast. It takes the image out of context and makes it more like a diagram or a drawing, it could be something else, more than just an image.”

It wasn’t until DeArmond attended graduate school at the University of Colorado in Boulder, that she began to think of the text as having potential as a three-dimensional form in its own right. “At some point everyone kept telling me to integrate form more with the surface decoration I was working with. I started cutting letterforms out of the middle of vessels, then experimenting with how a lid could reference a letterform, and several objects can form a sentence, like the classic diptych or triptych idea. Finally I dropped the vessel aspect of the work and made letterforms. I see these pieces as sculptural objects more than being about words or typography. I imagine them as vessels referencing historical ceramics, because of how they are made, as hand-built hollow objects.”

The large scale of DeArmond’s letterforms points to a direct lineage to commercial signage, one of her favorite sources for fonts. While in graduate school, the fonts became more decorative, sometimes obscuring the message hidden within. This requires the viewer to study the text as an object before understanding its content. “I like using really decorative text and subversively hiding a message within it--an unexpected message, another layer of meaning. I am thinking about abstracting type as form even more. I love how a typeface can reference a subculture, like you think of heavy metal or skinny jeans. It is great how type can go from having a really utilitarian use to something just poetic, straight poetry.”

Shortly after completing her M.F.A. in 2007, DeArmond’s work received a lot of press both online and in print. This visibility of her work led to at least one solo show and several exhibitions. “I like to think of my work in the context of our culture at large. So it was nice that I had exposure in these different venues [Elle, ReadyMade, New York Times among others]. It was a nice metaphor for looking at my work through the lens of popular culture outside of an academic context. It’s ironic that I’m interested in putting my work in a different context because it is so ceramic-y in nature. But I think its exciting when contemporary ceramic work shows up in mainstream media. It’s an opportunity for new dialog for both insiders and outsiders.”

In 2008, DeArmond moved to the Netherlands for two years while her husband completed his masters in graphic design. She found that the European approach to ceramics as a material was more interdisciplinary which resonated with DeArmond. “There was this different aesthetic there, ceramics is part of design. A lot of designers, like Hella Jongerius, work in ceramics but also design couches and other products. Ceramics is part of design— like interior design, product design. I like thinking about my work in the context of other creative fields. My influences are design, conceptual art and contemporary architecture.”

DeArmond and her family recently moved back to Minneapolis, Minnesota where she has set up a studio a few blocks from home. Settling back into American culture, DeArmond wonders how her time in Europe might affect her work. “Every time I move it changes my perspective. It changes the way I see things. You take a little bit of where you have lived with you. Environment changes your work and who you are as a person. It goes back to memory and idealizing the past. When I make my work I think about embodying joy or happiness. Drawing on happy memories is a natural source because [it makes] you want to keep going, you want to feel good.”

Like many of her contemporaries, DeArmond’s work is grounded in history and personal experience. Her poetic subversion of the hierarchies of ceramics places her in the middle of a clearly postmodern conversation about craft and its place in the art world. No doubt DeArmond will further establish her studio practice taking advantage of the glamour of porcelain and highlighting the idiosyncrasies of American subculture.

Interview with Karen Swyler, by Molly Hatch July 22, 2009

2010-04-10T06:56:00.001-06:00

Interview with Karen Swyler, by Molly Hatch July 22, 2009

M: Why don’t you start by telling us a little bit about yourself and your relationship to clay?

K: I grew up on Long Island. I spent a lot of time at the beach when I was a kid and I spent a lot of time outdoors. I think that the natural world has been a really big influence on my interest in tactile materials--touching things interacting with things. I collected shells. I was always interested in touching and the experience of feeling different materials in my hands. That being said, I think my mom is the biggest reason I am working in clay today. She is also a ceramic artist and she has a ceramics studio in her home. When I was growing up as a little kid I would play in her studio and make clay animals. I didn’t really get interested in it as a possible career until I was in high school. I think its kind of funny because I could have been making pots from the time I was ten years old. She helped me all the way through as I was learning. We were surrounded by her pots growing up--so my sister and I ate off her dinnerware, we drank out of her ceramic mugs and I didn’t think that was unusual, that was just typical. Today I have her old dinnerware. It is a really wonderful experience to eat off of the same plates that I did when I was 12 years old. She keeps making things. She is a retired art teacher, so now she is working in her studio full time. She is massing large amounts of work, so when she comes to visit me she drops off boxes in the garage. And she’ll say, “Oh honey, I just put out a box in the garage for you.” It’s more pots. She’s cycling through things and making new work. Its kind of funny but it is also really a special experience to be able to interact with these things again. It makes me think about the times I spent with my family growing up.

M: So the idea of relationship in your work…

K: Definitely. It is a lot about memory too. I can place myself in those times with those pieces. Growing up surrounded by this stuff that has such a memory is sort of poignant. It can be wonderful and painful at the same time. It actually shaped the things that I am thinking about when I am making my work.

M: So, could you describe some of your work and the ideas behind your making process? How did you evolve into making the work in the way that you do?

K: The evolution to me seems pretty natural. Because I grew up around all these pots, the natural thing for me to do was to make pots. I was making functional work in undergraduate school. In graduate school, I started to think more about the concepts associated with the work that I was making. Right before I went to graduate school my father passed away unexpectedly. I was kind of debating whether or not to go to school. I thought maybe I should stay at home and help my mom and my mom said, “You know, I haven’t ever asked you to do anything for me through this whole thing,” She said “I want you to go to school. I think it will be really good for you to go somewhere else and have this experience.” So I went off to school. I had a lot of unresolved issues thinking about the loss of my dad, which happened two weeks prior to getting into my car and driving out to Colorado. It was kind of a whirlwind for me. So I got there and I started making work and I didn’t really know what I was doing. I was kind of all over the place. I was thinking about my dad and I was trying to continue on. So the first year of graduate school was sort of working through those ideas. The natural result of that was making these pieces that dealt with personal relationships and how people relate to each other in familial and intimate relationships. I was missing my dad and I was thinking about all the things I wish I had said to him. He died unexpectedly so I felt like there was unfinished business. So I started making these things, like tea sets on trays. The trays were dictating a specific space for the cups and the cups began to become metaphors for people and human interactions. I liked the idea that I could make the situation to help foster the types of interactions between people. I wish I had more time. Today people are running around plugged into their ipods or technological devices and don’t spend quality time with each other like we should and I think that is one of the most important aspects of life. To make something to help other people realize that’s what is really important and beautiful is meaningful and I could feel I was doing something worthwhile. That is how the concepts evolved.

(My) work changed a lot later in graduate school. Jeanne Quinn was a really big catalyst for me. She had gone on sabbatical in Europe in 2001 and she came back with all these really wonderful little pots she had collected. Some of them had light glaze colors and some were unglazed. She said ”Karen you’ve got to try this. Look at these surfaces they’re sanded, they’re smooth, there is no glaze on them--I want you to try this,” and I tried it. That was a really big breakthrough for me (because) I started thinking about glaze in the way that I was thinking about the form. (I began) using it as a metaphor for clothing and thinking about raw clay as bare skin, the vulnerable quality that I was trying to get at with the work as well. I was looking at Eva Zeisel’s work in graduate school. She’s my ceramic hero. I just love her stuff. So she was an important influence.

After school, the work started to change but in more nuanced ways. A little bit more slowly, I was sort of fleshing out some of these ideas to a higher level of detail. Conceptually I am still working with similar ideas. The forms are changing now and I am really interested in cutting them apart and I don’t know why, but I love cutting leather hard clay and I love throwing on the wheel. I feel the uniqueness of each handmade pot is really important to the concept of the form. I have done some slip casting from time to time. I will go through stages where I am working on a slip cast project. I don’t want to slip cast these forms because I think that might take something away from their individuality. I am interested in making families of forms where forms have similar characteristics, but they are not identical. I don’t want to sit down and crank out 20 identical things because I think that would deal with a different idea and maybe not where my focus is.

M: The idea of touch is pretty integral in both the surface and the form of your work. That is something you began to talk about a bit. Do you think you could elaborate on that?

K: The feeling of clay in my hands is this wonderful experience. Maybe that is from my childhood, from my urge to be engrossed in my natural environment. Throwing and the touch involved in throwing is important to me. I am interested in fluid surfaces, so I will spend a lot of time sanding my work to make it really smooth and to make it alluring to people. I want the viewer to want to touch this thing. It is okay with me if they touch it. I want it to be the object that draws them in. I think that the look of the surface can do that and again, emphasize the ideas that I am working with. In some of the work you can see the throwing lines. I have been thinking about that a lot recently. I like that they are there. I’ll work to sand the surface to smooth, but clay has a memory and that is interesting to me because that is a concept I am working with. The idea that you can see subtly the memory of my fingers on the clay and my personal experience being put into this thing is really important. So a lot of these cut forms you can see the (throwing) line particularly on the inside. That is such an obvious metaphor for the human body, the interior/exterior. It is revealing this vulnerable interior and you get a glimpse of something personal inside. That is where my touch can be seen in the work.

M: I am curious about what a typical workday is like for you. I know you have told me in the past that you tend to make more in the summer and teach in the winter, could you describe some of your thinking about that decision?

K: I have two different kinds of typical workdays. I have my typical studio workday; I will probably work between 6-8 hours a day in the studio during the summer, 5-6 days a week. I have a studio at Green Mountain College, which is really nice because I get to use the facility. I use the kilns and I have access to the glaze materials. I feel like it is a nice reward for working here. I spend most of my time finishing my pieces and less time throwing them. When I say finishing I mean trimming them, cutting them, making the important decision about what the final shapes of the forms will be, refining them, sanding them--that kind of stuff. I will usually work for three weeks, do a bisque firing and then glaze intensely for a week. Right now I have a really large batch of work and I am just not ready to stop making. I feel like I am really in the groove with making. I’m going to keep making until I am ready to bisque. I don’t really have a set schedule; I work the way I want to work. If I am feeling like I am doing well and I want to crank out a 12-hour day, I can. The flexibility of the summer allows me to do that. I don’t teach in the summer. My goal is to have all this new work I am making now to be glazed and finished before school starts.

In a typical day during the academic year I’m spending all of my time doing things associated with teaching, so I don’t really spend a lot of time on my work. Maybe an hour or two a week, here or there, but it is unrealistic to put that pressure on myself. So my goal over the summer is to try to make a body of work to extend me through to the winter break. I’ll work for a few weeks over the winter break and get a few new pieces during that time. I think it is interesting to shift between teaching and making because by the end of the school year in May I’m really excited to get back into my studio again. I’m looking forward to the break from teaching. By the end of the summer I am looking forward to teaching again. Maybe I don’t have the time to make, make, make, I have time to think and look. When I get back into the studio again, I have mentally worked through those things and am ready to take the next step. I feel like time has to pass to allow time for change. Teaching certainly allows for that. I love teaching and I love sharing my work with my students. I think the fact that they get to see that I am a working artist is really important and inspirational to them. It gets them really excited about doing their own stuff. I think it’s nice that I’m able to make work in my studio here in the building where I teach. I can say, “this is what I am working on,” and I can bring them into my studio and show them what I am working on. It inspires what they do.

M: There is a lot of talk amongst artists and designers about real world training versus academic training. I would like to know what you think that art school gave you (besides the degree) that you might not have gotten in a non-academic setting.

K: I had experience in three different schools for my training. One of the most important things for me was being around other people that were really interested in making work. I suppose the traditional stuff would have been difficult to get if I had been out on my own. Like learning how to do glaze formulation, learning how to fire different kinds of kilns, learning how to talk about work, being exposed to historical and contemporary art… I think it would have been really difficult for me to get those kinds of experiences if I didn’t have that kind of training. It puts you in the situation where that stuff is much more readily accessible than it would be if you were out in the world on your own. One of the most important things for me was being in a system where I felt I was supported. I would say particularly in graduate school and in my post baccalaureate year where I really felt encouraged and enthusiasm from my professors. I was surrounded by people who were working really hard. That was motivational. It’s hard to survive as a studio artist. I knew I never wanted to try to make a living off of my work because I felt like if I did that I might get burnt out and not want to do it anymore. I hoped that would never happen. When I found out how much I really enjoyed teaching, I thought it would make sense to go that route. Graduate school seemed like a natural progression for me. Putting myself in the environment of education, learning and people that were all enthusiastic about similar things was really important. Without that I wouldn’t have been able to affect the change in my work as quickly as I have. For me, it was important to got through the academic system. I think its interesting, when you leave school then there you are, on your own. Finally nobody is telling me my work is bad, nobody is telling me I need to do this or do that, “What do I do now?” It is really wonderful and it is really scary at the same time. That’s why I was really lucky to end up at the Archie Bray Foundation. I was there with other artists who were in a similar situation. Being in a group, working together and working as hard as everybody did, there was fodder for the work to continue progressing. It wasn’t like I was out there on my own. I was part of this community of artists and for me it was really important to be part of a community, to have that experience--sort of a once in a lifetime experience--really helped my career in a number of ways. The publicity I received from being associated with the Archie Bray Foundation was wonderful. The connections I made with the other artists were also important. The Bray was a nice transition from academia to the real world, where now I am working in my studio on my own and facing a lot of these challenges alone.

M: Are there other benchmarks in your career since leaving school that have been major influences or career changing?

K: Being at Archie Bray was important in so many ways. That experience gave me time to make work in an unprecedented way. I didn’t have to deal with classes or other coursework I could just make work. I entered a lot of juried shows when I was at the Bray. I entered every juried show that there was. Initially, I got rejected from a number of them and I just kept doing it over and over again until I started to get accepted. Suddenly my work was being accepted into shows. By the end of my time at the Bray I was getting invited to participate in shows without applying for them. That gave my career a lift in terms of exposure of my work. The transition from that mode of working to working in an academic settling, doing the teaching, doing the administrative work, was a major change that I had to get used to. The first year was the biggest challenge. Now I have established a rhythm, I know what to expect with my classes. Since then, I would say the biggest challenge is not having as involved or as large a community where I teach, it is a little bit more difficult to get the kind of interactions I was getting at the Bray and when I was a student. This is the longest I have lived anywhere since I went to college. Reflecting on the completion of my fourth year here is almost mind-boggling, where did the time go? Here the change in the work is happening a little more slowly and that’s ok, that is to be expected.

M: Everyone has different things that mark their career. Sometimes it is moving somewhere…

K: I think about phases in my life as far as different places that I have lived, my time in Montana, my time in Colorado, and my time here. Being at the Bray was a wonderful little community, but it was so wonderful and so perfect it wasn’t reality. The reality is that sometimes I work long hours, that teaching and making work is a challenge and sometimes a struggle. I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t love because it is such hard work. I don’t think anyone would ever leave the Bray if they didn’t make you leave after two years. I was really fortunate to be there at the time that I was. The other artists there at the time were really devoted to their work. We had a really nice social situation, which was such a bonus.

M: I am curious about things you might have wished you had known when you were leaving school. How has your experience since leaving school different than what you expected it to be?

K:I am doing what I hoped I would be doing. I hoped I would get a college teaching job and I have a college teaching job, I feel really fortunate to have this job. When I finished graduate school there was a period where I was really ill, nobody ever found out what was wrong with me. I was kind of knocked out of my life for about three months. That was about the time I would have been applying for jobs and residencies and I couldn’t do any of it. I remember Jeanne (Quinn) saying “See if you can apply for the Bray. Just do one thing, I know you don’t feel well.” I went back home to stay with my mom for a while, she cared for me and helped me with my application for the Bray. I didn’t apply for any other jobs or residencies. When they accepted me to the Bray I was flabbergasted. I didn’t know where I was going or what was wrong with me. Being accepted to the Bray was so lucky for me because I didn’t have the energy to apply for anything else. From there I applied to every teaching job there was out there. I did 30 job applications. I spent $1000 on slides. My husband was very supportive of me. When I got this job I didn’t really know what to expect. I had never taught full time before. I didn’t have any idea about the obligations in addition to teaching associated with a position like this. When I left the Bray I didn’t really have any notion of wanting to end up in a specific geographic location. I think that some people decide, “I want to live here, and then I will look for a job in that particular location.” I never felt that way. My family is on the east coast and my husband’s family is on the east coast, so we were both really happy that I got a job here in Vermont.

M: How do you see your work in relationship to craft and design as well as the fine arts? I think that for me CU brought al lot of that to the forefront for me because they were questioning that so hard, specifically the relationship ceramics has to both craft and fine art.

K: I felt supported by the ceramics department when I was at CU and I was the only one making pots. It was interesting. Students in disciplines other than ceramics had a really difficult time talking about my work. One of my friends who was in grad school with me said one day, “I’ve got this idea.” I was frustrated some of my peers wouldn’t talk about my work. She said “Karen, take one of your teapots and put it on the floor and then they’ll talk about It.” and I said “Of course they will.” Taken out of context suddenly it was sculpture and she was right. In my M.F.A. thesis defense I remember Scott (Chamberlin) asking me what the difference was between my work and Eva Zeisel’s work. I admire her work and the work she does as a designer, the design of shape line and volume--those kinds of things. She casts multiples and my pieces are handmade, they have finger marks on them and the marks of my touch. There is a different kind of intimacy that is conveyed by my work.

As far as art versus crafts, I try to talk about this with my students. It is so over talked about that you should just get rid of these words and this language. If people can get past the past and the fact that something has a function and that that doesn’t detract from its value, we can appreciate all art in the same way. The problem is history. The hierarchy that has been established in the arts is part of the problem. If we could work to change that it wouldn’t perpetuate itself.

M: It seems to me that the fact that a large amount of your work is functional adds to the conceptual ideas that you are working with.

K: Functional pieces have a third dimension to them, another layer, not just concept and technique, there is a function to them as well. I am making both functional and sculptural work right now. I have been doing that for a while and I continue to do it. It doesn’t bother me. I have been thinking about it and I kind of keep wondering if I should abandon doing this kind of work or that kind of work. Sometimes I feel different ways about it. Right now I am excited about some of the vessels that I am working on that are not functional. But I don’t think that means I need to abandon the functional work. They inform each other. I do think that the venues the work can be shown in change. That is interesting and frustrating. I am still figuring out what venues are appropriate for my work. That continues to be a challenge--when its sculpture versus functional that changes where work can be sold and shown.

M: I am curious what you have done to develop relationships with galleries both on and off line. How that has changed over time?

K: I could probably do more marketing of my work and approaching galleries. I don’t do as much of that as I would like, primarily because I have a teaching job. I have been working with three galleries recently that I think do a good job of representing my work and I continue to keep those relationships going. As far as getting myself out there, I think the website is probably the best way to do that. I have had a website for four years or so. What is nice about the website is you can put work up there and you can let it sit there and people see it, then they contact you. I suppose a privilege of having a salary is that I can pick and choose the opportunities as they come to me. I can be a bit pickier, in terms of figuring out which opportunities are appropriate I’ll look at the work of the other artists that the gallery is showing and see if my work makes sense in that context. I want to make sure I am putting my work in a place where it can be best understood and displayed appropriately.

M: Are there places, artists or other sources you look at for inspiration?

K: I am a bird watcher. That is an important influence on my work. I have been watching birds since I was a child. Why are they interesting to me? There is this amazing variation in their plumages, their shapes and their sizes. They are graceful and elegant. So when I am making work I am thinking about bird form, colors and shapes. It influences the design of the work. There is something about the act of bird watching that I equate with making work. There is this level of patience you need to maintain. Sometimes you will get a little glimpse of this amazing bird you have been waiting and waiting to see. It is this patient perseverance that gets rewarded…sometimes gets rewarded and sometimes it doesn’t. I think that makes it even more meaningful. In terms of thinking of how to mark different moments in time I remember the birds that I saw in Montana, the birds I saw in Colorado and the different birds I have seen here since I have moved to Vermont and how they mark different passages of time. I keep a “life list.” I have this dog-eared bird book. I think my parents got it for me when I was thirteen and I’m still using it. It’s horribly out of date. I should probably use a different book, but I’ve got my whole “life list” in there. Anytime I see a new bird I check it off and it’s a really important thing to me, like a catalog of my experiences. I can remember different places and specific moments in time. I can remember when I saw this bird and that bird—it’s like this cataloging of things collecting of things. I associate it with patience and passage of time. My favorite bird is a cedar waxwing. It’s a little brown bird that has these weird waxy tips on their wings and tails. Biologists think it has something to do with mating. You usually don’t see them when you are looking at them. We are fortunate to have them here so we see them from time to time. They flock high in the trees and they are hard to see but sometimes you get to see the red waxy tips. It is a very subtly colored bird, fleshy colored brownish. It looks like it has been airbrushed. Those subtleties inform glazing decisions that I make.

The influence of my professors was really important and of course my mom. The biggest influence of all, growing up around her pots. My dad too, in a more subtle way. He was a physicist so he had this analytical, scientific way of looking at everything. Before I decided to pursue a career in art I almost went to college for biology to study birds. I thought I would go into science. So there is a part of me that works in that way too. That probably has something to do with this collecting and cataloging of the birds. I think those are the fundamental influences, family. I can appreciate different work individually but experience was the most important influence of all.

Historical ceramics. I love historical ceramics, Islamic and Iznic ceramics in particular. I love that stuff. You might think that’s funny because it’s so heavily patterned. The calligraphy is just amazing. There is this beautiful gestural quality in it that I pick up and enlarge into the line of the form.

M: Any influential books or texts?

K: I just read for a second time now, this fabulous book “Only A Promise of Happiness: The Place of Beauty in a World of Art” by Alexander Nehamas. He’s a philosopher. He talks about the history of beauty in the art world. It’s amazing. His main point is that beauty gets a bad rap and it’s often seen as trite or insignificant. He goes into explanations about why this is and talks about Plato and Kant. I think that modernism was the death of beauty. What I like about it is that it is accessible and easy to understand. It is well written and thoughtful. I agree with his sentiments quite strongly because I want to put beauty into the work that I make, I think its important. What he concludes is that it’s a risk to look at a beautiful object or to own a beautiful object because he says beauty is only a promise of happiness. If you surround yourself with things that you think are beautiful, instead of being rewarded with happiness you are often disappointed. It’s a risk. It’s about love and relationships--all of these things that are all kind of put into these objects that you look at and want. That’s the most interesting thing that I have been reading recently.

M: Any last sort of nuggets of information you can offer up?

K: its funny to try to reflect on where I am and what I’ve done. I am grateful for the support of my family throughout my education. I wouldn’t have been able to end up where I am if it weren’t for them emotionally and financially. I don’t have large college loans. I am very lucky. It is hard enough to live off of a teacher’s salary. That family support was really critical to doing what I want to do. I was really fortunate to have a family that supported me and believe that this was a viable career path. For me now figuring out when to say when and devoting time to other aspects of my life is the next step. Finding a balance is important in everything that you do. I knew that if I tried to be a studio artist I would burn out. I go through phases where I am not excited about my studio work. I will admit that. But I know that that will pass and it does pass. I like the cycle.

Relative Permanence: The Vessels of Karen Swyler By Molly Hatch

2010-04-10T06:55:00.000-06:00

Relative Permanence: The Vessels of Karen Swyler
By Molly Hatch

Working from her faculty studio at Green Mountain College in Poultney, Vermont, Karen Swyler employs what can be described as a thematic approach to her ceramic work. Concentrating on personal relationships and memory, her pieces rely on juxtaposition to one another to be complete both in concept and form. Swyler’s work is clearly grounded in the history of ceramics and the vessel, but through cutting and altering her thrown forms, much of Swyler’s work enters the realm of the sculptural. Her vessels act as metaphoric memoirs--as bodies relating to one another through proximity, palette, line and contour.

Swyler grew up on Long Island spending much of her time at local beaches collecting souvenirs of her outdoor excursions. With an art teacher for a mother and a physicist for a father, Swyler’s parents are no doubt a fundamental influence on her work. Her introduction to clay was crafting small clay animals as a child while her mother worked at the wheel in the ceramic studio in her childhood home. “(My father) was a physicist so he had this analytical, scientific way of looking at everything. Before I decided to pursue a career in art I almost went to college to study birds. So there is a part of me that works in that way too.” Swyler has fond memories of growing up surrounded by her mother’s pots, she and her sister thought nothing of drinking from their mother’s mugs. “I didn’t think that was unusual, that was just typical. Today I have her old dinnerware. It is a really wonderful experience to eat off of the same plates that I did when I was 12 years old.” The consistent conceptual thread of relationships in Swyler’s work is grounded in memory. “To be able to interact with these things again makes me think about the times I spent with my family growing up. I can place myself in those times with those pieces. Growing up surrounded by this stuff that has such a memory is poignant. It can be wonderful and painful at the same time. It has shaped the things that I am thinking about when I am making my work.”

For Swyler, growing up surrounded by pots naturally evolved into becoming a ceramic artist herself. As an undergraduate at Alfred University, Swyler focused on making functional pots and continued that focus through her post baccalaureate year at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth and into her graduate studies at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Just before leaving the east coast to attend graduate school in Colorado, Swyler’s father passed away unexpectedly. With encouragement from her mother, Swyler attended the University of Colorado only two weeks after the loss of her father. “The first year of graduate school was me working through ideas, thinking about my dad, and the natural result of that was making pieces that dealt with personal relationships and how people relate to each other in familial and intimate (ways).” In this important transition time in her work, pots became metaphors for people. For example, through creating two cups with a shared saucer, two people having tea are forced to engage in a more intimate and controlled drinking experience. It was with the development of these pots that Swyler’s work began to foster prescribed interactions between people and pots as well as strong relationships between the pots themselves.

The raw porcelain surfaces and muted glaze palette of Swyler’s vessels developed later on in her graduate career with encouragement from professor Jeanne Quinn. “(Jeanne) had gone on sabbatical in Europe. She came back with all these really wonderful little pots she had collected. Some of them had light glaze colors and some of them were unglazed. She said, ”Karen you have got to try this. Look at these surfaces. They are sanded and smooth, there is no glaze on them. I want you to try this.” That was a really big breakthrough for me (because) I started thinking about glaze in the way that I was thinking about the form.” Swyler began to see raw clay as bare skin and glaze as a kind of clothing. Her use of the raw porcelain surface added a desired layer of vulnerability to the work.

Swyler’s use of color is inherited directly from her love of bird watching, an activity fostered by her parents as a young adult. Her favorite bird is the cedar waxwing for its subtle coloring that often informs her glazing decisions. The male waxwing is a little brown bird that has brightly colored tips on its wings and tail. These red and yellow tips are often hidden from view, tucked under its flesh and brown colored body and may be revealed in courtship. “There is something about the act of bird watching that I equate with making work. There is a level of patience you need to maintain. Sometimes you will get a little glimpse of this amazing bird you have been waiting and waiting to see. It is this patient perseverance that gets rewarded. Sometimes gets rewarded and sometimes it doesn’t. I think that makes it even more meaningful.”

