May 27, 2012
Hey! These are my first three cups in NYC. I made a few glaze tests too, but these are ones I thought might be legit pots, and I think they are. My palate will likely be based on these two glazes, with a few highlights thrown in. I’m tryimg to not make Lucie Rie pots, but also not minding when I do. Any comments? Should I stick to pasty pink?
May 23, 2012
Getting closer! I have my first few bisque pots to try out a few glazes. I’m debating whether to conjure a tasteful palate of greens and whites or use a candy pink with acidy accents. Hmmm….
May 17, 2012
Hut jars! Just a few, bigger ones drying. These are harder than I remeembered!
Vases on the way too, larger in the foreground, smaller in the window. These will all get added sections to be taller and with narrow openings. Woo-hoo!
May 11, 2012
Here’s a pic of my lovely potting corner of the world. Pots are starting to populate the shelves! Small pots for small spaces seem like the best bet…
May 9, 2012
Testing out my new blogging system here. First pots drying! Little altered bowls.
May 6, 2012
I am taking a teeeny break from my very last (!!!!) paper at the BGC to let you know that I will be back at the wheel in a matter of days!
I have subletted a studio space in lovely NYC for the first part of the summer and as soon as I finish this paper guess what I’m going to do??? Make some pottery!
And guess what I’m going to do with that pottery??? Put it here for sale!
Yes, that’s right, keep your ears and eyes peeled for an adventure in new pots heading your way. These look to be my only new pots this year, and last year, and maybe next year. So if you are thinking you are ready for some new Sequoia pottery, now is the time – or almost now, soon!
Any requests?!? Comment here if you ahve anything in mind. I’m starting from a clean slate, or as clean as my slate can be.
Stay tuned…
In the meantime I’ll share this lovely image of the big B L from the archive of a potter named Minnie Negoro (1919-1998), one of my research projects from this semester. This is Leach demonstrating at Alfred University in 1949.
January 13, 2012
I finished another essay in Extra/Ordinary, Louise Mazanti’s “Super Objects.” Mazanti is a historian, curator and writer living in Denmark who, according to the contributors page, received the first PhD in craft theory in Scandinavia (she lives in Denmark). My goal here is not to offer a proper critique or review, just to jot down some thoughts.
One thing I love is Mazanti’s chutzpah in re-defining the term “super-object.” Garth Clark proposed it in the 1980s to describe highly refined, fetish-finish objects mostly coming out of California in the 1970s. It never really took off. Mazanti appropriates the term, redefining it as “an object that exists parallel to the design commodity, at the same time as it contains (super-) layers of meaning that relate to visual art.” (62) Another way to put it is that super-objects grow out of a design language in their relation to function but they are explicitly about something, “content is central.” (62)
Manzani then argues that super-objects embody the semi-autonomous state that folks like Hal Foster (whom she cites) say art should have. Semi-autonomous here means that art should offer a bridge to life, rather than hang isolated on a white wall for contemplation. Manzani connects this effort to bring together art and life to Arts and Crafts (obviously) and to interwar avant garde movements like Dada. This latter connection is excellent and she argues convincingly and revealingly how craft advances the avant garde through the “operational friction” that comes out of being neither a thing nor an artwork.
The only problem with this is her case study, Anna Tophoj’s Cultured Primitiveness (comes up in a googlebooks search of the book). Simply put, this piece is a group of ceramic objects, referencing function, in a