After completing her M.F.A. in December of 2002, Swyler left Colorado for a residency at the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena Montana. As a Lilian Fellow, Swyler took advantage of the creative freedoms integral to the residency. “(I had) time to make work in an unprecedented way. I didn’t have to deal with classes or other coursework, I could just make work. The Bray was a nice transition from academia to the real world. Now I work in my studio on my own and face a lot of the challenges (of making art) alone.” At the end of her two-year residency, Swyler sent out 30 applications to teaching positions throughout the country. Only two years after receiving her M.F.A, Swyler accepted a full time position at Green Mountain College in Poultney, Vermont where she is currently the Program Director in the Department of Visual Art and is in the midst of her fifth year running the ceramics area.

Settling into juggling her career as a ceramics professor and artist, Swyler has deveopled two very different kinds of workdays. During the summer, she focuses on making work for shows that she has scheduled for the upcoming year. Spending roughly six days a week in the studio for eight or so hours at a time, Swyler’s studio practice is uninterrupted by the diversions of academic responsibilities. Her goal is to complete a body of work before school starts up in September that will carry her through until the winter break in December. She works less frequently in her studio during the academic year. “It is interesting to shift between teaching and making. (My) ideas that are fresh and new settle and I have some time to think about them. Maybe I don’t have the time to make, make, make. I have time to think and look at (the work). When I get back into the studio again, I have mentally worked through those things and am ready to take the next step. I feel like time has to pass to allow for change.”

Swyler’s elegant groupings of vessels continue to employ similar conceptual and formal elements to that of the traditional still life. By focusing on the nuanced relationship between two or three forms she encourages close inspection and even touch. Her employment of negative space, small concentrations of color and subtle lines drawn between pots encourage the viewer to look more closely as the pieces reveal themselves slowly over time. Inspired by ceramic history, family and ornithology, Swyler’s poignant vessels encourage the exploration of our intimate lives.

2010-01-27T19:09:00.000-07:00

January 20, 2010

Deborah Schwartzkopf: Full Circle

by Molly Hatch Read Comments (0)

Pitchers, to 15 in. (38 cm) in height, wheel-thrown and altered parts combined with patterned slabs that were shaped with hump molds.

Deborah Schwartzkopf seems to feel most at home in the back of her glossy black pick-up. I met her for the first time as she was pulling pots out of the back of her truck to set up our shared sale table for “Salad Days” at the Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts in Newcastle, Maine. In the back of her truck under the cover of a cap, a platform was installed to create a comfortable place for sleeping during her long drives across the country and weekend-long pottery sales. Under the sleeping platform, Schwartzkopf stores everything from a small bag of camping spices to her glazes and a back stock of pots. That evening, we were both invited to stay with fellow potter Ingrid Bathe. I happily accepted the cushy place to sleep while Schwartzkopf opted to make her bed in the back of her truck parked in their driveway, insisting that she would be most comfortable there. Her truck has likely been the most consistent roof over her head since Schwartzkopf finished her MFA at Penn State in 2005.

Schwartzkopf darts a thrown cylinder that will become a tapered section of a pot at the Walnut Creek Art Center.

Schwartzkopf’s first introduction to ceramics was through a high school running start program in Seattle, Washington. She transferred to the University of Alaska in Anchorage in 1999 where her studies in ceramics intensified after taking a beginning-level course with visiting artist Pam Pemberton. While her studies at the University of Alaska were mainly with Steve Godfrey and Robert Banker, Schwartzkopf worked with Kris Bliss and Peter Brondz who mentored her career as a studio potter outside of the University. “(Working with them) really brought me into clay, because I needed a practical application for my degree,” she explains, “I came from a real working family and the whole idea of being an artist was pretty foreign. . . . My mom taught me to sew when I was young. My dad is a woodworker. I grew up making useful objects. My grandparents immigrated, they came from a life where you make or grow what you need. To give handmade gifts was a way of showing affection and caring in my family . . . so I needed something that was real and practical. That was really what drove me into ceramics,” she continues, “I felt like I had a way to exist. I loved it. It was a way to make it turn into a life instead of just something you study in school. I think that happens with a lot of potters. It’s not just the artwork, you love the lifestyle.”

This article appeared in Ceramics Monthly magazine’s February 2010 issue. To get great content like this delivered right to your door, subscribe today!

While living in Montana, Schwartzkopf transported ware to the Archie Bray kilns through the snow in her truck—in four-wheel-drive, low gear.

It was during her undergraduate career that Schwartzkopf developed her distinct approach to her complex utilitarian forms. As a result of the separate handbuilding and wheel-throwing studios in the ceramics department at the University of Alaska, Schwartzkopf developed two bodies of functional work, each constructed in very different ways. “It was good because I experimented a lot more in totally unrelated ways with the same material.” As she grew as a student, Schwartzkopf merged those two processes within the same body of work, incorporating her inherited skills as a seamstress into her process. “Sewing is something I think particularly influences (my work). It starts with this flat two-dimensional piece that you turn into a hollow form. So learning how to fit flat material to a body is really similar to making paper patterns into voluminous pots.” Inspired by industrial designer Eva Zeisel and the buildings of architect Frank Ghery, Schwartzkopf’s pots marry the clean lines of modern architecture and the asymmetry of the natural world. The result is a vocabulary of forms that sing of the softness and malleability of wet clay and retain the rigidity of vitrified porcelain.

Vase, 5½ in. (14 cm) in height, thrown and altered base with slab-built openings.

Shortly after finishing school, it became clear to Schwartzkopf that she needed to develop the surfaces of her work and refine her handbuilding skills. In a move that introduced her to the ceramics community beyond Alaska, Schwartzkopf packed up her truck and left to do a year of independent study at San Diego State University in California. During this time, Schwartzkopf focused on glaze chemistry, creating her distinct vocabulary of oxidation glazes ranging from glossy bright accents to soft pastel matts. “I want my work to look like it could be made out of the glazes. I want the work to look natural—where variation is (seeming to) occur because of a natural process. Whether it is because it grew like that or because the wind blew on it . . . I want the (glaze) accents to float on the body of the piece so it creates depth based on color and contrasts of shiny versus matt.”

Teapot, 11 in. (28 cm) in height, handbuilt with multiple slabs shaped over hump molds.

This concentrated effort to develop her palette proved worthwhile as she was accepted to the MFA program at Penn State University starting in the fall of 2003. Schwartzkopf is clear that her reasons for attending graduate school were grounded in developing her career as a studio potter. “I wanted two years of feedback and practice before I had to be a real potter. It led me into a deeper search of myself. I feel like in the school system (compared to working on my own) my learning curve was a lot higher. . . . Everyone else around me was failing too, and I could learn from their mistakes and get more feedback.” Her graduate school experience pushed her to refine conceptual ideas about the relationship between form and surface as well as the importance of color in her work.

After finishing her MFA in 2005, Schwartzkopf traveled to China as a resident artist at the San Bao Ceramic Art Institute in Jingdezhen, directly followed by a residency at the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts in Helena, Montana, as a Lilian Fellow. Schwartzkopf describes her experience at the Bray as a career watershed. “When I got out of graduate school, I got into the Bray and got a fellowship, which was my highest goal. It happened, and it seems completely unbelievable . . . the Bray has given me a supportive community. It was amazing interacting with so many artists and meeting people from all over with so much energy, experience, and skill.” To propel her career forward and begin to earn a living as a potter, Schwartzkopf researched galleries that she felt her work might fit into and sent out over 15 packets in January of her first year at the Bray. “I was really well received—actually a little too well; I had five or six shows that year and (my career) kind of snowballed from there.”

Vase, 3 in. (8 cm) in height, thrown and altered base with slab-built openings.

Since leaving the Bray in 2007, Schwartzkopf has taught as a visiting professor at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston as well as the Harvard Community Arts Program in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In addition to teaching in universities, she has taught numerous workshops. She has also been a resident artist at the Ceramic Center in Berlin, Germany, and Mudflat Studio in Somerville, Massachusetts. Schwartzkopf has come full circle in her recent move across the country back to her hometown of Seattle, Washington, where she is an artist-in-residence and instructor at Pottery Northwest for the next two years. The nomadic nature of her lifestyle has become an important part of Schwartzkopf’s understanding of her place in the world as a potter. “I feel like you have to strive, and it’s worth it. I look at all the jobs that people do, and I feel so lucky that I get to make pottery. I enjoy the process as a whole.” With her approach to clay, Schwartzkopf stretches, cuts, and folds the material into new and exciting utilitarian forms, challenging us to pay closer attention to the moments and places that accent our day to day.

For further information about Deborah Schwartzkopf, and to see more of her work, see www.debspottery.com.

the author Molly Hatch is a potter and author living in Florence, Massachusetts. See www.mollyhatch.com.

Want to read more about what Deborah has to say about her work?
Check out the full transcript of Molly Hatch’s interview with Deborah Schwartzkopf.

Interview with Deb Schwartzkopf

2010-01-27T19:08:00.000-07:00

January 20, 2010

Interview with Deborah Schwartzkopf at Mudflat Studio, July 2009

by Molly Hatch Read Comments (0)

This is a full transcript of Molly Hatch’s interview with Deborah Schwartzkopf that was done in preparation for the article “Deborah Schwartzkopf: Full Circle“, which appeared in Ceramics Monthly magazine’s February 2010 issue. To get great content like this delivered right to your door, subscribe today!

Molly Hatch: Start by telling a bit about yourself and your relationship to clay. How you started…

Deborah Schwartzkopf: How I started…(the) first time I was ever in a ceramics class I was in high school in a running start program (you can take college classes while still in High School). But I didn’t really latch onto it (clay). I also took photography and political science and drawing.

When I was 19 or 20, I transferred to Alaska after a year and a quarter at school in Seattle. I needed to kind of have some space to away from, you know, the roots. I needed to have other people informing my life. I wanted to be alone which is a good place to do that, in Alaska. So I went there and took a class with Pam Pemberton–a beginning ceramics class–and I really liked it so I kept taking (ceramics) classes. I also took classes in sculpture and jewelry. Steve Godfrey and Robert Banker were my two main teachers up there. That’s where I really started studying intensively. I had two mentors up there Kris Bliss and Peter Brondz. So that really brought me into clay because I needed a practical application for my degree. I came from a real working family and the whole idea of being an artist was pretty foreign. So I needed something that was real and practical–a cause and effect situation. That was really what drove me into ceramics…

M: So that was part of your motivation to make utilitarian pots?

D: Huge motivation, because I felt like I had a way to exist I guess, it wasn’t just…. I loved it (making art) it was a way to make it turn into a life instead of just something you study in school.

M: Interesting parallel, I think I had a similar reason for making functional work as well…

D: Yeah I think that happens with a lot of potters. It’s not just the artwork you love the lifestyle. The lifestyle that sounds so wonderful like having a beautiful home, you know with a garden and having roots which I have, but they are all over the place. They aren’t just in one place.

M: I suppose that’s something they (universities) don’t really prepare us for…

D: No, not exactly, hah hah…

M: Do you think that your move to Seattle will slow some of that moving down for you?

D: I’m not exactly sure. I’m moving there with Daniel, my boyfriend and I’m reluctant to say I’m settling there but it is also something that I want. So I don’t know, I’m just going there with kind of open expectations to see what happens. I think we are hoping to stay there for two years, maybe a little longer. It’s different when you are making decisions with somebody. I have been moving every single year for the last three years. I’m really tired of that and I can’t say that is over. I’d like to not move around so much…

M: Right, but it’s an opportunity for a long-term position?

D: It’s up to two years.

M: So to get back to your talking about your interest in utilitarian clay, could you expand on your ideas, your making process, how you came to working the way you do and describe how your process has evolved?

D: In Alaska there were two ceramics studios because of a merger between a Community College and a Vo-Tech College. One studio was at one end of the campus and it was more predominantly hand built and sculptural (clay) work and the other side was high fire wheel thrown, functional. I took classes in both (studios) and I had two separate bodies of work. One was wheel thrown and the other was pots, but they were more sculptural than functional–they were only hand built. So I feel like that set me up for being able to experiment in a lot of ways. (It) was also irritating–having to work in two studios at the opposite ends of the school but it was good because I experimented a lot more in totally unrelated ways with the same material. I feel like as a process I merged those two things so now I do a lot of both within the same body of work. I throw a lot of parts but I also hand build a lot of parts with slabs. So that was the beginning of my process as far as construction goes.

M: Sewing and other craft processes influence your work as well?

D: I come from a family of people that make things. My mom taught me to sew when I was really young. My dad is a woodworker. I grew up making stuff. My grandparents immigrated, they came from a life where you make everything, all the blankets, I mean anything you can make, you make. So I did a lot of handcrafts like crocheting and other things. I feel like if there was an opportunity to make something for someone it was made. It was a way of showing affection and caring between people in my family. Food was the same way. Making as much food as possible was a way of showing love. It came out of a family that struggled, that food was a gift. Sewing was something I think particularly influenced the way that I see things because it starts with this flat 2-D piece that you turn into a hollow form that moves around and doesn’t just have straight lines necessarily. So learning how to fit flat paper like things to a body is really similar to making paper patterns into volumous pots.

M: This is a tough question to answer because you have been moving around so much…there are key aspects to each of our studios that we set up and always keep the same. What do you require in your studio space?

D: That’s interesting because this space is the smallest space I’ve ever worked in and it really taught me the baseline of what I need. I need a lot of shelving. I built all the shelving in the studio. I painted the walls because the color of the walls influence how big something feels I painted it yellow and white which makes it have a brighter feeling. I really want windows. Making every space do something. Every space has to have an actually function. I always need a table. I do so much slab work that I need a space to roll out slabs. A wheel and a banding wheel are two really important tools. I also have a small box of hand tools. It’s all I need every time I do a workshop….Square bats, I can throw 50 cups and not have them spread out really far.

M: So when you are throwing you would throw on a bat?

D: I learned not to throw on bats but I started throwing on bats because I throw a lot of my work without bottoms and its makes it more difficult to pick up with out squishing it. I don’t want that kind of fingerprint on the work, I don’t want it to look messy and sloppy.

M: So your forms are often made with the bottoms added?

D: Yeah…

M: What does your normal workday look like?

D: I’m a really bad person for routines. Seriously…I try to have some goals for the day, which is one of the only routines I have. It varies so dramatically. I can’t glaze and make things here. So there isn’t a steadiness for making things for deadlines. I try to make extra for deadlines. Here my rhythm has been really strange because I have to stop and then haul everything to another facility to glaze.

M: Which has been Mass Art?

D: Which has been Mass Art.

M: You really haven’t been doing firings here?

D: No, I only did one glaze firing here…Mass Art has this gigantic glaze room and a spray booth that works really well. I store all my glazes there. I have 20 glaze buckets. For me it just made sense. Even in other facilities where I have everything in the same space I always work cyclically and make work for three or four, maybe five weeks. In my best health I fire a glaze kiln every month and a half or two months. January, February and March I just got through Christmas and I have to breathe. Usually it’s pretty cyclic.

M: You are firing gas kilns?

D: I fire in oxidation. I find that gas kiln oxidation firings aren’t as clean as electric and I think that’s good for my glazes that they get a tiny bit of variation as opposed to an electric kiln.

M: Do you want to talk a little about your forms? You have incredibly smooth surfaces on your work, could you talk about that?

D: My glazing…I guess I want my work to look like it has a skin on it. Like it could be made out of the glazes. I don’t want it to look super plasticky. I want it to look somewhat natural, where the variation is occurring because of a natural process. Whether its because it grew like that, or because the wind blew on it which happens when you spray glazes…or because fishes have speckling on the top of their back and on their bellies. (I am) referring to those sorts of natural markings. I also want to reference the more technological world. That is where the accents (on the surfaces) come in. Well actually, those are similar to bird markings too, its kind of a combination between those two things. Looking at things like traffic lights or brake lights and what they’re telling you what they are lighting up. What other markers I see around. Even how extension cords are orange so you don’t trip on them as often. Like bird markings are a seductive call if you will, or even wearing lipstick. I want those accents to kind of float in the body of the piece so it creates depth based on color and shiny versus matt. So, often the accents are shiny the overall glazes are matt.

M: It seems like you are doing a similar thing in the forms as well. Where you have fluidity, or an organic quality, but then also a rigidity that you might find in architecture.

D: Yeah.

M: Do you think that living in Boston or living in the city has affected you one way or another or are you holding onto some space from before?

D: I don’t know. I have this personal theory that when you get out of the place you are is when it actually affects you more. I feel like right now maybe I am still thriving off being in Ohio and the country more you know? But I don’t really know, I do really like looking at the buildings here. I guess when I think of the technological aspect I’m not really thinking of it always in terms of buildings that I see. It is more the contrast I see between people-they are these soft squishy things but they have teeth. Or even with birds, they are these puffy, fluffy things but they have this (hard) beak. I really like Frank Ghery’s buildings. He is an architect that I seek out.

M: Is that because of his use of materials or shape?

D: Mostly shape. I feel like there is this great parallel between how buildings are often squares with box windows and box doors, but his aren’t. But (his) still function and they inspire people because of the space they take up and the space they give. I think pottery can do that too. Based on tradition, you can take (clay) and morph it into something that’s not necessarily what is expected of it. It can make you more aware. It can change the way you see what you are holding because its not what you would expect.

M: Like a traditional cup versus non traditional…

D: Sure. I’m really interested in form. I approach my work really formally. It is often out of shape and surface that I am moving forward. I really want everything to function. I am really fascinated by that tug of war between surface and form and form functioning.

M: Its rare that I see a physical texture in the surface of your work. I feel like there is a glaze that might have a texture but there is a lot of visual texture, through mottling or dots. Why no texture?

D: Well I just don’t have a knack for it. I think my professor Steve Godfrey in Alaska uses texture in a really beautiful way. I feel like that’s the only kind of texture I could imagine liking. Then it would look just like his work! So I guess its something I have stepped away from. I also like the feeling of the surface when its just this taught curve it feels like its opening, I’m referencing flower petals and how they expand and have that really high energy when they are just starting to pop. I guess I’m just not that interested in texture. And also my process doesn’t lend itself to texture because I’m always scraping and surforming. I want my pots to look fluid, but I’m not fluid. I have enough going on in the pots right now.

M: One of the things we have talked about is school and education. There is talk in the larger craft world beyond ceramics of real world training versus formal training. You and I have chosen academic routes. It would be interesting to hear about undergrad and continuing on to get your masters. What is some of your thinking around formal education and its relationship to teaching and making pots?

D: My experience in school was fantastic. Every place I went. In Alaska, in San Diego, in Pennsylvania…

M: Was San Diego a post baccalaureate?

D: It was an independent study for a year and I went there because I wanted to study glaze chemistry. In the programs I was in, there was a lot of freedom. They were really studio-based and I spent all my time working in the studio. I didn’t go to graduate school so I could teach. I went to graduate school because I wanted two years of feedback and practice before I had to be a real potter. It kind of led me into a deeper search of myself, which I found really meaningful. Being in the school system as compared to working on my own, I feel like my learning curve was a lot higher because everyone else around me was failing too and I could learn from their mistakes and get lots more feedback. I felt like it was a good opportunity. I guess I am also intensely competitive, so it was a way I was introducing myself to the ceramics circle, and that wasn’t working on my own– hoping they would find me. I was pushing really hard to get myself into every single circumstance that I could to grow and to get my work more known. I have to say though, without the experience of working for those two potters, I don’t think I would have done what I did….

M: The mentors that you had?

D: The mentors that I had taught me that I could make a living and have a balanced life. Which is not what I have yet, but it’s my goal and so that is what really keeps me going. Even though I have chosen a more academic route. My real hope is to someday offer some sort of work situation to somebody if they want to work in a ceramics studio and see how somebody actually makes it happen. I’d like to teach maybe one class on the side. I don’t think that full time teaching is what I’m the best at. I love it. My one year at Ohio was wonderful. I feel like I learned more than anyone around me. It was really challenging. I think that the school system is really important because it challenges you to think, to improve your ideas. I think that sometimes it doesn’t cover enough of the basics about efficiency. What you are actually going to do with this–how you can really live off of what you do? I think that learning how to live off of what you do can sometimes be really stunting. I think there is just a really fine balance that’s hard and I think it’s very individual. Some people do really well immediately selling work. I didn’t really sell my work a lot until I was at the Bray. I had a long time where I wanted to sell my work and I sold a few things. Most of it I gave to my mother and I think that was healthy for me because it allowed me to experiment longer without consequences and make things that didn’t really work for longer. I think everybody has to seek out their own way. I think both are valuable and if you can do both, so much the better.

M: One of the things I’m interested in your practice as a studio potter is what your relationship to marketing is, how you are using the internet as a tool and generally your approach. I have had to figure out the different ways to navigate my career as a potter on my own through talking with people. It sounds like you had somewhat of a similar experience?

D: Penn State is where I went to grad school. I feel like my professors were incredibly supportive but at the same time there wasn’t a lot of “in order to succeed you should do this.” And partly because I don’t think its that clear cut. Everybody’s paths are different. I was really lucky to get the Bray right away I didn’t have a reality kick as hard as some people might. When I was there I decided that I needed to get my work out there because I made a lot of work and nobody knew where it was and nobody knew who I was. I needed to change that, so I used the internet to research galleries. I looked at a ton of galleries and sent out about fifteen applications in January when I knew everybody was going to be slow because I don’t want to be sitting at the bottom of the pile. I wrote them a short letter saying “I think my work might do well here can you take a look at my images.” I was really well received, actually a little over well! I kind of got myself into a…I had five or six shows that year and its kind of snowballed from there. I also entered every single juried art show there was, which cost a fortune. At that point I felt like I was investing in my career. So that’s what I did. If the juried show went well and sold, sometimes I would call and ask if they would like more work. At the very end of grad school I got a website which cost me a fortune–well for me. I also paid the guy who built the initial page to give me lessons on how to maintain the site. He taught me how to make the gallery with images. Now I can add and totally change everything. I keep up with that which makes me insane. Every time I move, I send a card which keeps people updated as well.

M: Describe some of the more career changing moments or places since leaving school. Clearly the Bray and teaching. Is there anything else since leaving school that stands out in your mind as career changing?

D: I feel like I am more of a cumulative effect person. The Bray was a huge thing for me to launch myself off of, but Ohio was equally difficult and wonderful at the same time. Being in a school system after two years of making was a challenge. Learning from having to do critiques was really amazing and being in the atmosphere of questioning every single thing again. I hadn’t been really doing that as much. I had just been living off of all my questions from grad school at the Bray. Then coming back here, I felt like I have got to do the same thing, I’ve got to let go of the questions, at least internalize them. I feel like that is something that I really enjoy, although I don’t want to keep traveling for a job and keep doing residencies. I’ve got to figure out something else…

M: Well you have done a lot of travel–we haven’t really talked about that …

D: I feel like that affects me more than anything. Each time I think this time it will be easier because I have done it so much and its not. There’s a whole new system to learn a whole new social circle to learn and a whole new everything. The things that should be easy aren’t, then you break your foot (Schwartzkopf broke her foot shortly after beginning her residency at Mudflat in the fall of 2008)…every single move has taught me so much even simple things like learning what other people are into like restaurants or music. It s amazing to be in this city and learning about all the museums and how to get in free. The traveling stretches me a lot. I really like it. It makes me nuts but right now I’m completely ready to move. It’s not because I don’t like it. I’m just ready. When I say that I’m not sure if I’m settling in Seattle its because I’m not sure that I know how.

M: What were your expectations for your career as an undergrad and how have they been realized or not realized now that you are here?

D: As an undergraduate I wanted to be a potter. Just like my mentors. I actually built a cabin, a studio and a kiln up there (in Alaska) and left it all because of relational difficulties and because I realized I needed to be in a more “in the loop” atmosphere. I mean, Alaska is fabulous, but one of the reasons it’s fabulous is because it’s removed. That’s also a less wonderful thing if you are trying to learn and inject yourself into a community that is not where you are. I took down my kiln and rebuilt it in someone else’s place and left. I did that special student (in CA). It was difficult but good for me. My expectations when I got out of graduate school…at that point I got into the Bray and got a fellowship which was my highest goal–and it happened! It seems completely unbelievable. I didn’t really now what I would do after that. I am swayed easily by people and opportunities. That is kind of what I am doing right now. I am working intuitively at this point.

I really want to make pots the most. I really feel like I need the social part of being an artist which being a potter doesn’t always give you. Whether it’s teaching or something else.

M: So we talked about a few of your influences. Are there other artists or designers or places you look for inspiration?

D: I really appreciate strong women like Lucy Rie and Eva Zeisel. I’ve read up on a bit and look to for inspiration. The fact that they succeeded in their age and the age they lived in. They made work that’s beautiful in really different ways. I have to say I’ve had so many good teachers. In grad school I had Liz (Quackenbush) and Chris (Staley). But John Utgaard was there. I have just gotten to work with so many great people.

When I was first starting ceramics I took every single workshop I could possibly afford. I like paying attention to what people are making but I really try hard to just be in the world. I’m really interested in the slow food movement. My hobbies take so much of my extra time.

M: Future projects? Anything under wraps that you are working on?

D: I’m trying to figure out working larger using similar techniques which is difficult, it is not similar. Someday I’m going to go to Kohler. When I first applied there I had this (she points to a large hand built piece in her studio) in my brain but I didn’t have any sort of image to apply with. I want to get a studio. I want to try to have a home.

M: So we’ll keep an eye out for bigger pieces?

D: Yeah.

M: Are there any books or texts that you read for inspiration?

D: I have been reading Eva Zeisel “On Design” It’s really a good book. I recently read a “Natural History of the Senses.” Studio Potter-Everybody should get Studio Potter.

M: Do you have any advice for people launching themselves or getting started?

D: Work hard. I think hard work pays off. I don’t have any tricks. I feel like putting yourself into really educational situations that will make you go insane will stretch you really really hard. I think being stretched hard–as far as how much information you can absorb and learn from is really important for me. Inundating yourself, because you can never absorb everything, even if you’re only giving yourself three things. If you are giving yourself 25, then maybe you are absorbing 20 of them.

M: It seems like you have persisted. Working hard is an underlying thing you appreciate…

D: Yeah, I feel like you have to strive and its worth it. All the time I go around here and I look at all the jobs that people do, and I feel so lucky that I get to make clay. I enjoy the process as a whole. Other people value potters bringing attention to what we do every day.

M: Thanks….

This interview is supplemental to Molly Hatch’s article, “Deborah Schwartzkopf: Full Circle“, which appeared in Ceramics Monthly magazine’s February 2010 issue. To get great content like this delivered right to your door, subscribe today!

Workshop with Molly Hatch at 4th and Clay

2010-01-27T19:06:00.002-07:00

Molly Hatch Cover Article of Pottery Making Illustrated November 2009

2009-10-16T20:19:00.001-06:00

October 7, 2009

2-D to 3-D: Using Image Transfer and Mishima Techniques to Make Drawings on Pottery

by Molly Hatch Read Comments (10)

If you’re drawn to drawing on clay surfaces, but haven’t quite mastered the ability to get your two-dimensional ideas onto your three-dimensional forms, this post is for you. During her undergraduate years at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, potter Molly Hatch mostly focused on drawing. Then in her final year, she learned how to combine drawing and printmaking skills for surface decoration on pottery, and the rest, as they say, is history. Molly went on to earn her MFA in ceramics and just recently finished a residency through the prestigious Arts/Industry Program at John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.

In today’s post, an excerpt from the November/December 2009 issue of Pottery Making Illustrated, Molly explains how she uses image transfer and Mishima techniques to create her drawings in clay. Plus she shares her slip and engobe recipes. - Jennifer Harnetty, editor.

Mishima is a traditional Korean slip-inlay technique. The Korean pots you see with mishima decoration typically use several colors of slip in the same piece. I basically use the same black slip recipe for all of my mishima drawing. I always reference a pattern when I am drawing on my pots and sometimes I use a template to transfer a detail of the pattern.

In this case, I am using the template to transfer the bird in the pattern onto the cup surface. I make my templates by laminating my own drawing of a found pattern. This is helpful if you are trying to make multiples, but still requires a lot of drawing and interpretation because you are drawing on a three-dimensional surface.

Be sure to download your free copy of the Buyers Guide to Ceramic Supplies and Materials for a comprehensive listing of manufacturers and suppliers, along with valuable studio resources.

	A laminated paper template of your drawing can help maintain consistency in a design when transferring images to a set. All of my mishima is done when the pots are a dry-leather hard. Usually they are ready to draw on just after trimming is finished.

	Gently wrap the laminated pattern around the cup and use a quill or dull-tipped pencil to trace the image, taking care to position the image exactly where you would like it to be on the cup.

	Remove the template to reveal the transferred tracing image. Use the transferred image as a guide for drawing deeper lines into the surface.

	After going over the tracing, finish off the rest of the drawing freehand, using the template as a visual reference. You do not need to draw very deeply into the surface for mishima to work. I often feel as though I am just scratching into the surface of the clay.

	Brush the surface of the pot with a soft-bristled brush to get rid of crumbs, which could mar the surface.

	Apply a layer of stain over the drawing using a wide brush. Once the pot has dried back to the dry leather-hard state and any sheen on the slip has gone, wipe away excess slip from the surface of the pot using a clean sponge. You need to clean the sponge often during this process to avoid streaks on the surface of the pot

Drawing Tools
There are many tools you can use to incise the surface of the pot for mishima. I have gone through stages of preferring particular tools. Pencil-style X-Acto knives, commercial stylus carving tools (sold in ceramic supply stores), African porcupine quills (available at Santa Fe Clay) amongst others. My current drawing tool of choice is a calligraphy pen with exchangeable metal tips. It is the same kind of pen that you dip in ink and would use to do traditional calligraphy; I just use it on clay instead.

Pictured here (from left to right): X-acto knife for drawing into the leather-hard clay; African porcupine quill (I got mine from Santa Fe Clay) for drawing and transferring images into the leather hard clay (different line quality); $1.00 Chinese brush for brushing on the slip after I have drawn into the leather hard clay; Extra soft men’s shaving brush for brushing away the crumbs of clay (I got mine at a flea market because really nice ones are really expensive!); natural sponge: for wiping away the slip after I have brushed it onto the pot.

Adding Color
On many of my pots, I add color accents to the mishima pattern through painting. I do all of my painting after the pot has been bisque fired and before I do any glazing. For the color, I use a cone 04 vitreous engobe that I mix myself, but commercial underglazes also work well. If you use an engobe, combine it in a 1:1 ratio with mixing-medium using a palette knife until it is well mixed. The mixing-medium helps make the engobe more brushable and thins it out so that you can build up color in layers, similar to painting on canvas. This layering makes for more solid colors with less visible brush strokes. The engobe recipe that I use tends to flux a bit at cone six but it can still be used to fill in the line drawings on the bottoms of pots. After I finish adding the color, I use a clear glaze over everything then fire the work in oxidation to a hot cone six.

Slip and Engobe Recipes

Andrew Martin’s Brushing Slip (up to cone 10)
Raw Material
Ferro Frit 3110				30%
Ball Clay				20%
Mason Stain (for black use MS 6600)				50%
Total				100%
Add:
CMC Gum				2%

Vitreous Engobe (cone 04 to cone 6)
Raw Material
Talc				15.3%
Ferro Frit 3110				18.4%
Ball clay (Kentucky #4 or OM 4)				15.3%
EPK Kaolin				5.1%
Glomax (Calcined Kaolin)				25.5%
Silica				20.4%
Total				100.0%
Add:
CMC (dry)				1%
Macaloid (dry)				1%

See images of Molly Hatch’s finished work at www.mollyhatch.com.

An expanded version of this article is included in the November/December 2009 issue of
Pottery Making Illustrated.

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American Craft Magazine Interviews: Sanam Emami

2009-04-21T10:15:00.002-06:00

STORY BY Molly Hatch

Can you tell our readers a little bit about yourself?
I am a studio potter and professor at Colorado State University. Except for the one year I lived in New York City, I have been teaching full-time since finishing graduate school in 2002.

For the past four years, I have traveled to Iran in the summers to see my family. The immersion of speaking Farsi and becoming engrossed in the daily life in Tehran for one month each year has had an impact on me. Although I was born in Iran, I left when I was six and had not returned since 1981. The visual and material culture in the Middle East has followed a different historical trajectory than that of the west. I am often drawn to Pre-Islamic and Islamic art in Iran and attempt to incorporate elements of these influences into my work. The influences are at time visually apparent on my forms and the patterns that are embedded in the wet clay, and at other times, they are only present in the method of juxtaposing selected patterns and images on the surface with silk-screened imagery. Some of my current work places abstract ornament next to more photographic images of nature. I am interested in playing with the idea of representation within the broad scope of Islamic art and architecture.

Can you describe your work, some of the ideas behind your making process and how you came to working in this way?
I work primarily in clay. Sometimes, my curiosity about other disciplines and activities such as silk screening and printmaking in general; on paper, on walls, on clay leads the work in different directions; however, I find myself focusing the majority of my studio time making utilitarian pottery and tiles.

Function is the predominant concept that ties my work together. Function and abstract ornamentation are constants. The idea of function is elastic and in flux. It is a starting point, a system that allows for endless imaginative solutions and variations. Within this framework, questions of form and surface arise and there is a play between the aesthetic and functional qualities of the pot or tile. My pots are time consuming, layered with multiple processes and yet still designed for daily use.

Can you describe a typical work day?
During the school year, my studio days are very divided. I work best when I have consecutive hours of studio time, but you adjust and find a way to get some things done. Currently my studio is at school and this means that at some point the studio is part of the office and the two are never completely separated. The winter break and summer break allow for a very different kind of studio day. That is the time when I can forget and put aside the daily activities of teaching and administration and focus on making pottery.

The type of studio day is organized around where I am in the process. I always try to throw on the pottery wheel in the morning. I am more alert and able to balance the physical activity at hand and the ideas that are swirling around in my head. Most other activities such as stamping, applying silk screens and trimming are done over the course of a few days when the clay is still wet and flexible.

How is your work studio set up and what do you value about it?
During the past ten years my studio space has changed almost yearly. My studio needs and set up are very simple. I need running water, a pottery wheel, a couple of tables and some shelves. I suppose what I value about the studio is that I have a space to work and that I am still excited and inspired to get to there and be with the work.

What is your background and education?
My undergraduate degree is in History with a focus on the Middle East. I always thought I would either go to law school or become a historian. I enrolled in art classes, mostly printmaking and ceramics, but these were among many of my interests at the time. Three years after finishing school, I decided to pursue a career in clay and enrolled as a special student at the University of Colorado, Boulder. After a two year residency at the Archie Bray Foundation, I began graduate school at Alfred University in 2000.

There’s lots of talk about formal training vs. “real world” experience amongst artists these days, and I see real value in both. Since you went the formal route, what do you think art school gave you (besides a degree) that you may not have received had you not attended?
I am not sure there is such a clear line or boundary between formal training and real world experience, nor has there been such a clear boundary for some time. Although most artists today do receive a degree from an institution, there are many other variables that factor into the impact of formal training. Timing is really important – when one finishes a degree and begins another. What one chooses to do before seeking a terminal degree also affects how the MFA will impact an artist. I spent seven years working, doing residencies, traveling, researching before entering graduate school. My two years in residence at the Archie Bray Foundation happened before graduate school. I learned from other more experienced residents about being an artist, multi-tasking and utilizing time: time to be in the studio, be productive and to value the time to reflect and talk about the work. This informative period had as much impact on my artistic development as did graduate school.

Many so called “real world” experiences are in place because of institutional and academic connections or support. We all need training and time to develop our skills as craftspeople. The systems and networks of apprenticeships are far smaller in the 21st century than the 17th or 18th century. The academic institutions provide not only precious time for the development of critical thinking and training, but also connect people to each other. This includes “real world” spaces. I think that the response to a question like this is very much directed by the question. If we approach these spaces as fundamentally separate, we continue to perpetuate the idea that they are not interconnected.

Could you describe some of the most influential and career changing experiences you have had since leaving school? What about these experiences was so important?
The most influential and career changing experience for me outside of school and academia was the year I spent prior to graduate school and the Archie Bray residency at the studio of Matthew Metz and Linda Sikora in Houston, Minnesota.

Matt stayed and worked in the studio during my first three months of my time in Minnesota. This time was invaluable for me. Matt was in the studio early in the morning, worked all day and often went back after dinner. He talked to me about the details of running and maintaining a studio. Matt and I often talked extensively about everything from pricing work, relationships to galleries, influences of history and the general state of contemporary studio pottery. He was very generous with his time and his ideas. He told me once that perseverance as much as talent was what kept more people in the field. I think he was right.

Is there anything you wish you had known when you were leaving school but didn’t that you might share with us now?
I thought that once I finished graduate school that somehow there would be more clarity about how to move forward and make decisions and make my work. I assumed that the failures would be less than the successes, and that the anxiety of being an artist and pushing through ideas and projects would diminish. I have been out of graduate school for six years and I realize now that those things will always be a part of the whole experience. Perhaps how one copes with the complexities and challenges changes as time moves on and skills develop.

How has your experience so far been different or similar to your expectations when you set out?
My one thought for this question is that I expected to have more consistency and continuity in my life after graduate school. Now I realize that many of the concerns that I had prior to graduate school were not the result of not having a degree, they are just part of the daily challenges that are necessary for growth and experimentation. They keep me interested, curious and wanting to rise to the challenges of going to the studio daily.

What is your relationship to design, craft and the fine arts? How do you see your relationship to each? Or one in particular?
Many philosophers and writers have written extensively about the problem of these historical divisions. The creative acts that inspire and have had a lasting impact on society utilize aspects of all three: design, art and craft. When these words get politicized and used to reinforce ideas of hierarchy, economic value and prestige, then I am wary of them. I think each generation, going as far back as Plato and others, have defined and redefined the role of work in society and the value of labor related to the human hand and head. As Richard Sennett writes in the The Craftsman, “Making is thinking.” I am interested in what we are able to create when we focus on the connections of these divisions and I can be the thinker and the maker.

Was there a point in your career that you made a decision to sell your work/pots for a living? Could you describe how you came to that decision?
I hope that decision is somewhere in my future, but I do worry about how functional pottery is valued in our culture. Sometimes I think that everything in the world, including painting, sculpture and glass, get more and more expensive. The vast majority of ceramics, and pottery in particular, seem to exist in a pricing range that was determined many years ago and has not changed over time. I think there is a big question for me about keeping the work accessible and trying to gauge value relative to the marketplace.

What difficulties arise in both making and selling your work and how do you overcome these?
Since I teach full-time, for me the difficulty is having the time to be in the studio. The selling of the work seems to be less of an issue. The pricing of work and the way our culture values the hand made and the functional pot seems to be the more pertinent question for me.

What is your relationship with galleries (on and offline)? How has that relationship changed over time? What role does the internet play in your work?
My relationship with galleries has developed slowly over the past few years. There is a lot of potential to link up patrons, artists and galleries online, but the question of quality and sifting through lots of information at once is also a reality of the internet. I have a website that archives past and current work, and often I think about selling work from my website. That may happen one day when I am no longer teaching full-time.

How does an artist go about acquiring business and marketing skills if they aren’t a natural at it already, and cannot afford to hire someone to help them? How do you market your work and what avenue has been the most successful?
I don’t even have a business card so I am certainly not qualified to answer this question. Ann Hamilton was visiting Alfred University a few years ago and said she spent three full months each year on the business and marketing of her artwork. I have colleagues who are also able to devote that much time to business side of things. I think perseverance and necessity are needed to create and market artwork.

Before and after graduate school, I said yes to every gallery and exhibition opportunity. I am trying to be a bit more selective now, but it is never easy or clear how and when to say no to an opportunity.

You must have some favorite designers that you look to for inspiration. What other artists’ inspire you? Where do you find inspiration for your designs?
Inspiration and influences can come from a photograph of an architectural structure, an historical pot as well as an excerpt of an essay or story. I absorb and fold inspiration into my pots from sketches, textures, shapes and the play between layering all these ideas onto clay. Often inspiration is not an immediate or direct step. Rather, it is an interactive and prolonged relationship that takes time to develop. I see many things that interest me, and sometimes the fun comes through sorting through the inspiration to find the particulars that need to move into the work.

Can you tell us about future projects?
I want to revisit the Tulip Vase. I am thinking of increasing scale and introducing new imagery on the forms. I also want to revisit a project I did at the end of my residency at the Archie Bray Foundation – tiles on a painted and silk-screened wall. I am also playing with color by working with both light and dark clay bodies. The shift has really changed the balance between the forms and the layered surfaces.

When you have a moment to actually breathe (!), what do you do for fun?
Bike rides, cooking meals at home and watching movies.

I always like to ask, do you have any influential books or texts that you can recommend?
I just finished A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini and am currently reading The Craftsman by Richard Sennett. Other favorites include: Ornament: A Modern Perspective by James Trilling, On Beauty and Being Just by Elaine Scarry, Ornament & Abstraction, edited by Fondation Beyeler and The Persistence of Craft edited by Paul

American Craft Magazine Interviews: Jeanne Quinn

2009-04-21T10:10:00.002-06:00

STORY BY Molly Hatch

Can you tell our readers a little bit about yourself?
I grew up in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., and spent a lot of my free time as a kid studying music. My non-structured time, however, was spent learning every craft ever invented. I went on to study art history and baroque music performance at Oberlin College. I wasn’t sure quite how to put that all together after I graduated, and I spent some time apprenticing to a woodworker and living on a commune in Tennessee. Then I apprenticed with a violinmaker in Italy; I came back to the U.S. and got a job making flutes in Boston. Making instruments was really interesting, and had this great quality of combining the act of making with hanging out with musicians. But after doing it for a while, you realize that it is all craft and not much about creativity. I needed to be inventing my own things—although relating them to use and the body, as musical instruments did, was interesting to me. I began taking some ceramics classes at a community center and did a bit of work as an assistant to a wonderful ceramicist, Anne Smith. I realized that ceramics was the thing—it had that history of relationship to the body, but had the possibility for all kinds of invention. I ended up becoming a student for a few semesters at the University of Colorado in Boulder, where I worked with Betty Woodman—she became a great mentor for me. I then went on to graduate school at the University of Washington. Two years after graduate school, I got a job teaching back at Boulder, and I’ve been there since.

Can you describe your work, some of the ideas behind your making process and how you came to working in this way?
For the past seven or eight years, I’ve been making installations, using multiple small parts to create a larger piece. They often reference decoration or the history of decorative arts in some way. I’m also interested in material as a metaphor. I’m interested in the dialectical nature of ceramics: soft and plastic to hard and immutable, permanent and fragile . . . these contradictory qualities invite endless exploration.

In 2001, I spent 8 months in Europe—most of it was at the International Ceramic Center in Denmark. They invited me to be part of a symposium called “Object and Installation.” Up to that point, I had been making vessels that I arranged in small groups, usually pairs, to create some kind of narrative still life. I thought it was interesting that they were inviting me to be part of a conversation about installation, as I hadn’t considered what I was doing to be installation—it was so small-scale. But simply having someone else frame my work around this question made me understand it in a new way: I started thinking about how the space between objects was as expressive as the objects themselves.

Can you describe a typical work day?
It varies tremendously. If I’m teaching, I generally focus on school for about 4 days a week. I try to spend at least one whole, uninterrupted day either drawing at home or working in my studio. I often hire an assistant during the school year—I like the rhythm of work that is imposed by needed to be ready to work with an assistant.

If it’s during the summer, or other time off, I usually spend one or two hours in the morning doing business work—correspondence, phone calls, working on a grant or proposal, etc. I pack a lunch and head to the studio and work steadily until dinnertime, listening to NPR all day.

How is your work studio set up and what do you value about it?
At the moment I am working in a studio in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. I share the space with a sculptor, Liza McConnell, who is a smart, funny person who I love to have around. I also have a stunning view of lower Manhattan, the East River, and the Williamsburg Bridge. I can watch the weather move in from the west, and can see when it is starting to rain at the Empire State Building; I know that it will hit Brooklyn a few minutes later.

It is a simple space; two large tables are on castors so that I can rearrange freely, depending on what I am working on—drawing, casting, installing, etc. I have aircraft cable strung across the ceiling at 1’ intervals, about 12’ up, so that I can hang things and see how they look.

So I value the view, the flexibility of the space, and the high ceilings. And the industrial beauty of the architecture. I value the incredible solitude of my studio. I feel free to experiment and try anything. It feels like a place of possibility.

There’s lots of talk about formal training vs. “real world” experience amongst artists these days, and I see real value in both. Since you went the formal route, what do you think art school gave you (besides a degree) that you may not have received had you not attended?
For me, as a student and now as a teacher, school’s greatest value is as a community. You meet a lot of people when you go to school. Some of the people who were most valuable to me in graduate school were not official faculty members, but artists in Seattle who had a connection to the school in some way. Jeffry Mitchell was a fantastic artist who periodically participated in critiques at UW; I admired his work tremendously and cultivated a relationship with him. He remains a dear friend. I had professors who helped me find a studio after graduating, who helped connect me with galleries and collectors . . . all of these things can happen outside of a school context, of course. I have also found residencies to be great places to meet other artists who can be helpful, both personally and professionally. But school concentrates people who are passionate about the same discipline, and provides a more formal space for important conversations to happen. I found that helpful as a student, and I value it tremendously as a teacher. It’s very stimulating. School keeps me from being lazy; there’s no time for it.

Could you describe some of the most influential and career changing experiences you have had since leaving school? What about these experiences was so important?
Probably the most important experience was my first extended time working in Europe. I began with two weeks as a guest professor at the Muthesius Hochschule in Kiel, Germany. I couldn’t have had a lovelier group of students—they were all women and they really took tremendously good care of me. We had a wonderful time talking about their work—there were some different sensibilities that were very interesting to me—but the important thing about that experience was realizing how similar we all were. The subculture of ceramics completely trumped the superculture of nationality.

I then spent a month working in a porcelain factory, Kahla, in the former East Germany. This was one of the hardest experiences of my life; in retrospect, I learned a tremendous amount. There were fifteen artists and designers who had been invited to work at Kahla Porzellanmanufacture; everyone spoke German except for a designer from Japan and myself. Almost no one in the factory spoke English. I was so accustomed to making allies through language, and this ability was rendered useless. I had to figure out other ways to navigate this incredibly rich situation without using the skills I always relied on. It was a great realization, ultimately, to see that I had more resources than I knew, but tremendously challenging and sometimes painful while I was there.

I then went to the International Ceramic Center in Denmark, where I spent seven months. I had a show while I was there at the Grimmerhus Museum, with Sadashi Inuzuka and Satoro Hoshino. That was the first show that I had in a non-commercial gallery, and so of course I made a large installation. I hadn’t previously thought about the unspoken agreement that had existed while showing in commercial spaces: I was agreeing to make things for sale. As soon as that was removed, my work changed. To my surprise. I hadn’t even realized that I was responding to that pressure.

Is there anything you wish you had known when you were leaving school but didn’t that you might share with us now?
I’m sure there is but I can’t think of it.

How has your experience so far been different or similar to your expectations when you set out?
Surprisingly similar. I ended up getting a teaching job, which is what I wanted. It has allowed me to pursue my studio life in a totally free way, to make whatever I like. That is an incredible gift. I always assumed that that was the way it would be; what is different now is that I realize how precious that is.

What is your relationship to design, craft and the fine arts? How do you see your relationship to each? Or one in particular?
I am interested in all three. I am constantly looking—and, most importantly, seeing things in person. I’m much more interested in going to museums than in looking at magazines, for instance, although of course I do both.

I think what is most important, though, is simply to be interested in my own work. It is easy to see something and say, “oh yes, that is what I should be making; if I make work like that I will be successful.” I have realized over time that introspection, investing time in my own ideas—wherever they come from—is what leads me to my most interesting work. Rather than worrying too much about what categories others might impose on it.

Was there a point in your career that you made a decision to sell your work/pots for a living? Could you describe how you came to that decision?
I’ve never done it. I’ve made my living through teaching. It’s always great to sell work, but I’ve never relied on it.

What is your relationship with galleries (on and offline)? How has that relationship changed over time?
I have worked closely with galleries in the past, although that is not happening at the moment. I have enjoyed those relationships—I have been very careful in choosing who I wanted to work with over an extended period. Currently, as I have been primarily making large-scale installations, I have been exhibiting in non-profit art spaces, museums, university galleries, etc—places where the market is relatively absent. Although I have sold some of these large installations, when it happens it feels like an accident. It’s not something I put energy into.

What role does the internet play in your work?
I put up a website about two years ago, and have been very glad that I spent the time and energy to do it. It’s great just to be able to refer people to the website when they are interested in my work. It’s also handy for me, to have a repository of all of my own information. When I need to look up the dimensions of a piece, it’s always right there.

Most inquiries about my work—invitations for shows, lectures, etc., come by email these days. I think that people are happy to have the website to reference—when someone else recommends me for a show, it’s easy for a curator to look me up.

I also use the web as a visual reference. I think that a lot of artists do this. I just discovered the photograph file at the Library of Congress that has tens of thousands of online images—I’ve been researching chandeliers for an upcoming project, and it is an incredible resource.

I’ve also been doing some collaborations over the last year or so. One collaboration started in person, in Brooklyn, and was completed at a distance—being able to send images instantly was critical. I’m just embarking on a collaborative group project, “Manufacturing Content,” which involves each of us using CAD programs to create designs that we will render using rapid prototyping technology. The whole project thus far has existed via email—we’re about t o meet in person for the first time.

What other artists inspire you? Where do you find inspiration for your designs?
Currently my favorite artist is Diana Cooper. I love the way that she makes drawing and installation into one thing. She also has a fantastic sense of play with materials—she really sees possibilities in things, all the while maintaining a very sophisticated sense of form. She’s super-playful and super-serious.

I also love the drawings of Nina Bovasso—again, colorful, playful, but very ambitious, very grand. Also Thomas Nozkowski. It’s so interesting—I’ve never been all that interested in abstract painting/drawing. But I find his work totally compelling. He is onto something big. I can’t name it but I sure recognize it.

The artists I’m interested in change all the time—I think it depends on what I need to learn at a specific moment. I study what I need to learn.

Can you tell us about future projects?
At the moment I’m working on drawings (perhaps not surprising, considering my answer to the previous question). I’m experimenting, trying to get my sense of materiality/physicality that exists in my installations into drawings. It has allowed me a lot of space to play, which has been great. I’m also interested to see where these collaborative projects are going.

When you have a moment to actually breathe (!), what do you do for fun?
The obvious answer is Aikido—it’s a Japanese martial art that I have been training in for about six years now. I like how non-verbal it is, especially after a day of talking, talking, talking at school. I find it very useful in a number of ways. I like being a student, having someone else in charge. I like learning something completely different. I like that it involves big movement, whole-body movement, instead of the micro-movements I make while working in my studio. It also gives me a great lens through which to look at the world, which is very different from the art lens.

I also love to cook, and I spend a lot of time reading/thinking about food. When I am in New York, I work as an intern at Murray’s Cheese, and I have learned a lot that way. I love it. I have also met a lot of high-level New York foodies.

I always like to ask, do you have any influential books or texts that you can recommend?
I think that fiction ends up influencing me more than anything else. Or occasionally movies. Some idea will strike me, some emotional state, some character, some sensibility . . . something will catch my imagination and get me going. Currently I’m working my way through the books of Walter Mosley (incredible characters, incredible prose) and Haruki Murakami (it’s like Japanese magical realism).

Any last golden nuggets of information you would like to offer up?
Be yourself. If that means making art, great. If it means finding another way to express yourself, do that. If you end up making art, make work that is important to you. All of the other motivations will fade away.

Sarah Archer of GHP Essay for "Obamaware"

2009-04-21T10:01:00.003-06:00

The full article can be read on Ayumi Horie's website. Click here to follow the link.
Kitchen Table Politics: ‘Obamaware’ Campaigns for Change, One Mug at a Time
2 comments Published by Sarah Archer on Tuesday, October 14, 2008 at 10:23 AM

About the Author
Sarah Archer is the Director of Greenwich House Pottery in NYC. She received her BA from Swarthmore College and has an MA in the history of decorative arts from the Bard Graduate Center. Sarah has worked at Price Glover, a New York antiques firm with a specialization in 18th Century British and American decorative arts, and during graduate school she was an intern with Garth Clark Gallery. She was a curatorial assistant at the Museum of Arts and Design before joining GHP. Her writing has appeared in Ceramics: Art and Perception.

by Sarah Archer

“The moment one picks up one of these objects to read it, one is already partly enveloped in that aura of home and hearth, and so one drops one’s defenses and is perhaps more receptive to the message the object contains.” Garth Clark, The Artful Teapot, 189.

On October 15th, 27 top American ceramic artists will unveil a diverse group of cups, plates and other pots called "Obamaware" as a fundraiser for Barack Obama's presidential campaign. What a great idea! A convergence of the handmade aesthetic beloved by progressive Americans, a 'green' object you can use over and over, and a way to support the arts during difficult economic times. What better way to support the candidate for change? It turns out that the Obamaware artists are in good company - some of the most fascinating episodes in ceramic history testify to the subtle but enduring power of pots to convey both food and ideas. Ancient Greek potters used scenes from well-known myths to comment on Athenian politics. One 16th century German potter decorated a jar with imagery that promoted controversial new Protestant beliefs - and went to jail for it. Pots have long played an important supporting role in conversations about politics in the domestic realm, or as politicians like to say, "around the kitchen table".

With the presidential race still close as of September 2008 and in atmosphere of urgency and hope, the Obamaware artists from across the country quickly mobilized their grassroots support for the campaign by organizing a sale of Obama-specific pots. Obamaware artists Garth Johnson and Ron Philbeck as well as ceramic artist Kristen Kieffer and have drawn attention to the event with thoughtful blog postings. Obama-related art and craft projects have popped up all over the internet: The Obama Art Report (a blog that tracks and highlights projects) and The Obama Craft Project are just two examples, both designed to raise the profile of the campaign and collect money for it. Many of the examples are prints, posters and graffiti, photographed in situ, where they can presumably be seen by hundreds of passersby, drawing attention wherever they are installed. The Obamaware pots, on the other hand, represent a different strategy - they both are and are-not-exactly public art. Notice of the pots will reach clay enthusiasts and Obama-supporters online, a place without geographical boundaries, but once purchased they will ultimately do their campaigning on a much more intimate scale, and that intimacy (a quality derived from the functional pottery format) is what gives the project its narrative power.

A key feature of Obamaware that distinguishes it from its ceramic antecedents is its reliance on a tool that potters as recently as the early 1990’s did not have: the internet. The ability to share images of Obamaware pots on websites, blogs like Design*Sponge and Daily Kos, or social networking sites like Facebook means that the project has the potential to circulate widely in the digital sphere. This visual circulation occurs in advance of an object’s journey to its new home, where it will be used, admired and shared with guests to spark conversation. Of course seeing images of a pot is not a substitute for holding it in one’s hands or viewing it in person. But the ability to view the imagery on a pot and to understand its intended function serve the purposes of a project like Obamaware. It’s a means of portraying Obama as an appealing candidate and conveying the grassroots passion of the artists involved. Viewers can choose the imagery they want on their new coffee mug, commemorative Sarah Palin beer stein or "¢hange" dish knowing that the piece will represent a way of both supporting a cause greater than themselves and displaying their own values.

Obamaware artist Donna Flanery summed it up well when she said of her pieces, echoing Garth Clark’s comment on narrative teapots: “the idea is to portray Obama as friendly and personable. Having tea with someone is an act of giving them your attention. The cups are intended to be functional and to provide the viewer with the feeling that they are attending a tea party - that they can have tea with the president.” Buy purchasing a piece of Obamaware, a person engages in this kind of metaphorical intimacy (combined, perhaps, with the feeling that the mug or bowl is akin to a piece of fantasy White House china). The buyer is figuratively opening their home to a candidate who is still relatively new to the public eye. Who is Barack Obama and what can we expect from an Obama-Biden administration? The Obamaware artists have sought to answer that question for the few remaining undecided voters (or those who can still be persuaded) by expressing in their pots the best arguments in favor of his candidacy as they see it.

Despite their diverse aesthetics and approaches to this project, the Obamaware artists all seem to have one thing in common: they wanted to do something more than just make a monetary donation to the campaign. Volunteering is usually too time-consuming for all but the most disciplined among us, and a donation that most of us can afford to make probably seems like a drop in the bucket (although Obama is known as the candidate whose rapid rise was fueled by a wave of small contributions.) A work of art, however, is literally something that only one artist can do, a unique contribution, and it fits seamlessly into the work-life of a busy professional ceramist, making the “no time to volunteer” problem moot.

All Objects Communicate Something

Signs and symbols in the decorative arts are so prevalent it is difficult to think of an era or medium that has not incorporated them. The reading and interpretation of symbols, from coats of arms, insignia and initials to specific plants or animals, is one of the most basic tools for situating decorative arts in time, place and social context. At all times, we are surrounded by objects that have been designed and crafted or manufactured, their creation informed by hundreds of decisions at every stage about form, color, texture, decoration and function. So much can be read from the objects we live with that an entire academic discipline has emerged to investigate the meanings of things: material culture studies. Decorative arts and design communicate with us even as they meet basic domestic needs like seating or coffee service. Whether the intended message is status and prominence (luxury) or humility and simplicity (austerity), it is almost impossible to view an interior with neutrality.

People buy things for their homes that communicate to visitors and reinforce a self image they hold or want to hold. In turn, designers and craftsmen attempt to tap into design zeitgeist by incorporating larger cultural trends into household objects. In the first half of the 20th century, particularly thanks to industrial designer Raymond Loewy, many household appliances appeared “streamlined” (a quality that doesn’t add much to the actual function of a refrigerator). This was a deliberate attempt to convey a desirable sense of progress because the sleek look of streamlining echoed automobile, locomotive and jet design. Today, those same appliances as well as cell phones, iPods and computers might be slim and brightly colored to convey a sense of individuality and hipness, or to make the device seem more approachable. Communication through objects works in multiple directions. Consumers choose things that send the right message about who they are or want to be. Designers try to harness that desire to sell their products. And in some cases makers (and regimes) produce objects with the hope that consumers or viewers will adopt the ideas that the objects express. It is this last type of object that sets the stage for Obamaware.1

Ceramics have an almost limitless capacity to serve as a canvas, thus they are a natural outlet for narrative. Political ceramics in the context of contemporary sculpture today is well-situated in the art world. This month the "All Fired Up" ceramic events taking place in Westchester County includes an exhibition curated by Judith Schwartz of ceramic artwork called "Confrontational Clay", a group of ceramic sculptures that directly reference conflict and struggle. Mid-century functional ceramic masterpieces of lyric simplicity by potters such as Hans Coper, Lucie Rie, Gertrude and Otto Natzler or Eva Zeisel (a ceramic designer, not a potter) are well-represented in important collections and museums. But when more recently created ceramic objects enter a contemporary museum or a gallery today, their functionality is usually symbolic. Utility is the message, rather than the actual purpose of the piece. Such works, ranging from Cindy Sherman's “Madame de Pompadour (née Poisson)” porcelain service, to Maret Oppenheim's “Object (Le Déjeuner en fourrure)” (the famous fur-lined teacup), and Judy Chicago’s “Dinner Party”, use the recognizable utilitarian forms of tableware to convey a message to the viewer, usually a commentary on themes of of domesticity and gender.2 The Yixing revival teapots of Richard Notkin address serious topics from nuclear war to homelessness. The pots are created in the hyper-real mode of traditional Yixing teapots that were carefully sculpted to resemble bamboo and other natural forms.3Functional yes, though Notkin's pots are so highly esteemed and collectible it is doubtful that they get a great deal of everyday wear. Obamaware, conversely, is functional in a rhetorical sense: its aim is to bring a political message into the kitchen or the dining room, not a museum or a gallery.

Obamaware in Historical Context
There is nothing in ceramic history exactly like this project, but there are many examples of ceramics that bear imagery with political messages and, like Obamaware, most of that imagery comes from other media - prints, drawings, oral history or myth. The 27 artists who created work for this project are drawing from the existing repertoire of imagery and words that are understood to signify the Obama-Biden campaign: images of the candidate himself, the blue and red campaign logo, words like “hope” and “change”, and countervailing imagery from the McCain-Palin camp, which is uniformly presented in a satirical vein. Many of the historical examples discussed here are commemorative, or represent the views of artists responding to events in their own time. Obamaware, by contrast, is anticipatory: the artists involved are hopeful that the election will have a particular outcome.

Ceramics, along with metal, glass and stone, are much more likely to survive the ravages of time than organic materials like paper, wood and fabric, thus much of what we know of ancient and some medieval cultures comes from the ceramics they left behind. A long-established prejudice within Art History still exists towards ceramics and other decorative arts, thus scholars who were taught to value larger-scale works such as frescoes, painting, sculpture and architecture more highly tend to regard ceramics as a mere taste of what an ancient culture's "real" art looked like, dismissing pottery as a derivative art form. It is certainly true that archaeological remains give us at best an incomplete picture. But this, as we ceramophiles know, misses the point entirely since the goal of narrative functional ceramics is to bring commentary into the home where ideas can be shared on the micro rather than macro level; the "major/minor" debate of art versus craft is a red herring that sheds no light on either category.

An important distinction to note about political ceramics from other time periods is that while grassroots ideas are more often expressed in the efforts of studio potters or those of small workshops, factory china is more likely to tow a 'party line', as it were, reinforcing ideas that support a particular ruling party. One challenge we face in interpreting politically charged narrative ceramics from the past is that we have only limited knowledge of the circumstances of their creation, patronage and contemporary reception. In addition, we are able to see only what survived - not what was deemed too offensive or controversial before it was smashed and discarded. Ceramic historian Matthias Ostermann notes that as 21st century viewers, we have a habit of reading "real events" from the artwork of previous eras, despite the fact that narratives, though perhaps politically charged and realistically rendered, may not have been as literal as they may appear.4

Among the earliest examples are the narrative ceramics of ancient Greece and they are some of the most expressive ever produced. Close reading of certain scenes from Greek mythology in concert with knowledge of actual events has led scholars to interpret some examples as political commentary. The best known proponent of these theories is the eminent British archaeologist and professor emeritus at Oxford Sir John Boardman concerning Attic black-figure pottery from 6th century BC Athens. He writes that that during violent periods, imagery of warfare would appear more frequently in ceramic decoration, with qualities like patriotism and heroism depicted in the actions of mythical characters.5 The more interesting question, he wonders, is why certain characters and not others? What significance do these choices hold? Mythological characters did not necessarily bear a one-to-one relationship with real statesmen or warriors, but they could be conflated to represent important personal qualities and cultural or geographical associations.6
Representations of Herakles (better known as Hercules, his Roman name) appeared all over Athens in the 6th century BC. The image of his head was carved on pediment statues in the Acropolis, and the prevalence of his image was much greater in Athens than anywhere else in Greece during this period (see figure 1). Boardman theorizes that the reason for this is Herakles’ association with the goddess Athena, his patron and defender. Athena is also the eponymous goddess of Athens, leading Athenians to adopt Herakles as an heroic symbol of their city-state. During much of the century, Athens was ruled by a series of tyrants. One named Peisistratos returned to power in Athens in 550 BC, arriving in a golden chariot next to a woman dressed as Athena as he rode towards the Acropolis. The black-figure amphora (wine jug) whose decoration is attributed to an artist known today as the Priam Painter depicts Athena and Herakles in a similar scene as Athena drives Herakles up to Olympus. Vase imagery like this (see figure 2), Boardman argues, was only one way in which the figure of Herakles was asserted as a particularly Athenian hero; pedimental sculptures in public areas, songs, poems and storytelling would have reinforced this idea. Thus Peisistratos’s theatrical chariot ride into Athens would have resonated with a public well-versed in the associations between their long-established myths and their contemporary political scene. They would have understood implicitly which hero he was supposed to represent. The transmission of these images probably ran in two directions - the images were influential to the people who bought the pots, but potters and painters only used them because they held significance for their clientele. It is most likely an example of ceramics as an expression of zeitgeist rather than systematic propaganda.

The Community that Drinks Together Thinks Together

Later examples that emerge from better documented periods give greater insight into the role of household objects as didactic tools. Art historian Andrew Morrall demonstrates that in Reformation-era Germany, the home was increasingly becoming the site of moral education as the authority of the Catholic Church was being challenged. This cultural shift breathed new life into the narrative power of household objects which could now be put to work as the bearers of ideas, illustrating events or concepts visually so that children could be made aware of their meaning. Morrall tells the story of a Nuremberg potter named Paul Preuning who was actually jailed in 1548 for creating a jug featuring a crucifix accompanied by a piper, a drummer and a peasants’ dance (instead of the traditional St. John and Virgin Mary). The depiction of this scene evoked the peasants’ war of 1525 - an uprising which had been sparked by economic and religious unrest during the Reformation.7 The brightly colored jug decorated with religious scenes shown here is attributed to the workshop of Paul Preuning (see figure 3) - the original vase discussed here did not survive.8

Morrall closely examines the relationship between print and ceramics - the question of whether a particular image holds special meaning when it is applied to a utilitarian object as opposed to a broadside or book, and whether the utilitarian, domestic role of the objects was the primary reason for their success as vehicles for narrative. Morrall points out that the Preuning incident occurred the same year as the controversial Augsburg Interim, a decree by Holy Roman Emperor Charles V that reintroduced some (but not all) Catholic practices into the Protestant states of the Empire. The deeply unpopular Interim inspired critical and satirical printed matter as well as ceramic objects among the Protestant population. Morrall describes a tankard from the third quarter of the 16th century (ca. 1550-1580) that features a three-headed monster representing the pope, and Jesus addressing the Devil saying “depart from me Satan to the Interim!” Morrall’s interpretation of this symmetry between opinions expressed in printed broadsides and the vivid, scathing critique presented on this tankard is that the social act of drinking together reinforced the narrative content on the tankard (or any decorated vessel) as shared belief, further bonding members of the community - in this case, fellow Protestants. Likewise at the table, vessels bearing religious imagery would have dovetailed perfectly with what Morrall describes as the almost “sacramental” nature of food and drink, and the saying of grace before a meal.9 Referencing the communal world of the beer hall, John Byrd has created commemorative Sarah Palin ceramic steins (”Palinsteins”), that echo the satirical tone of the anti-Interim tankard.

The tavern-centered political culture of 17th century London, where shared drinking vessels were the norm, sustained potters who created works in the slipware tradition. Garth Clark writes that as newly fashionable delftware and stoneware became established in England, potters in the more traditional slip-decorated earthenware ramped up their creativity and produced some of the most vibrant pots of the era. The old Anglo-Saxon custom of sharing warm beverages from a single vessel continued well into the 17th century and was evidenced by the tyg, which takes its name from the Anglo-Saxon tiegel.10 The tyg had handles on all sides (usually at least three) to enable anyone sitting at a table to grab it. The beverage of choice was posset, a brew of curdled milk mixed with wine or beer and spices that was a mainstay of the British tavern.11 Tygs, along with the earthenware pitchers and pots, frequently bore political slogans, advice to the sinner, or simply cheerful reminders to enjoy food, drink and good company. During the Puritanical rule of Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell (1653 - 1658), however, the messages grew increasingly serious. Clark points to an example from 1656 bears the message “PITTY THE POOR AMEND THY LIFE / AND SENNE NO MORE”. Eat, drink and be pious.

Tin-glazed wares (including English Delftware) are made from a sturdy stoneware clay body with an opaque white glaze allowing painters to apply decoration in a variety of pigments, opening up new avenues of expression. “Show plates” were created for special occasions and meant to be displayed, or used only on very special occasions, thus they were more likely to survive than utilitarian pots. The two show plates in figures 4 and 5 are lively examples of English Delftware designed to commemorate two figures who were key in the restoration of the English monarchy after Cromwell’s death. The plate in figure 4 depicts the King himself, Charles II, framed in a romanesque archway and posed in his coronation robes, majestic long hair (a wig) around his shoulders, and a jaunty foot tilted outward, just hinting at his famous pleasure-loving temperament. Figure 5 shows General George Monck looking stately and purposeful on horseback, a Royalist during the civil war who was instrumental in the restoration of the King in 1661. By contrast with the seriousness of the text-only admonition to repent on the previous decade’s Cromwellian slipware, the vivid illustrations on these Delftware plates with their expressive drawings and bright colors convey the spirit of celebration and relief that accompanied the Restoration. Diana Fayt’s Obamaware platter is similar in scale (17” in diameter) and features a portrait of Obama along with the candidates names and the word “hope”, as well as a donkey symbolizing the Democratic Party.

Porcelain Party Line: Political Narratives in Factory China
One example of a ceramic object designed to communicate with both its decoration and its shape is the “Etruscan Scrolled Vase” made at the Manufacture Nationale de Sèvres in 1813. The vase was designed to imitate the ancient two-handled amphorae that early 19th century archaeologists were discovering in Italy at the time. The decoration of the vase has a very specific narrative: the scene is entitled “L’Entrée à Paris des oeuvres destinées au musée Napoléon”, and it presents an idealized view of antiquities from Rome being wheeled into the Louvre (temporarily renamed “La Musée Napoleon” between 1803 and 1814). Famous works like the Medici Venus and the Laocoön are carried by soldiers in dashing costumes. The painter, Beranger, decorated the neck of the vase with cameos depicting important figures from antiquity. The medallions on the terminals of the vase’s handles feature reliefs of Napoleon, Pericles, Lorenzo de’ Medici, and Augustus.12 The narrative here is clearly designed to equate Napoleon with great patrons of the arts from previous eras - even the shape of the vase, a porcelain version of a Greek amphora (see figure 6 and figure 7, detail), is part of the story. Art historian Steven Adams identifies a major shift in the nature of Sèvres decoration resulting from Napoleon’s patronage of the factory. While the monarchy was still in power, the decorations on Sèvres porcelain were generally pastoral, pleasant, ahistorical and detached from politics. After the revolution and under Napoleon, the imagery becomes a catalogue of Napoleon’s accomplishments - necessary for a new leader who needed to prove his worth, but unnecessary for an established dynasty who had perhaps assumed that the ‘divine right’ needed no explanation.13

The Imperial Porcelain Factory in St. Petersburg (known during the Soviet era as the State Porcelain Factory of Petrograd) was found to be full of unfired leftover porcelain blanks when the new Soviet factory administration took over. Because the double-headed eagle of the Tsars was on the underside of the blanks, and the china painters had to blot them out (figure 8). The challenge of transforming these blanks posed design challenges for the new craftsmen both literal and figurative: how was a regime that supposedly despised luxury and class disparity make use of fine porcelain? The solution was to use the blanks and decorate their surfaces with imagery that would support the ideology of the new Soviet Union.14 The factory did not mass-produce this new china but had painters hand-decorate the blanks. Craft was viewed as a politically important symbol of peasantry rather than a quaint anachronism in the Soviet era.15

Two themes in particular survived the transition from Imperial to Soviet porcelain: the military and peasant life. Under Catherine the Great, the Imperial Porcelain Factory produced wares with decorations that alluded to the strength of Russia’s navy. Scenes of country life were, as in Marie Antoinette’s France, presented as sweet and romantic visions of simpler times. The Soviet versions of these vocabularies of images were depicted with a very different slant: low-ranking foot soldiers were held up as true heroes (to the exclusion of higher ranking officers) and peasant life (along with that of the factory worker) was celebrated for its importance to the greater good rather than as a pastoral idyll. 16The text on a plate by Mikhail Mikhailovich Adamovich from 1922 (see figure 9) reads “He who does not work does not eat”, a phrase from Saint Paul in II Thessalonians 3:10 that echoes a Soviet ideal. A rendering of Lenin smiling is accompanied by supplementary ration card and a workers ID card.17

Naturally the closest comparisons available for Obamaware are patriotic ceramics from the United States. Some of the earliest pots that bear national symbols were made abroad in England and China for the American market. The ability to transmit printed designs to Chinese or English workshops meant that almost anything could be effectively reproduced by craftsmen abroad and shipped to America. The copying was often excellent, though some of the famous icons have the tentative look of an overly-careful copy. A hard paste porcelain pitcher circa 1800-1815 (figure 10) in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art features a portrait of George Washington based on an engraving by Philadelphia artist David Edwin.18 Though probably best described as a near miss in terms of actual resemblance, the depiction of Washington’s face has an undeniable charm. The existence of pieces like this remind us that the vocabulary of desirable images used for decoration developed in the course of a dialogue between ceramics and print, just as it did in Paul Preuning’s day.

Several examples of Chinese export porcelain feature an American icon, the bald eagle, which was adopted as the emblem of a patriotic fraternal organization called the Society of the Cincinnati about a year after it was used in the design of the Great Seal of the United States (figure 11 and figure 12, detail). The Society was established in 1783 in New York state by officers who fought in the American Revolution. George Washington was the Society's President General from 1783 until his death in 1799. The Society’s name commemorates Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, a Roman hero of the fifth century BC who twice refused compensation for his services defending the Roman Republic in battle, instead returning to his farm to live as an ordinary citizen. The virtues of self-sacrifice and patriotism resonated with Society members and engendered a kind of understated pride in their accomplishments. The motto of the organization is omnia relinquit servare rempublicam - “he abandons everything to serve his country”.19 This plate in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art bears the ‘Angel of Fame’ displaying the blue and white ribbon and emblem of the Society. A service with similar decoration and patterns was owned by George Washington.20

Several nineteenth century examples reinforce the way in which commemorative ceramics utilized popular images and then served to circulate them further. The American Farewell Tour of the Revolutionary War hero Marquis de Lafayette, a figure who represented the cause of liberty both in France and in the United States, triggered a wave of patriotism and nostalgia in the 1820’s. Lafayette served as a General during the American Revolution and later as a leader of the National Guard during the French Revolution. President James Monroe invited him to tour the United States in 1824-25 in anticipation of the nation’s 50th anniversary. Commemorative objects including furniture, paintings, ceremonial weapons, drums, engravings, fans, snuffboxes, handkerchiefs, jewelry, medals, quilts and of course ceramics were produced and consumed in great quantities. The enthusiastic response was unprecedented, and indeed it sparked one of the earliest organized patriotic decorative campaigns in American history. The reverence for Lafayette was such that one earthenware pitcher (see figure 13) depicts him on one side and George Washington on the other side.

The “Century Vase” (see figure 14) is one of several large-scale works that Karl Müller designed for the Union Porcelain Works booth at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition of 1876. Six relief panels on the body of the vase illustrate iconic scenes from American history, including the Boston Tea Party and William Penn's Treaty with the Indians. References to the natural landscape and wildlife of the country are also referenced: bison heads serve as handles, and smaller animal heads decorate the lower third of the vase.21 Images of a steamship, a telegraph, a sewing machine and a reaper are also shown to illustrate a century of American progress. And the image that is featured most prominently of all is none other than George Washington, rendered in bisque bas-relief profile and crowned by an American eagle with gold bolts of lightning and stars.22

One of the most iconic Washington images of all is featured on the Trenton Vase which, like the Century Vase, was made for a World’s Fair (figure 15). The large porcelain urn was made for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in 1904 features a rendering of Emanuel Leutze’s Washington Crossing the Delaware of 1851. The Leutze image was widely circulated in the second half of the 19th century in the form of lithographs and became an icon of patriotism that we still recognize today. All of these examples were conceived of, designed and produced to communicate something to a particular audience; the fact that they still exist and that most are in museums attests to the fact that they probably succeeded in finding favor with their intended audience (the exception being Paul Preuning’s jar, which did not survive.) In each case, the imagery chosen to decorate the ceramics came from another medium: a myth, a drawing, print or engraving. There was a connection between the imagery on the pot and another source of visual information, so that the pot reinforced or capitalized on an existing image or idea; this was the source of the decoration’s narrative power.

Likewise, Obamaware artists Jill Oberman and Ayumi Horie have both drawn inspiration from Presidential campaign buttons and posters from the mid-20th century, an era that now seems somewhat less rancorous than the present, and highlights the desire among Obama supporters to emphasize the positive. And how many people would see the various pots discussed here? We could estimate dozens or perhaps hundreds in the case of Greek and Renaissance German examples, perhaps many thousands in the later examples, particularly those that appeared at the widely attended 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition and 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition. But in general, these decorated pots would never have the audience of a piece of monumental sculpture or even a widely published novel. For a field with a niche appreciation like ceramics (despite the medium's ubiquity in daily life) broad appreciation of specific pots is exceedingly rare among the general public. Yet with enthusiasm for the campaign at an all-time high, news of Obamaware is being circulated far and wide, beyond the usual ceramic audience. Coverage on numerous blogs has increased traffic on Ayumi's website by 1700% from its usual levels.

The Obamaware project has elicited a range of responses from the artists involved, from earnestly hopeful to cheeky and irreverent. The element of kitsch in the work of John Byrd, Peter Morgan and Garth Johnson provides comic relief, while the more straightforwardly celebratory offerings of Diana Fayt, Donna Flanery and Janice Jakielski are joyous mementoes of a campaign that has (relatively speaking) eschewed negativity and inspired so many first-time voters. Montana-based artist Beth Lo, whose pieces feature both images of children cheering for Obama (as well as satirical renderings of nude McCain and Palin with the caption "Republicans New Clothes") hopes that the pieces will become reminders of "a time when all worked so hard and celebrated a good cause for a good man, for the good of the country." The Obama-Biden campaign has inspired these 27 artists to produce work that expresses their hopes, and in some cases their fears, in a intimate medium that has a unique ability to commemorate events and instill values. Obamaware pots are now part of the the public sphere, where their form and content can encourage the sharing of views and ideas - that is, before they are sold and end up where they truly belong: at the kitchen table.

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Copyright Sarah Archer 2008 ©

The views expressed in this essay do not represent those of Greenwich House Pottery or its parent organization, Greenwich House Inc.

1 Not all expressions are literal: abstraction and non-narrative can be a form of communication, too. In the 1830s, the British Parliamentary Select Committee on Art and Manufactures expressed concern that the country was falling behind competitors France, Gemany and the United States in the quality of its decorative arts exports. The familiar call for “good design” was initially an economic imperative, followed quickly by a moral backlash against the gratuitous over-decoration of objects and the use trompe-l'œil design - what we now know as the Design Reform movement in Britain.

2 Ceramics from the Ancient Near East, Greece, Rome, Asia and the Islamic world are more readily celebrated for their function under the aegis of archaeology. They tell us something useful about the time and place where they were made, and that, apparently, merits an unquestioned place in museum displays without the mantle of “craft”.

3 Clark, Garth. The Artful Teapot. New York: Watson-Guptill, 2001, p. 30.

4 Ostermann, Matthias. Narrative Ceramics. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006, p. 18.

5 Boardman, John. “The Sixth-Century Potters and Painters of Athens and Their Public.” Looking at Greek Vases. Tom Rasmussen and Nigel Spivey, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, p. 86.

6 Beard, Mary. “Adopting an Approach II.” Looking at Greek Vases, p. 21.

7 Morrall, Andrew. “Protestant Pots: Morality and Social Ritual in the Early Modern Home.” Journal of Design History 15.4 (2002): 263.

8 Coutts, Howard. The Art of Ceramics: European Ceramic Design 1500-1830. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001, p 51.

9 Morrall, p. 268.

10 Clark, The Potters Art, p. 19.

11 The posset pot, usually a stocky cylindrical form with a lid and small spout, virtually disappeared with the welcome arrival of coffee and tea in the 18th century.

12 Sèvres: Porcelain from the Sèvres Museum, 1740 to the Present Day. London: Lund Humphries, 1997, p. 56.

13 Adams, Steven. “Sèvres Porcelain and the Articulation of Imperial Identity in Napoleonic France.” Journal of Design History 20.3 (2007): 183.

14 Wardropper, Ian, et al. News From a Radiant Future: Soviet Porcelain from the Collection of Craig H. and Kay A. Tuber. Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago Press, 1993, p. 14.

15 Ibid, p. 15.

16 Ibid, p. 16.

17 Ibid, p. 68.

18 “Jug, 1800–1815”. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, Oct., 2008.

www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ewpor/ho_34.74a,b.htm

19 “Society of the Cincinnati China Plate and Bowl”, Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center, Oct., 2008.

www.americanhistory.si.edu/militaryhistory/collection/object.asp?ID=142

20 “Plate, ca. 1784–85”. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, Oct., 2008.

www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ewpor/ho_17.73.htm

21 Frelinghuysen, Alice Cooney. American Porcelain: 1770-1920. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1989, pp. 177-179.

22 Peirce, Donald C. “The Century Vase in the High Museum of Art.” Magazine Antiques, Jan., 1997.

American Craft Magazine Interviews: Ayumi Horie

2009-04-21T09:48:00.002-06:00

STORY BY Molly Hatch

Can you tell our readers a little bit about yourself?
I work as a studio potter in the Hudson Valley of New York, making functional pots in earthenware with animals drawn on them. Every few months, I travel to teach workshops and do visiting artist engagements at universities and craft organizations around the country and internationally. Additionally, I’m on the Board of Directors of the Archie Bray Foundation, the oldest residency in the country devoted exclusively to ceramics. Six years ago, I bought a hundred year old country church with a dilapidated building attached to it that I’ve since renovated into my home and studio. My studio is sandwiched between my living room and kitchen on one side and the back yard on the other, so my studio life feels very integrated with the normal rhythms of maintaining a home; I stoke the wood stove, snuggle with my dog (who’s usually glued to the woodstove), have a snack, check my email, pull some weeds, stack some wood, and then go back to the studio. A great day in the studio might include making a table-full of forty bowls with some new twist in the ribbed pattern, while listening to a nail-biting audiobook, and having a delicious lunch outside with a friend.

Can you describe your work, some of the ideas behind your making process and how you came to working in this way?
My work is largely informed by the process by which I make it. I try to rely on the skill I have in the moment of making and accept what my state of mind brings to it. My cardinal rule is not to overwork a pot, but rather to throw it or assemble it with freshness and candor. If a tear develops, I patch it with a band-aid of clay; if a pot is accidentally dented, it becomes another thing that defines its character. There is great pleasure in understanding a pot’s history of making and seeing that it might have a certain awkwardness or vulnerability.

At Alfred as an undergrad, I developed a process called “dry throwing” in which I trim to center using a pin tool, scoop out the inside using a loop tool and thin out the walls by pushing them out with a rib. I use no water because I like the surface of moist clay, rather than wet. This method allows me to preserve the inherent textures in clay that I love- the stretching, cracking, and sagging. Fingerprints have a different kind of crispness and I can coax out a delicate edge of a line on a massive wall. Using this method, I can also work more spontaneously and intuitively because I don’t have to wait for the clay to dry out quite so long. When I glaze, I try to keep up the same level of spontaneity and intuition so I can keep things fresh. I’ve found that if I set up 100 cups to glaze at once, my exhaustion and desperation at coming up with new ideas and variations pushes me to take risks and grow.

Can you describe a typical work day?
I typically work a 10 hour day, 12 if I have a show coming up, and at least six days a week. 6-8 hours is production time with at least 2-4 hours of computer and other work sprinkled in. I work in month-long cycles of production/dirty work followed by administrative/clean work where I photograph, post new work on my website, pack and ship. This seems to work well for me, as I need time to reload my mind and think how the next generation of pots will shift.

How is your work studio set up and what do you value about it?
I’m thankful everyday that I’m not in a basement studio, as ceramic artists often are. When I renovated, I made sure that I had plenty of light and air for my own mental health as well as for the pots as they dry. In the summer, I can open the doors to let air circulate and in the winter, southern exposure and the low sun bring direct light into the studio where I can lay out my pots. I’ve also set up a work area just outside my studio door where I can dry pots and do dusty work.

What is your background and education?
I have a BA from Mount Holyoke College, a BFA from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University and a MFA from the University of Washington in Seattle. My background is as a documentary photographer, I worked for a few years after college shooting for weekly papers in Seattle. I can still see parallels between my photo work and my functional pots; an interest in everyday life, a love of material, and formal compositions that are softened by texture and a bit of disorderliness.

There’s lots of talk about formal training vs. “real world” experience amongst artists these days, and I see real value in both. Since you went the formal route, what do you think art school gave you (besides a degree) that you may not have received had you not attended?
My formal art school training gave me a solid technical foundation, a broad network of friends and colleagues, and most importantly, the ability to critique my own work. I value the opinions of certain friends, but on the whole I feel that I have a decent sense of how my work needs to develop and when I’m being too safe and conservative. While pushing work to a new level can be very uncomfortable, I am my own harshest critic.

Could you describe some of the most influential and career changing experiences you have had since leaving school? What about these experiences was so important?
My work is largely made for other people. Of course, I have the need to make things, to work with my hands and be creative, yet the thing that is most important is that the work comes full circle by finding a home and being used. To this end, community has been crucial to both my studio practice and to the business of selling work and having it exist in the bigger world. I make work within a community whether they are physically present or not and I make work to foster community.

My two-year residency at the Archie Bray Foundation in Montana came at a moment when I knew just enough to survive in a ceramics studio but not enough to really thrive on my own terms. What the Bray gave me was endless encouragement in the studio and countless role models of artists who had designed balanced, meaningful lives. Having smart, funny, kind people around the studio made taking chances a whole lot easier. It also gave my pots a place in the world through local sales and national exhibitions. The community that exists there and the network of people internationally who are connected to the Bray continue to feed my work and life.

Is there anything you wish you had known when you were leaving school but didn’t that you might share with us now?
In school, I never heard the words pottery and small business spoken together, but this is the reality of it, with its extreme swings from small bookkeeping details to a larger creative vision. My photographic skills have come in handy with publicity and computer skills are essential for dealing with galleries and websites. They also never told how hard I would work or how much fun I would have.

What is your relationship to design, craft and the fine arts? How do you see your relationship to each? Or one in particular?
I love calling myself a potter; the word itself has no airs or smugness and carries with it a sense of timelessness. Nearly everyone, in every geographic place and at every point in time since human beings created settlements, has understood what a potter does; I feel I am part a meaningful continuum.

I’m much more comfortable with the moniker of craftsman and designer than I am with artist. I’m a craftsman in the sense that I’ve largely committed myself to one material and am concerned with function, use, and accessibility. I’m a designer in the sense that I understand how my aesthetic translates into various materials and am happiest when I have various side projects in media other than ceramics. Spending three years renovating my house full time helped hone my aesthetic more than anything else. Making daily decisions about trim, shingles, gutters, mullions, and tread thickness made certain aesthetic patterns evident to me and even brought more clarity to my ceramic work.

I’m much more interested in practice than theory. Rather than talk about something, I prefer to just do it, get my hands dirty and explore first-hand the problems and solutions to a project. Tacit knowledge, the knowledge that comes from repeating something over and over until it’s embedded in one’s body or mind, is something I seek as much as explicit knowledge, which is the more quantifiable, rational rules that define work. When one makes the same basic thing again and again, as a potter does, problems and interests shift. This repetition never bores me. While I’ve been throwing the same basic cup shape for the past twelve years, I can see a clear progression in its changing. My throwing has become softer and the cups feel more attuned to gravity. The back and forth of thinking and making, thinking and making fine tunes my ideas and opens up the possibility for a spontaneous touch. A poke in the belly of a wet cup or a green dot by a monkey ear could be just the thing to clarify the identity of a pot. Having an open-ended process in which anything is possible without consulting others or disrupting production, as a designer might have to do, gives great freedom, potential, and satisfaction. I’m entirely self-sufficient in my creative process.

I see elements in my work as relational, so I rely on intuition to navigate through problems. For instance, the height of a cup, the position of a handle, the waver in a lip are all elements that change from cup to cup and also relate to each other in different ways each time. When I decide which animal to draw, what gesture it will take and at what scale to draw it, I’m making decisions based on the relationship of all those elements to each other and to the drawing. Almost none of it is planned out; if it was, my work would lack freshness. I love more than anything the possibility of acting spontaneously on a pot, so that it truly is a singular object and an object which is a record of a collection of moments in time. This is also a way of creating value through impulse and chance. Locking myself into a perfect prototype doesn’t appeal to me, as it might a designer, at least in ceramic studio work. Using intuition and tacit knowledge to give a pot what it needs in that moment is dependably exciting.

Was there a point in your career that you made a decision to sell your pots for a living? Could you describe how you came to that decision?
It was clear to me once I committed to going back to school for ceramics, that I would make my living selling pots. I felt that the only way I could make something good was to devote myself entirely to it.

What difficulties arise in both making and selling your work and how do you overcome these?
Being a studio potter, especially one whose work is so dependent on a particular touch and intuitive decision-making, makes it nearly impossible to out-source any work, the way most businesses do these days. It’s a very old-fashioned model, complete with a studio assistant who works an average of twelve hours a week for me. My assistant helps with jobs that do not need my hand but take a lot of time, such as loading and unloading the kiln, prepping clay, packing and shipping. Having control over the entire process on-site allows me to keep my standards high and gives me flexibility, because I don’t have to rely on anyone else. The downside, of course, is the amount of time and energy involved.

What is your relationship with galleries (on and offline)? How has that relationship changed over time? What role does the internet play in your work?
I have several galleries that I have casual relationships with and several wholesale accounts, but I’ve tried to keep these limited. Over the past few years, I’ve found myself being overcommitted and overwhelmed so I now try to be realistic about how much I can produce while keeping the quality of work high and carving time out for research. Unlike industry, which makes a commodity, a handmade pot coming out of an individual studio is made with a different intention. Profit is not unimportant, but the relationship created between object and maker, object and user, maker and user are key. Recently, I’ve made a conscious commitment to put even more time and care into each piece, so that the fact that it’s handmade becomes even more crucial.

While some potters recoil from computer work, I love the process of taking and posting new pictures, updating my home page, and designing postcards. I spend quite a bit of time on the internet and on my website. Because it’s the primary way people do research and because it’s my most important outlet for sales, I’m fairly diligent about keeping it up to date. The best thing about having a presence online is that I’ve developed relationships and friendships with people who buy my work or simply email to exchange dialogue. In the past, when I was selling wholly through consignment galleries, I felt totally uniformed about where my pots were going and what, if any, effect they were having on people. The internet has opened up a great community for me.

How do you market your work and what avenue has been the most successful?
Links, blogs, and postcards that are beautiful or funny enough for recipients to want to keep.

You must have some favorite designers that you look to for inspiration. What other artists’ inspire you? Where do you find inspiration for your designs?
Mostly I look to antiques for inspiration- primitive American furniture and Japanese folkcraft and woodblocks mostly. When I travel, I also seek out antique store to see what gorgeous handmade or constructed thing I can find. Ceramic artists I love include Annabeth Rosen, Ryoji Koie, Jean-Nicholas Gerard, and Michael Connelly. Designers I admire include Tord Boontje, Hella Jongerius,Sori Yanagi and Piet Stockmanns and my favorite illustrator is Sara Varon, who wrote Chicken and Cat.

Can you tell us about future projects?
Aprons for potters and porcelain pulley lights.

When you have a moment to actually breathe (!), what do you do for fun?
At the moment I’m in Denmark doing a residency at Guldagergaard, and my favorite thing to do here is ride fast on country roads with no clue of where I’m going or what’s around the bend.

I always like to ask, do you have any influential books or texts that you can recommend?
Right now I’m reading The Craftsman by Richard Sennett

Any last golden nuggets of information you would like to offer up?
I’m working on dreaming more.

Ayumi will be holding a pottery sale with guest artist Julia Galloway on October 25 and 26, 2008. The studio is located at 167 Cottekill Road, Cottekill, NY.

American Craft Magazine Interviews: Christa Assad

2009-04-21T09:43:00.002-06:00

Christa Assad: A Life Made from Mud

“Making utilitarian objects appeals to my practical side, yet the romance of being a potter seduces my dreamier side. ”

STORY BY Molly Hatch
PHOTOGRAPHY BY Robert Schlatter

The California-based artist Christa Assad has spent the last 14 years exploring the ins and outs of an existence as a studio potter. Her adventures have taken her from Pennsylvania, to Indiana, Colorado, Nova Scotia, China, Greece and seemingly everywhere in between. American Craft caught up with her just as she was preparing to leave the Kansas City Art Institute, where she had been teaching, to set up her new studio in Berkeley. In a whirlwind conversation, Assad offered her views on what it takes to make your life out of clay.

This Article is from the October/November 2008 Issue.

Christa Assad has spent her life traveling, learning and pursuing her many passions. These many experiences eventually led Assad to her career as a ceramist.

Can you tell our readers a little bit about yourself?

I’m a studio artist with past-life imprints of a gypsy and a nomad.

Can you describe your work, some of the ideas behind your making process and how you came to working in this way?

My work is primarily in clay, though anything involving designing, engineering, and constructing holds my interest. I was accepted as an undergraduate student at Penn State to study aerospace engineering, enjoying physics, chemistry, and geometry in high school. Back then I even had a grasp of calculus! Now I’m much more interested in the hands-on. Making utilitarian objects appeals to my practical side, yet the romance of being a potter seduces my dreamier side. Ultimately I think it is a lifestyle choice that brought me to this place in my career. The Potter is an unusual figure in today’s social order – a maverick and inventor functioning slightly on the fringe of society. The pace and length of the work cycle also appeals to me: on average I have a month or two month-long cycle of making a series of pots, glazing and firing them. I don’t often engage in year-long projects, for example, and I feel much more comfortable with a quicker turn-over rate, more rapid results, and more frequent check-points with my work.

Can you describe a typical work day?

Wake up at 7:30 to catch an 8am Bikram yoga class; walk to my studio, then sip on some coffee while I plan my attack for the day. Wedge up enough clay for the morning agenda, throw until lunchtime (2pm). I like to spend the afternoon and evening trimming or assembling work from previous day’s throwing. I have several damp boxes to keep things flowing, never allowing for waiting time. After another contemplative (or social) coffee break, I lose track of time until around 8 or 9pm, usually roused by hunger! While living in San Francisco for the past 7 years, I routinely went out to hear live music after dinner…oh, you asked about the work day…but seriously, rocking’ out to good bands is a HUGE part of my life. It inspires me.

How is your work studio set up and what do you value about it?

Hmmm, right now I’m in transition – moving from Kansas City (teaching job for one year at the Kansas City Art Institute) to Berkeley, California, where I’ll soon be set up in a brand-new studio! I am very excited about this new opportunity, sharing a gorgeous space with artists Rae Dunn and Josie Jurczenia. I think what I value most in a studio is GOOD ENERGY. It sounds California-hippy, I know, but from my experiences I know that chemistry between studio mates can be incredible — or not so – which will definitely affect my productivity accordingly. I’ve been very lucky — sharing a space with Rae Dunn and Mary Mar Keenan in my previous business venture, Verdigris Clay Studio + Gallery, was extremely positive. For seven years we shared a very small studio space, focusing a lot of energy on our consignment gallery that featured all local clay. We managed to let our business evolve naturally, and our personalities melded just as comfortably.

I think ceramic artists work well in a communal environment, sharing kilns and retail space, along with ideas and adventures. From my past studios I’ve learned that it’s smart to have a small area dedicated to the display and sales of finished work – whether you have a retail gallery or not. It’s important to reserve some space for the pieces to live and be viewed outside of the rest of the dusty clutter of the studio…that is, if you’re interested in selling the work! Even if you don’t care about sales, seeing the work properly displayed and lit is just as vital to artistic growth, encouraging room for contemplative thought and study.

Otherwise, my studio equipment “needs” are very basic: a wheel, a kiln (right now I’m using an electric kiln), a table, some shelves and ware boards, my throwing tools and some clay and I’m set! I make an effort to keep it simple so that I’m not reliant on a lot of cumbersome, expensive, specialty machines or materials.

What is your background and education?

I grew up in a suburb of Pittsburgh, PA, graduated Valedictorian and punk-rock poster child. Ran around Europe on a study-abroad program through Penn State, and there went my engineering aspirations! How can you visit Rome and think about pursuing anything other than art! I changed majors about nine times and ended up in the ceramics department my senior year of college, as a beginner under the guidance of Dave Dontigny of “Super Mud” fame. Little did I know that my next professor, Department Head Chris Staley, was one of the best potters in the U.S. He took an interest in my work, pushed me hard and encouraged me to pursue ceramics as a career. At the same time I was urged by my college advisor to apply for a Fulbright Grant – and I had the grade point average, professional recommendations, and guts to try. At that point I had nothing to lose, and everything to gain…that’s the best part about being 20-something and naive! Staley had referred me to Walter Ostrom at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, who helped me work out a proposal and budget for a year of study in Canada. I was awarded a Fulbright Grant that year, and Walter was my host and mentor. That year (1993-‘94) was an incredible, pivotal year for me.

Just like following clues of a treasure hunt, I picked up the clues to my life-path from teachers like Chris and Walter. Walter’s clue was to go to Anderson Ranch Arts Center, in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. Doug Casebeer, director of the clay program there, invited me to spend 9 months as a resident artist, during which time I think I realized I was a “for-lifer” in clay. Residencies are ideal opportunities to gauge your commitment level to your work, and to try the lifestyle of a self-employed artist on for size (it doesn’t fit everybody). The veils of student life and familial security are lifted and there is just you and the studio – it’s sink or swim! I was slightly paralyzed by the freedom at first, but soon established a work schedule for myself, along with regular visits and conversations with other resident artists at the Ranch. I took my first wholesale orders, made wares for a local restaurant, and experimented a lot with pricing my work. It was the perfect time and place to practice the potter’s life while still in the supportive, nurturing environment of an arts center.

Two years later I went to Indiana University for graduate school – a well-endowed, well-equipped three-year program, complimented by an incredible art museum on campus. During that time I built my first kiln, engaged in my first collaborative projects, and began building a network of peers and clients. Those three years at I.U. helped me to gain confidence in my work, and to build the exhibition record I had begun while in Canada and during my residency. Really, it all blended nicely into what is now my professional studio arts career. I was 29 when I finished grad school, and I think it really benefited me to have spent those four years in between undergraduate and graduate studies working to build my portfolio, and also testing the waters of full-time studio practice and production. I also dealt with the sudden death of my mother during that time, and the notion of adjustment and adaptation to all of the circumstances surrounding this type of loss.

There’s lots of talk about formal training vs. “real world” experience amongst artists these days, and I see real value in both. Since you went the formal route, what do you think art school gave you (besides a degree) that you may not have received had you not attended?

Obviously my formal training and “real world” experiences have been rather intertwined. I found value in the structured curriculum of a four-year degree program, as well as the actual classroom and studio dynamics. Also, I didn’t exactly attend art school, I went to a state university both for graduate and undergraduate study. The open-forum style lectures at Penn State encouraged discussion, debate, and ultimately comradery and peer support. As an undergrad I studied a lot of academic courses like Astronomy, Anthropology, Symbolic Logic, and AP English. These courses definitely impacted who I am as an artist today – and the practice of persuasive writing, developed from years of answering essay-question exams, has been particularly useful in my grant-writing pursuits.

While pursuing an MFA at Indiana University I was awarded a teaching assistantship all three years – an unparalleled opportunity to teach at the university level while still a student. I led courses in ceramics and 3-D design fundamentals, and gave my first lectures and demonstrations in front of a group. It also put me in the position of leading group critiques and grading others’ artworks. I’m not sure that I would have experienced anything like this in an apprenticeship situation.

Could you describe some of the most influential and career changing experiences you have had since leaving school? What about these experiences was so important?

As already mentioned, Anderson Ranch was a life changing experience because there I was first confronted with the isolation of working in the studio, and the unstructured, open expanse of time of a studio art lifestyle. Both can be crippling, and at the Ranch I learned how to schedule my studio time and invite others in for discussion when needed.

After grad school, I’d say the most influential event was going to China for six weeks. It was such an eye-opener: an education not only in ceramic history, but also in cultural evolution…it left me wondering about our corporate-run culture, our big-box mentality and greedy capitalism. My parents had started up a few small businesses when I was younger, but now my convictions about the value of mom-and-pop shops were stronger than ever. My greatest fear is total homogenization of American culture, and ultimately, world culture (I guess that’s globalization!). Now I’m getting all punk-rock on you again…but there is a point here. This existential crisis of sorts, in response to my time in China, led me to the next milestone of my life. I joined forces with Mary Mar Keenan and Rae Dunn who had just launched the small business venture I would be committed to for the next seven years — that is, Verdigris Clay Studio + Gallery. Our shared devotion to clay and to serving the local ceramics community created a contagious enthusiasm and growing momentum that was surprising even to us. We hosted events, took on interns, and consigned the work of more than thirty California-based artists. Our business plan developed and grew as we experimented with inventive methods of advertisement, publicity, and sales tactics. Often I regretted not taking a business course while in college!

Is there anything you wish you had known when you were leaving school but didn’t that you might share with us now?

Uh, that I should have taken a business course in college?! Otherwise, (I didn’t even do this, but…) I want to warn you all: DON’T TAKE OUT LARGE STUDENT LOANS FOR GRAD SCHOOL!!! You can get tuition waivers and stipends if you apply to the right places, and avoid falling into debt. It is extremely challenging to start out as a studio artist straight out of grad school if you are $60,000 in debt!

How has your experience so far been different or similar to your expectations when you set out?

When I was an undergrad I thought I would mimic my professors’ lives. When I got out of grad school I thought I would have my own studio and store front. Turns out I don’t like to work alone, and I don’t have time to teach!

What is your relationship to design, craft and the fine arts? How do you see your relationship to each? Or one in particular?

I pick ALL OF THE ABOVE. I’m really tired of the arts/crafts argument, and I think it’s just recently been changed to the art/design argument. I see myself as an artist who designs and crafts functional vessels from clay and other earthy materials. I always did like to hang out in the sand-box my parents built for me in our back yard!

Was there a point in your career that you made a decision to sell your pots for a living? Could you describe how you came to that decision?

Being a nomadic gypsy, I always sold my pots – even in my first semester of throwing – or traded them with anyone who would buy me a warm meal. It’s as natural to me as making. Although personally I would prefer to barter than exchange paper for everything…and so I do. For instance, right now I am working with a graphic designer/letterpress printer on a new business card – and trading pots for the fee! I also am trading pots in exchange for photography service…AND for help with moving my home and studio to California.

What difficulties arise in both making and selling your work and how do you overcome these?

The hardest part is asking the price your work and time really deserves. People seem to undervalue functional pottery, and it is our job to educate the public. It needs to be a group effort, a movement of sorts, to get the value and prices of pots up to where they should be. Why shouldn’t we be paid for our time like everyone else?

The hardest part about making is keeping the momentum going in the studio, even when inspiration is lacking. I try to work through the inevitable dips in enthusiasm – or I go to the museum. I need about three times the input for any output, so sometimes it is crucial that I stop and do some research. I’m not one of those people that can find all of the answers in my own work. I have to go out and look around, travel, read, and of course, rock out.

What is your relationship with galleries (on and offline)? How has that relationship changed over time? What role does the Internet play in your work?

I ship my work out to about a dozen galleries across the country. The specific galleries have changed over time, but the routine is pretty constant: ship out a small body of work to each, then replenish as necessary. Wait for the commission checks to come in. The Internet is beginning to play a slightly larger role in the promotion and sales of my work. I recently took control over my own website (http://www.christaassad.com), changing the format to a blog template that is easy for a Luddite like me to manage. Now I feel much more connected to my peers and clients, and anyone can comment on my writing or images there.

I think what has changed most over time is the familiarity galleries have with my name and my work. Stick around long enough, and people will notice you!

How does an artist go about acquiring business and marketing skills if they aren’t a natural at it already, and cannot afford to hire someone to help them?

Is it bad if I say, “trial and error”? I guess you could take a course at a local community college… I see emails all the time about workshops on this type of thing. Personally I couldn’t stand to sit through one, but a good potter-friend of mine, Whitney Smith (see http://www.whitneysmithpottery.com) does this kind of thing all the time – for sales/tax tips, business plan writing, grant writing, etc. And she’s the smartest business gal I know, besides Ayumi Horie, of course (http://www.ayumihorie.com).

How do you market your work and what avenue has been the most successful?

The most successful marketing venture for me has undoubtedly been the Artstream Nomadic Gallery (http://www.art-stream.com). Artstream is an entrepreneurial venture devised by potter-genius Alleghany Meadows of Carbonale, CO. Begun as a grass-roots style collaboration between Alleghany and five or six other potter-friends, the gallery was born from an old 1967 Airstream trailer that Alleghany and crew gutted and converted to an exhibition space specifically for utilitarian clay vessels. When not docked at the Aspen Farmer’s Market, it has traveled from L.A. to N.Y.C., putting contemporary ceramic art on the street. I’ve been involved with this project for seven years now, and I credit its iconic magnetism with boosting my career most. If you haven’t heard about Artstream you can see some pictures on my website, its own site, or even visit its MySpace page (search ARTSTREAM) and add us! The power of Artstream is strength in numbers: put a group of energetic potters together and bring the wares directly to the market. Have wheels will travel.

You must have some favorite designers that you look to for inspiration. What other artists’ inspire you? Where do you find inspiration for your designs?

I try not to assimilate the work of other clay artists into my own, and instead look to industrial design and architecture for functional tips. Inspiration can be found in the most unexpected things, and usually whacks me in the face right when I’m not looking! I do love the work of Anish Kapoor, Marek Cecula, Sam Chung, Peter Beasecker, Jason Walker…I also have tons and tons of respect for Eva Zeisel, Betty Woodman, Beatrice Wood, and Marguerite Wildenhain.

Can you tell us about future projects?

I’m thrilled to tell you about the very recent publication of the book, “Searching for Beauty: Letters from a Collector to a Studio Potter,” for which I wrote the introduction. It’s the culmination of a five-year collaboration with academic, collector and author Dr. Richard Jacobs, whose philosophical and emotionally-charged writings use pottery-making as a metaphor for life. Dr. Jacobs has written more than 1,000 pages to me over the past five years, and together we have presented two exhibitions, several public lectures, and a panel discussion at the National Ceramics Conference (NCECA). The book is the first of a two-volume set that chronicles the 75 letters and accompanying bibliography of texts referenced throughout the discourse. Published in Wales, UK, and not yet distributed in the U.S., you can have a copy shipped directly to you…go to: www.kestrel-books.co.uk. The book has received fantastic reviews in England, Canada, Australia, and the U.S., and I highly recommend it for your personal library!

Also a 13-stop Artstream tour could be shaping up for October, with the Smithsonian as our headliner. We are in the process of lining up workshops at universities and arts centers on the East Coast, where, at each stop, we will also set up an exhibit of functional wares by about a dozen nationally renowned potters. That’s quite a lot of set-up, tear-down and pack-up – people have actually asked us if we leave everything set up when we drive! Truth is, the Artstream crew feels a lot more like roadies than rock stars.

On the heels of that trip could be a visit to China in late October for the 1st annual International NCECA conference – I’ve been invited to be part of a panel discussion arranged through West Virginia University about international educational programs.

Last but not least, there’s my new studio collaboration with Rae and Josie.

When you have a moment to actually breathe (!), what do you do for fun?

Uh, besides rocking out to live music? I hula-hoop, drink tequila, crack jokes and laugh a lot…oh, and travel to distant lands whenever financially possible.

I always like to ask, do you have any influential books or texts that you can recommend?

Of course I will take this opportunity to shamelessly put in another plug for Searching For Beauty. A great book about sensory stimuli is Diane Ackerman’s, “A Natural History of the Senses.” Some of the old staples are still in circulation for good reason: Rhodes, Rawson…and of course Garth Clark, as a contemporary critic. As a teaching tool I recommend Julia Galloway’s Field Guide for Ceramic Artisans – it’s invaluable to professionals and aspiring artists in our field. I encourage all of my students to buy it (mailto:jmgsac@rit.edu).

Any last golden nuggets of information you would like to offer up?

It’s pretty simple – just keep working. Many artists fail because they quit. Success is just a matter of perseverance; sooner or later, you will arrive.

Gimme More!
http://www.christaassad.com
http://www.akardesign.com/
http://americancraftmag.org/zoom-entry.php?id=5489
http://americancraftmag.org/zoom-entry.php?id=5492
http://americancraftmag.org/zoom-entry.php?id=5493

Diana Fayt on Surviving as a Full-Time Potter

2009-04-21T09:34:00.002-06:00

I had to share this email from Ceramic Arts Daily. You can go to their site and sign up for the emails to come to you daily for free. Diana Fayt has been inspiring to so many--here is yet another reason to love her!

www.CeramicArtsDaily.org |

To many of us in the Ceramic Arts Daily community, making pottery is something we wished we were doing more often. We work hard to squeeze studio time in each week while juggling fulltime jobs, family, housework, sleep. We probably all fantasize at one time or another about opening a pottery and making a living doing something we truly love. In the upcoming June/July/August issue of Ceramics Monthly, we get some insight into what that is like. The Working Potters issue is back. In it, eight fulltime potters share their trials, tribulations and triumphs working for a living in this field. Today, we'll present an excerpt from that article. So if you are thinking of taking the plunge to fulltime pottery, read on for some advice from a couple of experts on the subject.- Jennifer Harnetty, editor.

A Pottery Paycheck: Expert Insights into Making a Living as A Potter

by Diana Fayt

Diana Payt
San Francisco, California
My career as a potter started fifteen years ago, soon after I graduated from the California College of Arts (CCA), though I only began to make a living from my ceramic work in 2005. Previous to 2005, I always had a secondary job(s) waiting tables, as well as teaching ceramics and art. After twenty years of that schedule, I got tired of being spread thin and decided to make a go of it with my work full time. Now, when I look back at those years, I wonder how I did it all. Flying solo has been incredibly satisfying and has also had its lean, mean moments, but somehow I always manage to make it work.

Making a living from my work was something that found me slowly. For many years I was really hesitant to give up the security of another income. Becoming burnt out from wearing too many hats at one time and the feeling of never being able to focus completely, was a key motivator for me to pursue my work full time and make a living from it.

I sell my work through a multitude of venues. I have an online shop where I sell directly to customers. This has broadened my spectrum of buyers to a world market. It also helps to supplement my income, since I can sell my work for retail prices. I love having direct contact with my customers as well. The relationship aspect of selling my work, without a middle person, is really wonderful and I enjoy knowing where my work is going. I participate in a couple of local craft shows each year, and I host annual studio and holiday sales. I sell my work in galleries and participate in as many shows as I can handle. I find showing my work really helps it to stay fresh. In the past, a large part of my sales were from wholesaling my work, though that model is really tough to pull off with one-of-a-kind handmade work. I find the time it takes to make the work, handle all the details that must go into creating a wholesale line-like keeping up with communication and paperwork-is far too much work and really does not pay off.

See what the other six featured working potters have to say in the June/July/August issue of Ceramics Monthly.
Subscribe today to have it delivered to your door!

In 2005, I decided to start writing a blog, One Black Bird (www.oneblackbird.blogspot.com). At the time, there were only a few blogs covering the topic of ceramics, and I thought it would be fun to give people a glimpse into what was happening in my studio as well as provide a dynamic aspect to my website. Doing this was, by far, the most advantageous way to promote my work. Because of the blog, I was able to share what I do with a much broader audience than if I was only showing my work in galleries and at craft shows. It also expanded my community of fellow potters and ceramic enthusiasts, as well as people in the design world. Selling on Etsy and promoting my work via design blogs has resulted in a great amount of exposure that I may not have received otherwise, including giving my work international attention.

The internet is a really wonderful tool for potters and artists to utilize to promote themselves and their work. However, this does not come without working at it. Managing an online shop, writing blog entries and keeping up with correspondence can take up a lot of time. I think, in today's world, it is foolish for artists not to take advantage of the internet. I know many potters who are not tech savvy and find it difficult to transition into the digital world, but an online presence would go a long way toward growing an audience for their work.

If I were to advise someone about pursuing a career in ceramics, the first bit would be to remain flexible yet focused. Though my work stays consistent, I find that I am constantly re-inventing myself in order to make a living with it. I do my best to keep an open mind about this. There really are a multitude of possibilities out there for one to have a career as a ceramist. Being too precious or limited in ones thinking can kill that dream.

To see more images of Diana Fayt's work, visit www.dianafayt.com.

Betty Woodman speaks about making work

2009-04-21T09:31:00.000-06:00

OBAMAWARE SHOW!

2008-10-02T08:41:00.002-06:00

Ayumi Horie has curated an upcoming show titled: Obamaware. There will be a preview of the work for sale up on Ayumi's site on October 13th. The work will actually be for sale October 15th. Ayumi writes of the show:

"On October 15th, this online exhibition will go live as a fundraiser for the Barack Obama campaign for the US Presidency. Twenty-seven ceramic artists have joined in creating Obama/Biden-specific work, much of it limited edition, in an effort to raise money in support of Obama in this crucial election. We invite you to support our efforts, as half of the proceeds of your purchase will go directly to the campaign.

Potters often talk about the intersection of art and everyday life and functional ceramic's power to impact people on a daily, intimate basis. Through Obamaware 2008, we hope to expand this dialogue by generating a timely conversation and by supporting a candidate who is brave enough to promote a hopeful, humanistic paradigm."

Please visit the Obamaware site for profiles of the artists who are participating in the show. Janice Jakielski, a fellow ceramics grad from CU is pne of the participating artists (her work is shown here)

Faythe Levine: "Ambassador of the Handmade"

2008-09-09T08:05:00.002-06:00

I am sure you all read the NYT on a regular basis, but I have to draw attention to the recent article about Faythe Levine which was put in the "Home and Garden" section of the Times. I was a little put off finding it in H&G, why not the Arts section? Especially since the article discusses American Craft Magazine's newly designed role to bridge the gap between Craft's Old Guard and the D.I.Y. movement. I find that the younger generations of art students (I put myself in this category) are paying attention to craft materials and concepts in their art. I feel a bit like it is up to "us" to redefine "Fine Art" as inclusive of Craft and all that it has to offer. I would be bummed to have the D.I.Y. movement separate itself out from Academia entirely...Is there really no room for someone with an MFA to make work just as political as the next person knitting?

I understand that the perception of the successful D.I.Y. crafters is that they are generally un-schooled or self-schooled in craft, but I think that isn't entirely true. Many of the successful craft artists on Etsy are coming from an art school background of some sort. Perhaps their skills as beaders or knitters is self taught, but isnt it often the idea in conjunction with the execution that makes alot of the D.I.Y. craft exciting and interesting? I think one of the most successful and well known examples of this kind of person is Jenny Hart of Sublime Stitching--didn't she start as a painter?

I encourage you to read the article at NYT here and let me know what you are thinking...

Craft Victoria

2008-08-14T07:26:00.002-06:00

If you haven't recently been to the Craft Victoria website, it is time. A hip compliment to the current trends in craft in the US, it is very similar to our own American Craft Magazine. It has great articles and show reviews online. What got me there was their current A Month About Making with a show I'll Show You My Craft, If You Show Me Yours #1 as well as a show titled: In the Making: Professional Members' Exhibition
The images for the "I'll show you mine" came from Australia's Design Files weblog. There are also lots of ceramic related articles in their Craft Culture section of the site. I enjoyed the article by Garth Clark titled: Blunting the New. It is a spirited reaction to criticism from Damon Moon regarding some of Clark's own critical views of Bernard Leach (yes, we are still having that conversation in the ceramics world) as well as some fears about Clark's gallerist role in Australia. I have to quote Clark here just to whet your appetite:

"...as much as we may praise Leach for his dedication, his kindness (as long as you were not one of his wives or children) and his undisputed love of pots, he and his often more conservative followers brought on decades of artistic constipation, delaying our engagement with the contemporary."

Joeseph Pintz: ICON Ceramics

2008-08-13T08:15:00.002-06:00

Since I mentioned a relationship between Joseph Pintz and Shrosbree in my last post, here is some of Joe Pintz's work. According to his website, he is finishing up a residency at Archie Bray (I thought he had moved on?). He attended the University of Nebraska, Lincoln along with some other recent fabulous ceramics folks comingout of that program. I have a cup of his that I thoroughly enjoy using it. I find using his cup comforting and amusing at the same time.

Santa Fe Clay: FUSE

2008-08-13T08:05:00.003-06:00

I have to point out the current exhibition at Santa Fe Clay titled: FUSE. It is a show of the work of Paul Kotula, Melissa Mytty, Howard Kottler and James Shrosbree. I am finding myself returning to the Santa Fe Clay website over and over to look at the work, specifically the work of Shrosbree.
I love the bright colors and the simple form, I wish I could be there to see them in person. It looks almost like his work is inspiring Joe Pintz?

tulip fields in holland

2008-07-16T09:01:00.003-06:00

I just came across these images on another blog, but the original article was published in England: here

Residency Hot Spot via Ayumi Horie

2008-06-18T14:04:00.004-06:00

I just received a lovely email from Ayumi Horie who is International Center for Ceramics- Guldagergaard in Denmark. It has come up in many many conversations about good residency programs as one of the best. I know that Jeanne Quinn and Anders Rhuwald both enjoyed their time there as well. It is a distant (or maybe not so distant) dream of mine to attend... Here are some pictures courtesy of Ayumi.
And some information about the residency:

Residence Program

JANUARY - OCTOBER

International artists, craftsmen and designers from all over the world can apply to work in the studios and develop a specific project.

Guldagergaard gives the individual the possibility of concentrated studio work, investigation and research. The center offers a fine combination of international atmosphere and professional dialogue.

The residence program is intended for artists who wish to work independently in the studios, but applicants may want to consider the thematic programs that interest them when scheduling their residency. Calendar

Guldagergaard holds a maximum of 20 resident artists.

Artist-in-Residence Program
Arists-in-Residence Awards 2007-2008
Assistantships

APPLICATION DEADLINE

November 15, February 15, May 15, August 15

FUNDING

The Artist-in-Residence Program is supported by Guldagergaard, the local Town Council and private Funds. Guldagergaard is a non-profit-making foundation, and residencies are offered at the lowest possible rate.
In 2007-2008, the Artist-in-Residence Program is funded in part through support from the Danish Ministry of Culture.

Facilities Photoes General information Application information

T-Shirts from Ayumi Horie and Mikey Walsh

2008-05-21T09:44:00.002-06:00

I first saw this t-shirt on Christa Assad a few weeks ago when I was a visiting artist at KCAI, in Kansas City. I was totally jealous and wanted one for myself. Well, now it is possible, and for you too! Ayumi Horie is posting them for sale at 12pm est. on Thursday (tomorrow!) along with some new work. I am going to be getting online to get one for myself, things go fast off of her site so I recommend getting there early.
Click here to go to her fabulous site.

Thesis Paper: Salon Familiar

2008-04-29T20:16:00.001-06:00

Hatch, Molly C. (M.F.A. Ceramics, Department of Art and Art History)
Salon Familiar
Thesis directed by Associate Professor Kimberly Dickey

“We find it familiar to consider objects as useful or aesthetic, as necessities or vain indulgences. We are on less familiar ground when we consider objects as companions to our emotional lives or as provocations to thought. The notion of evocative objects brings together these two less familiar ideas, underscoring the inseparability of thought and feeling in our relationship to things. We think with the objects we love; we love the objects we think with.” ~Sherry Turkle

Salon Familiar

As a viewer, I find that I rarely consider the gallery or museum as the final home for artwork. I always imagine the home to which the pieces might belong. What role does the artwork play in the daily life of the owner? Understanding this tendency to see artwork as related to the domestic environment has allowed me to better understand my motivation to make functional ceramics. I have designed this exhibition to be viewed in a gallery, but ultimately envision it to be used, viewed and enjoyed in the home. It is designed to hang on the wall as one might hang a painting but is then removed, used and returned to the wall. My appropriation of baroque and chinoiserie patterns on the surface of my work as well as my use of traditional methods to make my forms results in objects that simultaneously embrace the history of ceramics and the decorative arts.

Concept: Desires, Needs and DIY
I grew up doing. My childhood was spent on a small organic dairy farm in Vermont. This meant long summer days putting away hay, driving a tractor and doing chores. Learning the value of hard work and understanding task-oriented labor lay the foundation for a life of making things. I learned early to trust my own capability make things for others and myself.
Growing up, it was clear to me that the process of painting and art making was a meaningful process to the women in my family. In my childhood visits to my maternal grandmother’s house, I was encouraged to pass my time by drawing and painting. My great grandmother and grandmother were painters. In addition to being a farmer, my mother is also a painter. My own exploration of art has directly stemmed from this familial connection to art making and instilled a desire to understand my family history and to participate in it.
My love of ceramics comes from this family history of using our hands to make objects for use and for contemplation. In my ceramic work, I aim to keep the family tradition of making the things we need and things we desire. When I was first drawn to ceramics as an undergraduate, there was a real satisfaction in making something that was clearly useful. A cup or a bowl is almost universally accessible and navigable as most people use them in their daily lives. For me, the blank cup is anonymous in a manner similar to a blank piece of paper. The three dimensional surface of functional ceramics is rich with potential as a place for drawings and paintings.
In the preparation for making Salon Familiar, I asked myself to make work that could become part of my daily life. I began with a relatively simple question: How can I make utilitarian objects hang on the wall as objects to both contemplate and use? How can cups and plates be easily used and stored in a way that they are also viewed as art objects?
Do-It-Yourself (often referred to by its acronym DIY) is a term used to describe a process of creating things for oneself. This idea stems from life in an industrial society and relates to the ideals rooted in the Arts and Crafts movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The current DIY movement arguably takes the Arts and Crafts rebellion against mass production and its perceived lack of soul to the next level. Today’s DIY movement is plain in its critique of modern consumerism by encouraging people to take technologies into their own hands to fulfill their needs.
My personal understanding of DIY stems from my childhood experiences of making my own things to fulfill desires for what I couldn’t otherwise afford. In the case of Salon Familiar, I worked to create alternative storage devices for plates, platters and cups that question our traditional use of cabinets and shelving for storage. In altering the more accepted modes of storage of functional objects in the home I am questioning the traditional perception of the role of ceramics and craft in relationship to art, decoration and function.
Making the work for this show was a process of creating things to fulfill desires and needs. I want to be able to literally use the plates I hang on the wall as paintings. In response to this I created ceramic tiles that mimic baroque frames with rounded cleats that the foot of a plate hangs on. The plate can then be easily removed and replaced after use. I also created ceramic hooks for cups that are mounted on a ceramic tile or on the wall directly allowing for the same ease of use, storage and viewing.
DIY results in objects that are often close to the commercial equivalent, but often hover in an odd existence between the commercial ideal and the handmade representation. In most commercial products evidence of the process in which things are manufactured has often been removed. It seems the industrial product often is devoid of human touch. In the making of the work for Salon Familiar I have intentionally left marks of the hand, revealing the process by which each object was made. The mark of the hand makes for a visual and tactile connection with the maker, a connection that is lost in industry. In the case of this work, the mark of the hand is a construction. The mark of the maker acts as a signifier of authenticity. The objects I am most often attracted to offer me a connection to the maker through use, surface as well as through looking at the object. Choosing to make things by hand and to subscribe to the ideals of the DIY movement fuels much of my motivation to continue making work. These ideals are best described in the following statement by artist Faith Gillespie:
There is clearly another imperative at work now in our exercise of the old crafts. It has to do with reclamation, with reparation. The world seems not to need us any more to make ‘the things of life.’ Machines make more and cheap. The system needs us to do the maintenance jobs and to run the machines that produce the so-called ‘goods,’ to be machines in the consumer societies which consume and consume and are empty. Our turning to craftwork is a refusal. We may not all see ourselves this way, but we are working from a position of dissent. And that is a political position.

To be able to make a useful and beautiful object from a handful of clay feels powerful. To fully understand the skill, energy and time that it takes to make that piece of clay into a cup makes me more aware of my own habits of consumption. This awareness helps me to value objects beyond their monetary worth.

The Work: Form
The work in this show consists of several forms—cups, saucers, plates and frames. My approach to making each form was similar. I wanted to highlight the work of the hand by leaving visible fingerprints from pinching the pots. The imperfections in the drawing and painting were purposefully left and the marks in the clay from building the forms by hand, casting and wheel-throwing were intentionally not erased. I chose to use porcelain for all of the work in the show for its durability, ability to show color, and its historical significance as a rare and precious material.
The wheel-thrown forms I chose for the plates are not specifically derived from one historical source. This archetypal plate form allowed the plates to work with the frames behind them in a way that one might begin to see the two separate objects as a cohesive image. When the plates are removed from their counterparts, there is an empty frame left behind, pointing to the functional plate as the framed art object. In the case of the composition of Salon Familiar, one would see that it is a plate or a cup that belongs in the empty frame. This sense of a void hopefully leads the viewer to conclude that the plate (or cup) is the artwork housed by the frame which itself is an artwork.
The forms of the cups are directly derived from the production and pattern books from the French porcelain factories of the 18th and 19th centuries. The three large scale paintings titled Pattern I, II and III, are also specifically and directly influenced by these traditional factory forms. Rather than keeping with the style of the pre-industrial revolution production patterns that are almost mathematical in their precision in painting the production patterns for my cups I intentionally made the painting style more sketch-like. Each cup form in the painting refers specifically to a corresponding historical form. In thinking about the historical cup forms and their use for formal tea and the aristocracy, I decided to reconsider the original designs for a more contemporary lifestyle. My designs increased the volume of most of the forms and made them more mug-like. I also removed the saucer from all but four cups because it seems saucers are rarely used today, and I, myself rarely use saucers.
I chose to handbuild the cups in an effort to slow down my process, to pay close attention to the nuances of the historical forms and to create a general mindfulness around the process of making an object by hand. The cups were then cast in porcelain and altered again by hand after being pulled from the mold. This action of returning to the cast piece to alter the existing form made each piece unique and directly comments on the lack of uniqueness found in industry.
The specificity of the cup forms from the French porcelain factories of Sevres and Vincennes reference an aristocratic class and imply formality. The aspects of the cups and plates that make them more contemporary—the enlarged and cropped pattern, non-traditional color choices and the imperfections in the forms—are meant to make the work more accessible, useful and more functional for a contemporary lifestyle than their historical counterparts.
My appropriation of the French rococo floral and foliage decoration implies a similar formality and richness that the historically referenced forms possess. My faux frames are renderings of 18th century French rococo wooden and silver repoussé frames. The overly ornate quality of the baroque aesthetic exaggerates the importance of the artwork the frames hold and itself as a piece of art. The frames function to contextualize the cups, saucers and plates as art objects to be looked at and admired in the same way they might contextualize paintings in a traditional salon. The small hexagonal jewel forms on the frames are used to conceal the screws that mount the frames on the wall directly reference the historical method used in repoussé frames to conceal screws with gemstones set in silver.

The Surface: Drawing

As a result of coming to ceramics via drawing and printmaking, I am very interested in engaging the two-dimensional with the three-dimensional. I have, in my own way, created objects that have been drawn as a representation of a traditional salon-style hanging of paintings. Each piece in Salon Familiar contains a drawn element. The surface of all of the work is treated similarly in an effort to unify the overall composition of the wall. I chose to use the Japanese mishima slip inlay technique as a way to create a flowing line quality that allows a great deal of detail. The graphic quality of the mishima line is advantageous in my effort to have the work talk to drawing and painting as representation on a three-dimensional form. I think of this drawing as both physically on the surface of the forms and as a way to delineate each change in plane. As I drew the lines defining each plane change, I felt almost as though I was drawing a representation of a cup on each cup, a representation of a plate on a plate and so on. It was in this way that the cups and plates were similar to a blank sheet of paper to be drawn on.
The use of the drawn line as an illusion or representation becomes instrumental in understanding the composition of the work as reference to a traditional salon. Salon Familiar is not a traditional salon-style hanging in that it has repeating forms in the frames and the patterns on the surfaces of the hanging forms. This repetition is subtle, allowing the viewer to see an overall diversity of the objects on the wall as a unified whole. The repetition differentiates Salon Familiar from a traditional salon that would have no repetition in the frames or in the paintings.
Salon Familiar was made for the specific dimensions of the wall in the gallery in which it was exhibited. Originally, I was going to show the work individually, each piece working on its own. All of my forms and their surfaces were treated with this in mind. It was not until I got to the gallery with the work that it became clear to me that this was a single piece of work. I feel that the individual pieces require the strength of the density of the overall composition to complete their relationship to the broader idea of the salon. This density of the work creates a unified composition of multiples. The density of the composition also acts to encourage the viewer to come closer to the work to view the details in the density of the surface decoration. The act of moving closer to the work creates a more intimate experience with the individual pieces. This intimacy is similar and approachable to the familiarity most people have with functional ceramics. The fact that the hanging pieces are functional encourages the viewer to understand the work as simultaneously an image for using and viewing.

The Surface: Pattern and Appropriation
I. Cups, Saucers, Platters and Plates
On the cups, saucers and plates and there are several patterns used repeatedly, which are all chinoiserie patterns made for the European market in the 18th and 19th centuries. I am drawn to these patterns as early examples of appropriated imagery used to placate a desire similar to my own desire to attain something otherwise financially (and culturally) unattainable. My appropriation of Chinese imagery on my ceramics is similar to this historical precedent; it is related to a long history of these same patterns being interpreted and reinterpreted from one culture to another.
The desire that the Europeans had for the Chinese export porcelains lead the Europeans to mimic the aesthetics of the Chinese florals and narrative scenes. Even well after the Germans discovered their own local kaolins, Europeans were creating replicas of Chinese porcelains because of their beauty, symbolic wealth and preciousness. These odd copies and renderings by the Europeans of the Chinese aesthetic were made out of a desire to have what was otherwise unattainable. In a sense this was an early form of DIY. My own appropriation of this aesthetic becomes my interpretation of another culture through my use of color, altered form, evidence of the hand in the form and stylized drawings. These modifications are made for my culture. This process of appropriation relates to my employment of DIY as aspiration--I can’t afford the real thing, so I am going to make my own version.
My desire to appropriate and have access to objects that are out of reach is more than personal. Duchamp’s “readymades” act as a precursor to the postmodern use of appropriation as a resistance of ownership. In my work I am creating a pastiche of work that employs historical art practices and reworks the role of authenticity in relationship to the decorative. Out of desire for these objects, I have created my own collage of historical form and imagery. I am altering the patterns by reacting to the visual information available, editing out parts of the original pattern and inserting aspects of different patterns from the same time period. By employing the same chinoiserie aesthetic to remix and modify imagery and pattern, the work is functioning within another historical framework. Through the use of scale shift, repetition and cropping I am creating contemporary views of historical patterns.
I am attracted to the late 18th and early 19th centuries’ obsession with florals and birds that were borrowed from the Chinese export porcelains and fabrics. In my rendering of the birds, which are compiled from various chinoiserie wall hangings, I have inserted character and expression. The birds are stuck, almost lost in a stasis of branches in constant spring bloom. I hope to evoke empathy with the bird characters, rarely in flight, often looking as though they have been caught, trapped by the cup. The most specific and perhaps meaningful appropriation of imagery was that of the Blue Willow Pattern. My ancestors were merchants. Much of the inherited china that I grew up using is left over from mercantile shipments. The pattern I was most enamored with as a child was the Blue Willow Pattern that were on the plates and cups we had. By rendering the Blue Willow Pattern in red and editing out much of the original pattern I am making my own remix of the original. The cups and plates then become renditions of a product that I desire, need and have a great affection for. Rather than purchasing the originals, I have taken advantage of my familial history and history at large to make these objects.

II. Frames
The frames are directly appropriated patterns from silver and wooden frames of the European baroque and rococo periods. The frames are directly drawn from an existing pattern. Rather than reworking the imagery for the frames, I drew two-dimensional representations of the original three-dimensional frames on flat ceramic tiles that are mounted to the wall. The scale of the rendered frames is close to the scale of the original frames. This similarity in scale points to the rendered frame as actual frame, yet it is still an illusion or removed from reality by being alternately drawn. The flatness of the tiles is instrumental in the viewer understanding them as illusions or representations of the real.

The Surface: Color
The color palette I used for Salon Familiar is brighter and more contemporary than in the historical patterns I am referencing. I have looked to contemporary interior and industrial design for the palette in keeping with my interest in modifying the historical. In the case of the Blue Willow Pattern, I was particularly interested in matching it to my own kitchen--red being the dominant color. The change of color from a historical to a more contemporary palette allows for the viewer to understand the origin of the pattern and see that it differs from the original.
The diversity of color in the composition was also used to create variation as well as to help balance the overall composition of the wall as a whole. In my planning of the work, I wanted a diversity of color to allude to the idea and act of collecting a diversity of objects over time. As the work developed, it became clear that repetition in form and surface and color was unifying the whole piece and talking about a different kind of collection, one based in appropriation and form rather than accumulated over time. A collection of artwork is being alluded to, but the work could never operate as a diverse collection as one might find in a real salon. It can only exist as a grouping of work assembled by one artist.

Conclusion: Decorative Function
In my time in graduate school, I have been exploring different ways in which I understand decoration as meaningful. I have often asked myself what the function of decoration is. I agree with Valerie Jaudon, a member of the Pattern and Decoration group in her statement: “ The decorative is both a reflection and an essential part of the world around it.” The decoration can lead the viewer to understand the function of the pot it is housed by. In making this work, I thought about the hanging pots as being useful beyond their place in the larger composition within the home. I decorated the surfaces of the pots to be viewed both when in use and when hanging and it is the combination of these two elements (decoration and use) that intrigue me. When the cups are being used there are drawings revealed that are hidden by being hung against the wall. Whether on the wall or in use, the decoration function functions as an investigatory element.
I chose to create a grouping of pots to display on the frames for Salon Familiar to imply the variation of a traditional salon hanging of paintings and the variation of my sources for imagery. The diversity of color on the surfaces of the work add emphasis to the importance of individual pieces within the larger composition of the wall. There is no overall repeating pattern in the piece; there are no sets of dishes. This differs from the traditional way one acquires china in sets, but is similar in how most collectors acquire paintings. The choice of varied colors and forms is indicative of my own aesthetic choices and how I acquire things in my own home. In the same way that I appropriated and altered pattern for the surfaces of my individual pieces, I wanted to alter the salon to fulfill my own desire to see a ceramic salon, as I would have it for myself.
In my own home, I collect objects slowly and over time. I find joy in knowing the story of each pot. This exhibition is my way of celebrating the potential of these objects to be evocative as individuals as well as in a group, no matter how inconsequential they may seem. Each pot in this piece offers a particular kind of experience when in use. I hope that this experience provides an opportunity for the role of a cup or a plate in the everyday to become more contemplative and useful.

Bibliography

1. Turkle, Sherry. Evocative Objects: Things We Think With, Massachusetts: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2007.

2. Triggs, Teal. “Scissors and Glue: Punk Fanzines and the Creation of a DIY Aesthetic,” Oxford Journal of Design History; London: Oxford University Press, 2006.

3. Elinor Gillian, Su Richardson, Sue Scott, Angharad Thomas, and Kate Walker, eds. The Masterless Way: Weaving an Active Resistance; Women and Craft, London: Virago Press, 1987.

4. Adamson, Glen; Thinking Through Craft; Glen Adamson and the Board of Trustees of the Victoria and Albert Museum, 2007.

Paintings of plates and everyday things.

2008-04-15T12:32:00.003-06:00

These paintings by Holly Farrell are fantastic. They are operating in a similar way to my goals for my own work. It seems we both want the everyday to be regarded as artwork....

Pattern in unexpected (great) places

2008-04-15T12:29:00.001-06:00

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Ceramics and Thread

2008-03-25T10:43:00.004-06:00

I found these images of Diem Chau's ceramic embroidery. I love the detail of the imagery, there is much more here than Hella Jongerius ' embroidered ceramics. I think the most wonderful part is the thread that begins to draw off of the canvas of the cups. An amazing example of drawing and craft. via Emma's Design Blog.

Form follows Surface

2008-03-21T10:17:00.002-06:00

I just came across this image on This Love Forever. Apparently it is an image from a Pantone Magazine called View on Colour. Really what this image inspires is for me to make more work that does the same--what would happen if my forms began to be dictated by the surface even more than they already are? I am sensing a new body of work...

Etsy Find: Brooklyn Rehab

2008-03-06T09:09:00.005-07:00

I love the 2d-3d play here with the drawn line of the teabag. I cant help myself for loving drawings on 3-d objects. Click here to view Brooklyn Rehab's Etsy shop.

Trixie Delicious: Vandalized Vintage

2008-03-05T11:16:00.004-07:00

I am sure we have all seen this here and there, but I have to post some images myself, just so that I can keep tabs on Trixie. She is a designer, artist and craftswoman hailing from Auckland NZ. The kiwi sense of humor comes on strong in these witty and clever pieces of recycled ceramics. A girl after my on heart. I will have to send her some images of my affirmative series once it is finished. Text and ceramics are beautiful together...

Gesine Hackenberg

2008-03-04T10:25:00.003-07:00

There was a mention of Gesine Hackenburg today on Design*Sponge. I first saw some of her work a the Fragiles exhibit at Design Miami back in December. The cut out spoon from a cup is done so nicely. The "kitchen necklaces" are a natural progression from her spoon made from a cup. I love that she is reinventing an already functional object--perhaps one that is even broken and needs to be recycled into a new useful object. Reinvention of the everyday. New ways to display objects of use? By golly, yes.

The Everyday as Art continued

2008-02-26T09:46:00.004-07:00

I the plate image first on the guest blog last week on Design*Sponge. The plates are right up my alley--going along with an interest in creatively displaying our objects of daily use as art. The source for the images is Living Etc.

source: wool blankets

2008-02-09T09:42:00.001-07:00

Vika Mitrichenka

2008-02-07T15:36:00.000-07:00

Vika Mitrichenka moved to The Netherlands from Minsk on a tourist visa. While still at school in Minsk, Vika was inspired by Holland’s Golden Age, particularly the painters of the time, such as Johannes Vermeer and Pieter Hoogh. Other than knowing that she recently graduated from a very prestigious program in the Netherlands, I have been unable to find much information about her or her process. It appears that she frankensteins cast pieces together and then decorates them traditionally.

The gorgeous tea service (numbered edition) is available from the Frozen Fountain.

In the series “Grandmother’s treasures” (numbered editions):
Teaset “Victoria” no. 10.

Tea for two, “Victoria”

From the series “Grandfather’s Predilections”

Images found on the Style Files and The Frozen Fountian.

LucyD. Recycling Ceramics

2008-02-07T15:31:00.001-07:00

Lucy D. is an Austrian Design company. One of their more recent projects were these tableware pieces. Each piece is made from reclaimed china that has been treated with luster. Click here to check out the blog entry on 2Modern where I came across Lucy D.

2d/3d: Portia Wells and Mark Cutler

2008-01-30T12:30:00.000-07:00

Portia Wells (top images) and Mark Cutler (bottom images) are both working with a lovely sense of 2D and 3D in combination. The flatness of the drawings on the fabric lend themselves to the modernist or even minimalist forms beneath. I really enjoy the conflation of modernist and decorative aesthetics.

Broken English: Slow Movie

2008-01-30T12:29:00.001-07:00

I have to recommend this movie to other romantics out there. It is one of the more cynical and sweet movies that "ends right" that I have seen in a while. Who would't move to Paris for love?

One lump or two?

2008-01-28T08:06:00.000-07:00

Delft Toast

2008-01-28T08:05:00.002-07:00

This CNC toast machine courtesy of Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories. They have images of people on toast in addition to this text. Personally, i am more excited about my toast matching my plate...You can view many other lovely, more decorative toast products from Minale Maeda here. This piece below is a part of their "Table Manners" series.

Aurelie Mathigot

2008-01-28T08:04:00.001-07:00

Trash Luxe: Christine Misiak and Karen Ryan

2008-01-28T07:54:00.001-07:00

SuperNaturale!

2008-01-19T09:43:00.001-07:00

I have just come across an entire website that is dedicated to making art out of everyday life. Here is how they describe themselves:

SuperNaturale is an independent site dedicated to the Do It Yourself culture in all its glorious forms. From simple afternoon home improvement projects to radical lifestyle choices- we love them all. We celebrate ingenuity, creativity and the handmade.

We publish an online magazine, host an active bbs (Glitter), and have a group blog (Glimmer). Simply put we are a hybrid, a chimera, a liger—a radiant community with great editorial content.

Supernaturale is produced by Flat, a New York City-based design firm.

SuperNaturale has articles ranging from craft tutorials, digging your own root cellar all the way to the politics of drinking tea (click here to read the article). There are some really good interviews, Jenny Hart, Andrea Zittel, Garth Johnson, Annette Kesterson, and others.

Spectacular Craft Reading List

2008-01-19T09:17:00.000-07:00

I have already purchased a couple of the books on this incredible reading list. I highly reccomend visiting the V&A site for more information about this exhibit. If you are near London or passing through, the show is up until February 17th.

READING LIST:

Adamson, Glenn. Thinking Through Craft. New York: Berg, 2007
Bishop, Claire. Installation Art: a Critical History. London: Tate, 2005 NAL pressmark: 603.AG.0493
Bishop, Claire, ed. Participation. London: Whitechapel Gallery, 2006. NAL pressmark: 602.AH.0102
The Body Politic: The Role of the Body and Contemporary Craft. London: Crafts Council, 2000. NAL pressmark: 603.AD.2334
Bourriaud, Nicolas. Relational Aesthetics. Dijon: Presses du Réel, 2002. NAL pressmark: 73.D.211
Buskirk, Martha. The Contingent Object of Contemporary Art. London: MIT, 2003. NAL pressmark: 602.AE.0286
Crow, Thomas. The Intelligence of Art. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999. NAL pressmark: NB.99.1512
Danto, Arthur C. After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997. NAL pressmark: NB.97.0386
De Oliveira, Nicolas, Nicola Oxley, and Michael Petry. Installation Art in the New Millennium. London: Thames and Hudson, 2003. NAL pressmark: 603.AE.0595
Dormer, Peter. The Art of the Maker. London: Thames and Hudson, 1994. NAL pressmark: 22.J.165
Dormer, Peter, ed. The Culture of Craft: Status and Future. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997. NAL pressmark: NB.98.0008
Drucker, Johanna. Sweet Dreams: Contemporary Art and Complicity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.
Fariello, M. Anna, and Paula Owen, eds. Objects and Meaning: New Perspectives on Art and Craft. London: Scarecrow Press, 2003. NAL pressmark: 602.AE.0725
The Future is Handmade: The Survival and Innovation of Crafts. Prince Claus Fund Journal 10 ( 2003).
Greenhalgh, Paul, ed. The Persistence of Craft: the Applied Arts Today. London: A & C Black, 2002. NAL pressmark: 603.AD.1242
Harrod, Tanya. The Crafts in Britain in the 20th Century. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999. NAL pressmark: ND.99.0238
Harrod, Tanya, ed. Obscure Objects of Desire: Reviewing the Crafts in the Twentieth Century. London: Crafts Council, 1997. NAL pressmark: 73.R.87
Highmore, Ben, ed. The Everyday Life Reader. London: Routledge, 2002.
Jeffries, Janis. Selvedges: Writings and Artworks Since 1980. Norwich: Norwich Gallery, 2000. NAL pressmark: 606.AE.0383
Johnson, Jean, ed. Exploring Contemporary Craft: History, Theory & Critical Writing. Toronto: Coach House Books, 2002. NAL pressmark: 602.AE.0806
Jones, Amelia. Body Art: Performing the Subject. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998. NAL pressmark: NC.98.1948
Jones, Caroline A. The Machine in the Studio: Constructing the Postwar American Artist. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. NAL pressmark: 47.Y.2061
Johnson, Pamela, ed. Ideas in the Making: Practice in Theory. London: Crafts Council, 1998. NAL pressmark: NC.99.0815
Kwon, Miwon. One Place After Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2002. NAL pressmark: 602.AC.1070
The Maker's Eye. London: Crafts Council, 1981.
Munroe, Alexandra. Japanese Art After 1945: Scream Against the Sky. New York: Abrams, 1994. NAL pressmark: ND.96.0480
Peters, Tessa, and Janice West, eds. The Uncanny Room. London: Luminous Books, 2002. NAL pressmark: 602.AD.0596
Pye, David. The Nature and Art of Workmanship. Rev. ed. London: Herbert Press, 1995. NAL pressmark: NC.95.0314
Rowley, Sue, ed. Craft and Contemporary Theory. St. Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1997. NAL pressmark: 399.A.0011

Clare Twomey

2008-01-13T21:31:00.000-07:00

This image is of several kids playing with porcelain birds in Clare Twomey’s “Trophy” at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The birds were meant to be taken home from the museum, challenging the conventions of both museums and craft and traditional parameters of interaction with artwork. Photo/Dan Prince via American Craft Magazine Dec/Jan issue.

Definitely check out the revamped American Craft Magazine, it is a completely new rag. Much deserving of a subscription if you ask me.

Every Day as Art II

2008-01-11T23:04:00.000-07:00

This image comes courtesy of Emma's Design Blog. Yet another wonderful image of the everyday on display. Click here to go to Emma's blog.

This is an image of a cabinet I couldn't help but include in my recent gathering of images that are ceramic collections on display---clearly these are objects that are meant for use on a daily basis.

This image is from Fine Little Day's Elizabeth (courtesy of Camilla Engman's guest blog on d*s this week).

Slow Design

2008-01-11T22:44:00.000-07:00

After reading the Slow Design manifesto, I find that my work is naturally gravitating towards adopting the philosophical approach to making as it is described. I have paraphrased the theory in addition to quoting several passages in an effort to remind myself to slow down in my own making and apply these most important ideas to make my work more sustainable over the long haul.

Slow Design’s 52 page ‘Slow Theory’ begins by defining the crisis in contemporary design. Concern with design’s complacency with corporate politics, globalization and a lack of attention to environmental issues sparks Slow Design’s question: “Can design rise to the challenge or is it a victim of its own success in its service to industry, consumerism…?” Slow Design encourages the design world that is enabling our rampant consumption as a society to change and slow down with the following question: “How can design deliver more sustainable patterns of production and consumption together with improvements in quality of life?”

The current beginnings of a movement towards sustainable and green-design are discussed as a marginalized aspect of contemporary design. Slow Design states that in order for this shift to slowing of design, there needs to be a larger social shift. Organizations they recommend looking at that are already subscribing to Slow Design values: Droog, Doors of Perception, o2.

In the Slow Design definition of today’s design paradigm, design is controlled by manufacture. Current design contributes to the kind of production that requires product replacement. Due to a high flow of production, short-term goals and corporate desire for growth things produced and designed now are meant to be short-lived products that do not stand the test of time—computers are a great example. “Since design is wed to both technology and economy, then design has also contributed to a perceived speeding up of our lives.” Design enables mass-production and fast turn around of new trends; this encourages consumption out of desire, not need or well-being. This in turn creates post-consumer waste and puts large demands on resources.

Slow Design asks: ”How does design respond to eco-economy challenges? How can it balance the global and the local? Will design contribute towards more sustainable ways of living, working, playing?”
“Slow Design was conceived as means to refocus an anthropocentric (individual+socio-cultural community) and environmental well-being. It is seen as a counterbalance to the existing paradigm of ‘fast design.’ It is about transforming our current materialistic and consumer vision of the world.”
“The guiding philosophical principle of slow design is to reposition the focus of design and the individual, socio-cultural and environmental well-being. Slow Design encourages those engaged in design to take a long view; envisage slower rates of consumption and production; stimulate a renewed joy in design…focus on the present rather than trying to design the future.”

Pages 18 and 39 were particularly interesting to me and I find that they clearly sum up the Slow Design Theory. I won’t include them here as I do respect their copyright on the information, but please visit their website here to download the pdf document to read all about Slow Design on your own.

In support of Slow Design I am pledging to do my best regarding the following:

1. I will set parameters in my studio practice and making of ceramic work to encourage slowness
2. Make work to satisfy real needs rather than satisfy trends
3. Minimize my ecological footprint by reducing the amount of resources I use to make my work and sell it.
4. Harness and use renewable energy sources
5. Choose to use materials in packaging etc. that can be most easily recycled or reused
6. Consider all aspects of well-being for the people using my products
7. Inform clients of the philosophy I am subscribing to in an effort to encourage education and further sustainable action
8. Avoid complacency in the design of my products through consistent re-evaluation and improvement
9. Encourage modularity

The Everyday as Art

2008-01-07T16:00:00.000-07:00

I have been reading all about Slow Design the last couple of days in preparation for writing about it and its relationship to my own work. I have been thinking that my blog would be a great place to put my ideas down as I develop my thesis. In doing this, i have come across these three images as very good sources for my thesis project. I have been frequenting Lisa Congdon's Blog which has some images of her kitchen as you see at the left. She has this wonderful way of displaying objects of day to day use as art objects--right up my alley! I have been working on developing hooks for displaying your cup collection in a composition similar to the image below. I have also been working on engineering a cleat system for hanging bowls on the wall--making it easy to use the art you hang on the wall. Keep posted to see the work as it develops, for now it is in the developing stages...

Handmade 2.0

2007-12-31T19:14:00.001-07:00

In my own work, I find that I am constatntly struggling to keep my interests in ceramics at the forefront of my day to day studio practice. In my time at grad school, I have been reading a lot about making art, what art is, the history of art and so on. I find that in the few minutes I have between coming home from the studio and collapsing into bed, I cant help but do a bit of catch up on the world of crafting and design that is so prominent on the web. This world of product reveiws and handmade movements seems so inline with who I would like to be as an artist. I feel as though I have been invited into a dialogue about what ceramics is for me--about the hand, about good design, about usefulness and accessibility and so on. The recent article Handmade 2.0 written by Rob Walker for the NYT was an excellent find. I cannot wait to read the book when it is published. Click here to read the article by Rob.

Back by Popular Demand

2007-12-30T09:45:00.000-07:00

I recently deleted my original Blog titled: "Adventures of Stripes and Dots" and by popular demand, I have reposted all of my original positings from that Blog here on a new blog. My interest in this blog is to post articles I write and collect pertaining to my concerns with ceramics, both historical and contemporary. I will post images and articles written by myself and others that I find interesting and newsworthy, in addition to the occasional more lengthy and formal writings. I will be posting bi-weekly to keep things fresh. If you have comments, please share them--the blog will be more exciting and fun as a result of your participation.

Gwyn Hanssen Pigott

2007-12-30T09:44:00.001-07:00

OVERVIEW

Gwyn Hanssen Pigott (born 1935, Ballarat, Australia) is a contemporary ceramic artist. With a career spanning over 45 years, influences from her early apprenticeships with English potters Ray Finch, Michael Cardew and Bernard Leach are still apparent in her current work. Hanssen Pigott wood-fires her porcelain still-life arrangements that are noticeably influenced by the still life work of Italian painter Giorgio Morandi. Her palette is clearly inherited from China’s Song Dynasty wares introduced to her through her various apprenticeships in the Leach tradition. Hanssen Pigott currently maintains a studio in Ipswich, Queensland where she is recognized as one of Australia’s most significant contemporary artists.

BIOGRAPHY

In 1954, Gwyn Hanssen Pigott received her Bachelor of Arts (equivalent to a Bachelor of Fine Arts) from the University of Melbourne. Hanssen Pigott’s first introduction to ceramics was in the 1950s while a student at University. She studied Bernard Leach's A Potter's Book, an influential text for potters both when it was written as well as today. In seeking to learn more in the Leach tradition, she sought out Ivan McMeekin who had apprenticed with both Bernard Leach and Michael Cardew in England.

Between 1955 and 1959, Hanssen Pigott held apprenticeships with several influential potters from both Australia and England. Her first apprenticeship was with McMeekin at Sturt Pottery in Mittagong, New South Wales, Australia, between 1955 and 1957. McMeekin established Sturt Pottery in 1953 as a production and teaching pottery modeled after the studio traditions of Leach and Cardew. McMeekin emphasized the use of local materials for small-scale studio production, a concept introduced to him by Cardew. Hanssen Pigott studied with McMeekin at a time when all clay bodies had to be made from hand-processed raw ceramic materials, they were not available as commercially pre-mixed
products. While at Sturt Pottery, Hanssen Pigott was exposed to an appreciation of materiality and process in addition to a learned admiration of form and beauty in a pot.

Hanssen Pigott’s introduction to the Leach-Cardew studio potter tradition via McMeekin more than likely encouraged her to go abroad to England to apprentice with Finch, Cardew and Leach. Hanssen Pigott traveled to England in 1958. She first worked with Ray Finch at Winchcombe Pottery. Michael Cardew established Winchcombe in 1926 by shortly after he left St. Ives where he had been an apprentice to Bernard Leach for three years. Cardew’s goal was to make pottery for everyday use and to make his pottery available at a price that most people could afford (in the seventeenth century English slipware tradition). In 1939, only three years after joining Cardew, Ray Finch assumed the management of Winchcombe while Cardew set up a new pottery in Cornwall at Wenford Bridge. In 1946, Cardew sold Winchcombe to Ray Finch.

In 1958, after working at Winchcombe, Hanssen Pigott apprenticed Bernard Leach at St Ives, and Michael Cardew at Wenford Bridge. In 1960, she left Cornwall with her newlywed husband, Louis Hanssen, to establish a studio in Portobello Road, London. During her time in London, Hanssen Pigott enrolled in evening classes at the Camberwell School of Art, with Dame Lucie Rie.

In 1966, after several visits, she moved to Archeres, France where she set up her own pottery. Hanssen Pigott became more and more well known in the ceramics community internationally. Around this time she lectured in the United States as well as Holland. In 1973, she returned to Australia, moving to Tasmania in 1974 with her second husband John Pigott. Hanssen Pigott and her husband set up a pottery workshop in Tasmania with financial help from the Crafts Board of the Australia Council.

Some of her many artistic accolades include the following: in 1980, Hanssen Pigott was a “tenant potter” in Adelaide at the Jam Factory Craft Center, from 1981-1988 she was the potter in residence at the Queensland University of Technology. In 1989 she was the artist in residence at the Fremantle Arts Center. In 1993 Hanssen Pigott was awarded a three year Artist Development Fellowship from the Visual Arts and Crafts Board of the Australia Council. In 1994 she was the artist in residence in the Ceramics Department of the School of Mines and Industries, Ballrat.

INFLUENCES

Gwyn Hanssen Piggot’s work has a wide range of influences. The variety of influence from Song Dynasty glazes and palettes to Leach-Cardew forms can be clearly seen in her work. Hanssen Pigott has written about her interests in Buddhism and the meditation accompanying the practice as well as her interests in the quiet still-lives of Italian painter, Giorgio Morandi—all of which influence her work.

As previously discussed, Hanssen Pigott was influenced early on by the text A Potter’s Book, written by Bernard Leach. Artist and author Edmund de Waal describes A Potter’s Book:

A Potter’s Book, finally published at the start of the war in May 1940,
stands as both manual and polemic. Indeed its significance and popularity are due to the complex way in which Leach’s technical descriptions are bound up in his values. It is a book that seems to encode the whole meaning of being a potter and working as a potter, not simply the making of pots. From his introductory chapter ‘Towards a Standard’, through the technical chapters to the description of an imagined month in the workshop life of a potter, Leach rehearses his convictions about the place of handwork in society…Leach starts from the presumption that there is a need for a common standard of ‘fitness and beauty’ and that such a standard is lacking in the West where the appreciation of pottery is a marginal activity…His judgments are expressed as absolutes: ‘a pot in order to be good should be a genuine expression of life,’ ‘it is true that pots exist which are useful and not beautiful and others that are beautiful and impractical, but neither of these extremes can be considered normal: the normal is a balanced combination of the two…(Leach states) The potter must be symbolically independent of contemporary society…The gravitas of Leach’s book, though, lay in the feeling that art was not various but very particular indeed. It was the very absoluteness of Leach’s ‘Song standards’, ‘the ethical pot’, that were to define the post-war agenda on ceramics.

Through her study with McKeenin, Hanssen Pigott’s sense of the Leach tradition was sharpened. McMeekin set up the Sturt Craft Center based on Michael Cardew’s philosophy of self-sufficiency. McMeekin relied on local clays and raw materials to make his work. McMeekin wrote his own influential book published in 1967, titled Notes for Potters in Australia. Clearly Hanssen Pigott chose to learn more about Leach and his family of potters in her decision to apprentice with Leach, Cardew and Finch in the UK. De Waal’s description of Leach’s high regard for the aesthetic of China’s Song Dynasty wares, specifically the objects made for meditation in the monasteries, has been incredibly influential on Hanssen Pigott’s aesthetic.

The Song Dynasty wares, so influential to so many contemporary potters, are known for their simple glazing, soft colors, elegance, poise, restraint and peaceful qualities. Bernard Leach might be considered one of the most notable contemporary advocates for this aesthetic in the West. Chinese firing technology had become quite advanced during the Song Dynasty, allowing for the development of more sophisticated high temperature glazes. More important than decoration, the shapes of this dynasty became complex and engaging as the focus of the wares. Many potters made work with tradition in mind, aiming to recreate the look of jade stone in their glazes.

In Hanssen Pigott’s pottery, you can see a heavy influence of specifically the Northern Song Dynasty wares. The Northern Song wares concentrated on the meditative qualities of form. Glazing was rich in color, but decoration on the surfaces was minimal. What decoration that was used was delicate and restrained. The work is technically very accomplished.

In addition to her adherence to the aesthetic of the Song Dynasty wares, Hanssen Pigott describes her own sense of form, which is aligned with the Cardew Leach philosophy of the importance of the everyday and humility in pottery:

About form. I am sure that the forms of the most common, everyday utensils can evoke so much that is inexpressible in any other language, about humanness. That with only the very slightest gesture, the merest suggestion of the lip of a jug, or pouring spout, or the lightest softening of a curve, there can be expressed a sort of vulnerability, or a tenderness, or an attentiveness that causes us to pause. That the scale alone of some objects can touch us, and a small jug of open and generous form can somehow seem brave and absurd and a bit like ourselves.

It is later on that Hanssen Pigott describes how her work differs from the aspirations of Leach and Cardew:

I no longer care if the cup, with its careful handle and balanced weight (the heritage of years of teaset making), stands unused among a quiet group of table-top objects arranged as a still life, somewhere higher than table height. Aait is still a cup—an everyday object as ordinary and simple as can be—but from somewhere, because of its tense or tenuous relationship with other simple, recognized, even banal objects, pleasure comes.

I am surprised. It is a weird idea. It is not what I thought my work would ever be about when I tried to live like the unknown craftsman in a hamlet in France, or a hillside in Tasmania. It is alarmingly contradictory; to make pots that are sweet to use and then to place them almost out of reach. To make beakers that are totally inviting and then to freeze them in an installation. Worse still, to take so much time with each piece, carefully trimming and turning and removing most marks of the throwing….Old friends indeed be worried. And yet it has come slowly, out of observation, out of what cannot be refuted. These forms, these assemblages and groupings and jostlings and juxtapositions sometimes have a power to move me, and others. Strange, I cannot understand.

Hanssen Piggot might have come to arranging her work in groupings as still life compositions reluctantly, but it was not without influence. Hanssen Piggot describes her interests in the paintings of Italian Giorgio Morandi:

Thankfully there are masters I can look to, who never seemed to miss. The makers of the Korean rice bowls, Giorgio Morandi. Their works confront and inspire, and imply humility, unconscious or highly, intensely conscious, they express a sure understanding. Of something. What? Is that truth in form? Are their forms true? Well, they have left us some sort of man-made, material, tangible expression in real stuff, real clay, real thick paint, which in its pulled back simplicity satisfies a suprising longing. And because I can appreciate it (a little), or feel it, then that understanding must be in me too—as deeply as I allow it. And also, perhaps, the potential to express it. Worth pursuing, would not you say? But perhaps, after all, not to be spoken about too much. Words get too big. Leave them.

Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964) started painting still life compositions in the 1920s. His style of painting was minimal in its use of composition, quiet colors and line quality. His colors often used whites, muted blues, browns, iron reds, cobalt and ochre creating a very specific palette. Author Karen Wilkin writes of Giorgio Morandi:

This is true even among the still lifes constructed of utterly familiar, repeated objects. In some, Morandi gangs those objects together so that they touch, hiding and cropping one another in ways that alter even the most recognizable features; in others, the same objects are treated as distinct individuals, gathered on the surface of the tabletop like an urban crowd in a piazza. In Morandi's closely linked "serial still lifes", apparently identical groupings of familiar objects, altered by the addition or subtraction of a single element, the presence (or absence) of one more bottle, one less box, as casually placed as an afterthought, can serve not only to completely shift the dynamic weight and the spatial logic of a given composition, but to change its color harmonies, and even the entire proportion of the picture.

WORK

In her early work, in the 1950s through the 1970s, Hanssen Pigott focused on producing functional ceramic wares. She is most well known for her more recent objects--three dimensional still life groupings, which she has worked with closely since the 1980s. Her influences from the Song Dynasty wares show early as she was working with McMeekin in the 1950’s, who was also heavily influenced by the work from the Song Dynasty. This early engagement with the history of ceramics has proven to become an old friend for Hanssen Pigott in her later works.

Owen Rye writes of Hanssen Pigott:

Had I come to Pigott’s work with knowledge of recent art history, and none at all of her journey, I might sat that her work is much more suggestive of the modernist movement than of its beginnings in a love for Song Dynasty ceramics; more redolent of Bauhaus Germany or later Scandinavia, than distant China…the group carries an alternating current, a constantly reversing flow from one polarity to another; from abstraction to reality… Early in the evolution of the group concept, Ian McKay, in 1990, discussed the inherent contradictions in the grouping that arose at that time from considering each item in the group as a functional object, for example, a bowl or cup for daily use. These functional pots if used and replaced would constantly modify the group. Or, if the group were retained in its original format, then quite usable objects could become solely objects of contemplation. In a prescient manner (the article was written just before his death) McKay suggested: "The still lifes should be thought about again, both by enthusiastic critics and the artist".

In a 1999 review, Helen Stephens writes of Hanssen Pigott:

She (Hanssen Pigott) says in making her forms, she dared herself to go to the edge of formlessness and, she wrote: "To my delight the pared down forms remained pots; glazed, strong, usable. What is more, this eccentric presentation, unframed, unboxed, completely floating on an idea, was accepted." She says she is wary of design: "Skill is one thing but a pot has to breathe." These groups have a meditative value -- we take time out to consider them in the rush of life. People who purchase these groups of pots set aside alcoves, shelves, specially designed locations for these object groupings. Their strength and individuality; their cool composure; their certainty; their lightness and depth have the power to move and reassure. Pigott says they have, "for a moment pulled on our attention, with, perhaps, a reminder of our own vulnerability, and beauty and possibility of transformation and repose". The range of colours also have a powerful effect -- from pure white groupings to rich and intense browns that seem to glisten out of the darkness.

Gwyn Hanssen Pigott’s work can be found in the collections of: the Art Gallery of South Australia, Australian National Gallery, Victoria and Albert Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Boijmans Museum, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, Winnipeg Museum and numerous others. Her recent accolades include: 2001, Order of Australia Medal; 1998, Australia Council Fellowship Award; 1985, Queensland State Ceramic Award, Toowoomba; 1963, Fellow, Society of Designer Craftsmen, UK; and numerous others.

ETERNAL LINKS

Garth Clark Gallery: http://www.garthclark.com/artists/artists.php?id=Hanssen%20Pigott
Sturt Contemporary Australian Craft: http://www.sturt.nsw.edu.au/index.htm
Galerie Besson: http://www.galeriebesson.co.uk/hanssen2exhib2.html
Ceramics Today: http://www.ceramicstoday.com/articles/pigott.htm
Smithsonian Freer Gallery of art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery:
http://www.asia.si.edu/exhibitions/current/Parades.htm
Chritine Abrahams Gallery: http://www.christineabrahamsgallery.com.au/adisplay.cfm?id=74
National Gallery of Victoria: http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/hanssenpigott/
The Leach Pottery: http://www.leachpottery.com/
Wendford Bridge Pottery: http://www.wenfordbridge.com/
Winchcombe Pottery: http://www.winchcombepottery.co.uk/history.html
Museuo Morandi: http://www.museomorandi.it/english/sec_pag.htm
Song Dynasty Wares: http://www.artsmia.org/art-of-asia/ceramics/early-chinese-ceramics-sung.cfm

Mark Pharis

2007-12-30T09:42:00.000-07:00

[Functional forms] "have been a source of curious and engaging problems for many years. I suspect it is because the nature of the pots is multifaceted and unfolds over time. Utility or function is but one aspect of a pot. Use and its connection to the domestic arena form the framework and a context in which I work. The themes provided by function are familiar-vases, cups, teapots, etc. And they may be thought of as a kind of shorthand for a longer and less obvious list of concerns, which includes-in no particular order-interactivity, material, chemistry, the realm of ideas, metaphor, formal constitution, social and cultural context, a pot's relationship to 'fine art' and function as 'idea." –Mark Pharis

"Just as in music we find that the simpler the theme, the more thorough must be the knowledge of the musician in order to compose acceptable variations thereon. So, in fact in every Art this rule obtains, and the simpler the apparent result- assuming, of course, that such result is really beautiful the greater the art care knowledge and taste required... The problem presented is practically one of elimination. To include all that is necessary and eliminate all that is unessential..."

Mark Pharis is an American ceramic artist and professor residing in Roberts, Wisconsin. Pharis is currently the Chair of the Department of Art at the University of Minnesota where he has been a faculty member since 1985. Pharis is most known for his exploration of functional vessels: namely the teapot, vase and soy bottle forms. Pharis is well known for his unique method for handbuilding using cut paper templates and slabs in a way very similar to sewing with fabric. Pharis comes from an important lineage of potters having been a student of Warren MacKenzie, an influential American potter formerly an apprentice of British potter Bernard Leach.

BIOGRAPHY AND ARTWORK

Mark Pharis received his Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis in 1971. Between 1971 and 1985, Pharis was employed by many Universities (mostly Midwestern) as a visiting faculty member, sabbatical replacement and summer session faculty. During this time Pharis showed in many group and two person shows as well as several solo exhibitions. In 1985, Pharis began his long-term career as a professor in the Department of Art at the University of Minnesota, where he is currently the Chair of the Department.

It was as a student at the University of Minnesota that Pharis studied with Warren MacKenzie. Sandy Simon, also a student of MacKenzie, describes the importance of MacKenzie: “I remember what brought me into the world of pottery—coming of age in the midst of the Vietnam War, kids we knew in high school were getting killed; our college campus was closed. Violence was everywhere and for reasons we doubted worthwhile. Pottery making was a vital practice of living. Warren MacKenzie, as our teacher, encouraged us to follow our vision, allow our talents and trust ourselves. The world was a healthy place: compassion and confidence in humankind not only existed but thrived, and feeling it was just the beginning; living it was just down the road.”

In an interview with Jeanne Quinn (faculty member of the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Colorado at Boulder) Quinn describes McKenzie’s artistic strength as his very narrow focus in clay—his ability to work within a structured set of rules to work within. Quinn queries Pharis about his own rules or parameters for working with clay. Pharis responds stating that it is his choice to make functional vessels that is a parameter in his work. He states: “I was in love with the whole functional world and I could operate confidently in that world—I like the fact that this is [function is] structured—functional pots happen in a certain framework, both defining and liberating at the same time. It is interesting to investigate the boundaries of that.”

Apparent simplicity of form and decoration in Pharis’ vessels allow for a revealing of the subtle complexities in the work over time and through the use of his work. His interests in function are clearly both literal and conceptual. Pharis states: "I want my pots to have that potential to flip or alternate, to appear to be about use at one time, but to be visually independent and clear enough to be other than functional as well." His process of folding and joining slabs together that have been cut using templates similar to sewing patterns gives a sense of volume to his closed vessels that speaks to the softness of clay in the green state. Where the slabs are joined as seams the process of assemblage is apparent.

His exhibitions are numerous and his work can be found in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England, Gardner Museum, Toronto Canada, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, Ferguson Collection, the Kansas City Art Institute, The Woodman Collection, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, Everson Museum, and Los Angeles County Museum of Art, amongst many others.

EXTERNAL LINKS

What Follows Interview at the University of Colorado at Boulder: http://www.researchchannel.org/prog/displayevent.aspx?rID=2018
Akar Design: http://www1.akardesign.com/art/ceramics/pharis/pharis.htm
Department of Art: University of Minnesota: http://artdept.umn.edu/faculty/gallery.php?UID=phari001
Ferrin Gallery: http://www.ferringallery.com/dynamic/artist_portfolio.asp?artistID=87
Trax Gallery: http://www.traxgallery.com/artist.php?sid=pharis
LaCoste Gallery: http://www.lacostegallery.com/dynamic/artist.asp?artistid

Eva Zeisel

2007-12-30T09:41:00.001-07:00

Eva Zeisel (born in Hungary, November 13, 1906) is a ceramist and an industrial designer. Zeisel declares herself “a maker of useful things.” Ziesel’s career spans over seventy years. Her work pioneered modernism into the home. Her forms are often abstractions of the natural world. Zeisel currently resides in New York where continues to design furniture as well as glass and ceramic objects.

BIOGRAPHY

Eva Zeisel (nee Eva Amalia Striker) was born into a wealthy Budapest family. At 17, Zeisel entered Kepzomuveszeti Academia (the Budapest Royal Academy of Fine Arts). She left the academy in 1925 to work with a potter in Budapest learning to design and make ceramic objects. For ten years Zeisel employed herself as an apprentice, then a journeyman in a guild. In 1928 she went to work at the Schramberg factory in Germany where Zeisel became one of the earliest designers of mass-produced contemporary ceramics.

In 1932, Zeisel moved to the Soviet Union. In 1935, at the age of 29, after working several jobs in the ceramic industry--inspecting factories in the Ukrane as well as designing for the Lomonosov factory—Zeisel was named the artistic director of the Soviet ceramics industry.

It was only a year later, in 1936, while living in Moscow Zeisel was accused of participating in an assassination plot against Stalin. Zeisel was arrested and held in prison for 16 months, 12 of which were spent in solitary confinement. Zeisel was released and deported to Vienna. It was while in Vienna that Zeisel met her husband Hans Zeisel. In 1938, shortly after her arrival and marriage, the Nazis invaded Vienna encouraging the couple to move to New York with only $64.00 to their name.

Zeisel’s career in design continued to develop in the United States. In addition to designing for companies such as General Mills, Rosenthal China, Castelton China, Zeisel taught one of the first courses in industrial design at the Pratt Institute in New York. In 1946, Zeisel had the first one-woman show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Zeisel stopped designing for industry during the 1960’s and 1970’s, returning to work in the 1980’s. Many of her recent designs have found the same success as her earlier designs. Zeisel’s recent designs have included a teakettle for Chantal, glasses for Nambe, a sink and bathtub for Signature, ceramics for KleinReid as well as the designer of one of Crate and Barrel’s best selling dinner services.

Zeisel’s works are in the permanent collections of Brohan Museum, Germany; the British Museum; The Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the Musée des Arts Decoratifs de Montreal; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Brooklyn, Metropolitan, Dallas, Knoxville, Milwaukee. In 2005, Zeisel was awarded the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award for Lifetime Achievement.
DESIGN

Eva Zeisel’s designs are made for use. The inspiration for her sensuous forms often comes from the natural organic curves of the body, taking advantage of the softness of clay. Zeisel’s more organic approach to modernism most likely comes as a reaction to the Bauhaus aesthetics that were popular at the time of her early training. Her sense of form and color show influence from the Hungarian folk arts she grew up seeing. All of Zeisel’s designs, whether it be her furniture, metal, glass or ceramic, are often made in sets or in relationship to other objects. Many of Zeisel’s designs nest together creating modular designs that also function to save space.

Zeisel describes her designs in a New York Sun article: “I don’t create angular things. I’m a more circular person—it’s more my character….even the air between my hands is round.”

2007-12-30T09:39:00.000-07:00

I came to the Pre-Colombian exhibit at the Denver Art Museum with the expectation to see more pots that depicted daily life, more illustrations of people and what I think of as particularly Aztec imagery. This expectation is directly related to my memories of and familiarity with the Pre-Colombian collection at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

I chose this seated female figure from the Pre-Colombian ceramics because it seemed to me to be a calm, almost meditative figure. The quality of quietness in this figure is important to me in that I enjoy art that makes me step back for a second—this reflective quality is one that I am drawn to because my own work is not quite there yet—but I am aiming to get it there if I can.

I do feel that this object is sincere, mostly thanks to the attention to detail in the surface treatment. I also feel that it is very related to death and the stillness of the dying, something about the eyes suggests this to me. I think it is the darkness and the closed quality of the eyes that stands out in this way. Though there doesn’t seem to be humor here, there is a sense of the sublime in regards to the spiritual. Much of my sense of this figure comes from speculating answers to some questions in regards to the physical, social and historical aspects of the work as follows:

IN REGARDS TO THE PHYSICAL:

This female figure was made form local earthenware and slips and resists, it has no glaze but has been highly burnished. This burnishing indicates a high level of skill in the maker. The smaller than life size scale of the figure in relationship to the amount of detail on the surface also indicates skill. It is a hollow female figural sculpture, which seems to have been made for religious use, maybe even for a tomb.

IN REGARDS TO SOCIETY:

Because the time spent is valuable time in any agrarian society and because this object was clearly not made for everyday use, I have to conclude that it was most likely made for the private use of an upper class citizen. I imagine that this figure is valued for completely different reasons today than when it was originally fabricated. I believe the cultural influence on this object is regional rather than far-reaching. There appears to be much attention to realism in the rendering of the female body, but more stylistic rendering of the face, legs, hands and arms. This makes me wonder if it is an idealized representation of the female figure? The tattoo-like detailing on the skin also points me to this conclusion. The body has been made beautiful and aesthetic through the use of iconic imagery, symbolism and patterning—perhaps even through the seated positioning and the specificity of the eyes.

IN REGARDS TO HISTORY:

It is not particularly clear what the purpose or use of this object is, it is dirty and aged. It will appreciate in value over time because there are only so many Pre-Colombian objects out there in the world to own. The figure could still be used today for what it was originally intended for. I would say the modern equivalent would be the tombstone and the objects we are buried in/with. The object seems well cared for and not damaged by time.

Aesthetic Push and Pull

2007-12-30T09:36:00.000-07:00

 Initially, I expected to write about the Ninsei teabowl as representative of my aesthetic heritage. But as I looked at the two objects more and more, I find myself most attracted to the Kizaemon Ido teabowl. There are several reasons for this. The foremost being that I am most empathetic with the Ido bowl. This empathy is for the imperfections and irregularities in the bowl, which in the western aesthetic I would argue we tend not to value. It is this sort of natural beauty that reflects human nature and imperfection that I find more attractive than the precise technical skills of the Ninsei bowl.  The contemplative simplicity of the Ido bowl is something that I am attracted to, most likely because my own work is more didactic and illustrative. I am also very attracted to the clear evidence of the hand of the maker in the Ido bowl. The direct connection I feel with the maker when i use a pot similar to this is very exciting for me. I hope that my interest and appreciation of this quality will allow me to incorporate it into my work formally as well as conceptually.  I do think that I have been trained to be attracted to this simpler aesthetic over the Ninsei bowl. I feel that our (Western contemporary ceramists) lineage of aesthetic was directly handed down to us via Bernard Leach and Leach's relationship with Hamada and his admiration for Japanese ceramics. I feel this particularly, due to my time working as a production potter in a studio very much of the Leach tradition. As an undergraduate student, I think that I would have been more excited about the Ninsei bowl. I think this because at that time i was very interested in the technical capabilities of ceramists. The question--"How did they do that?" was often one of my first when looking at ceramic work. As a graduate student, I feel that my aesthetic lineage is more and more apparent as I am able to focus energy on the analytical aspect of making more than the technical.

For the Love of the Northern Song

2007-12-30T09:25:00.000-07:00

 Recently, I have been focusing a lot of my thoughts on ceramic form in regards to my own work. So, in a trip to the Asian Collection at the Denver Art Museum, I think that it was natural that I was drawn to a piece that was white and without decoration--a piece that relied on form as a strength. It was the quiet softness of this ewer from China's Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127) that made me want a second (longer) look.   

In Regards to the Physical
This ewer is made of stoneware, probably local stoneware as that was what clay was available. This piece was thrown on the potter's wheel as you can clearly see the throwing rings (especially in the spout and handle). The technical proficiency of the maker(s) seems varied, which makes me wonder if it was made by several potters and assembled factory-style (the body and the neck are very well thrown, but the spout and handle seem dischordant). The piece appears to be made of a gray stoneware with a white slip applied to the surface and a clear glaze applied over that. There are visible wadding marks from the firing on the foot, drips in the glaze (uneven application), there is a large iron spot in the glaze as well as a couple scratch marks visible in the slip. All of these imperfections point to a less skilled maker(s) or an object made for everyday use. What lends to the elegance of the ewer is the dramatically narrow foot in relation to the narrow neck and spout and the wide lip. The effect of these proportions is a form that is reaching up and out--if I were to make my body take the shape and gesture of this ewer, I would put my feet together and take in a deep breath forcing my hands in the air above my head and at about a 45 degree angle from my shoulders. 
It seems that this piece was valuable for contemplation as well as use. It is not decorated at all, which for this time period makes me think it might be made for the temple/monastery. So if this is the case, then the white, undecorated surface would make it valuable. If it is for everyday use (the strangeness about the handle and spout would point at this piece being made by a potter in training, making it less valuable for ritual etc. and more utilitarian).  It is a rather large ewer, making me guess that it is for a liquid that is plentiful--not so special or the ewer would be smaller. It seems proportionately functional--it wouldn't be akward to use. It appears to have all of its parts, though I cant help but wonder--where does the liquid go? Cups? A bowl?  

In Regards to Society
 This ewer was possibly made by multiple people, most likely all men. I am going to say that it was made from parts thrown by several potters and assembled. This might mean that the piece was made in a large pottery, implying that the potter was probably not paid immensely well (though that might be my contemporary prejudice viewpoint). The skill levels of the potters who made this varies so widely that I am inclined to think that this piece was made as training for more well made pieces to go to the Monastery for contemplation/meditation. So in this way, the object was made with the public in mind, but became private and for non-spiritual use. It is beautiful in its simplicity and interesting in its varied technical skill levels.  

In Regards to History 
Time really hasnt changed this object at all. There seems to be very little evidence of time passing on this piece. There arent even visible bracks (okay, I’m going to stop highlighting your typos now: you get the idea), chips or breakage. I am sure the value of this peice has been affected by its ability to have withstood time and avoid any visible damage. I am sure that it is also valuable as a representative of the Song Dynasty purely because there are a limited amount of objects that are still intact fromt his period--and there will most likely not be any more available any time soon. This ewer was not as valuable when it was made as it is now. It was not considered art at the time it was made. The object could still be used today for what it was made for originally, I also feel that most anyone could intuit how to use this object today because of a similarity to contemporary objects in use now. I have a feeling this object was not meant to last but for whatever reason--it did.

Phrases and Philosophies

2007-12-30T09:18:00.002-07:00

Paul Greenhalgh's essay Social Complexity and the Historiography of Ceramic addresses several ideas concerning the ceramic medium's relationship to Modernity. I enjoyed Greenhalgh's definition of the term Modernity, especially after he quoted Wilde's comments and categorizations of Victorian Society. I would be curious to hear a conversation regarding Modernity between Greenhalgh and Josiah McElheny--as McElheny is using glass as a material which has a "historiography" I might compare to that of ceramics. I would be curious to know if Greenhalgh would conclude from their conversation that McElheny is an artist who is exploring the next phase of modernism, dubbed "complex modernism" by Greenhalgh. 
Greenhalgh aslo briefly addresses the complexity of ceramic's historical realtionship to the decorative. He states "Ceramic is a discreet set of stories within the history of ornamentation" as one of his bulleted points. I would love to read more regarding this topic as this seems to be such a loaded statement. What are these stories? What would Greenhalgh write about in his history of ornamentation?

 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

 Greenhalgh's use of Wilde's writing style in his essay as described above tickled me. It was an effective and humorous way to categorize ways of looking at ceramic objects.

As a result of brainstorming about the questions I often ask as I look at ceramics, I will categorize and phrase my own list in the following manner (please keep in mind that many of these questions can be asked of many of the categories--not just the one it is listed in) :

1) In regards to the PHYSICAL

* What materials were used? (regional vs. far reaching--what materials were available?)
* How it was made? (Handbuilt, wheel or cast? Mass produced? What kinds of glazes? Technical proficiency of the maker(s), surface treatment,specific color choices, time involved in making the object, what does the bottom look like? With what tools?)
* How does material choice affect value?
* Why was it made? (for what specific function, purpose, does it belong to a larger group of objects?)
* Where was it made? (regional or "folk tradition")
* How big it is? What does it weigh? How does it relate to the body?
* Does it have all of its parts?

2) In regards to SOCIETY

* Who made it? (what is the role of the object for the person who made it? WHo were the artist's teachers? Gender of the artist? Age, work enviornment, politics, education, lifespan of the artist, how did these factors afffect/not affect their career?)
* Who was it made for? (why? who paid for it to be made? What class was it made for? What was the class of the maker? Is it valued the same by the society that made the object as the society that purchased the object?
* What is the cultural influence on the object? (far reaching? regional?)
* Was there an inspiration for the object? If so, what was the inspiring factor?
* Was it made for personal or public use? (religious or secular, everyday or ceremonial)
* Does the conext in which you regard it affect its meaning
* Is it beautiful? Interesting? Is there visible iconic or narrative meaning or information present?
* What does the object say about the person who owns it?
* Can it be shared?

3) In regards to HISTORY

* How has time cahnged the object?
* Does the permanence of the object affect its value? (Will it appreciate? What is its worth? Says who?
* Was it considered art when it was made (How does that change how we regard the object? Is it original? Was originality valuable at the time it was made?
* Could the object still be used today for its original function? What is the modern equivalent? What is its historical equivalent?
* Does it have a title?
* What is the provenance of the object? Was it well cared for?
* How does it relate to other objects of its time? Was it meant to last? How does it relate to the history of similar objects?
* Why is it displayed the way it is?

What Class

2007-12-30T09:18:00.001-07:00

The relationship of class to my work has become more apparent to me over the course of my time in graduate school, though I think that there is still much remaining to understand about whom I am making my work for.

My attraction to ceramics has habitually been through the usefulness of utilitarian objects. I love the inherent intimacy we have with pots, which makes them more approachable on so many levels. Everyone knows how to relate to a cup, everyone understands the basics of a cup, making cups a valuable and subversive place to put the drawings I was making as an undergraduate. It still is this ability of pots to slip into the home and our everyday lives that excites me in the making of my current work. I hope that the people using my pots are engaged with them in a way that makes life slow down a little. I think this is mostly because that is my favorite kind of experience with art—the kind that makes me pause for a moment.

When I left the Museum School, I went to work as a production potter for Miranda Thomas. At that time, I had very romantic notions of being a full time potter and what that lifestyle was, ironically based on Bernard Leach’s presentation of the socially significant potential of the potter in his book titled: A Potter’s Book. The irony lay in that I was, unknown to me, about to work as a “master potter” under the tutelage of Miranda Thomas and Ara Cardew, both having studied (or grown up with) Michael Cardew who was one of Bernard Leach’s first apprentices at St. Ives in Cornwall, England. It was the Leach Cardew heritage at my new job that excited me, but almost immediately I realized that the unknown potter actually kind of has to be known and marketing themselves to make a living. And a sort of pathetic living at that, considering the enormous amount of labor involved in production.

At the moment, my work is affordable to a middle class, though I imagine that it is more affordable to the upper classes. I find that I personally am interested in purchasing work form other potters, despite my lack of income. I feel confident in stating that that is rare and unusual in the grand scheme of things. In the past, I have wanted my work to be for anyone and everyone. More recently, I have come to understand that there is a certain romance for me with upper class society and what I perceive as a somewhat more leisurely lifestyle. I find that I am secretly excited by the fact that my pots (which I think of as representative of me, as born of me) are living in this class that, in some ways, I socially aspire to.

I am interested in how teaching and a salary will help me be more confident in my relationship to class. In many ways, I feel that it would be the right thing to do to make my work affordable to anyone and everyone, but I also know that I probably wont ever make that choice…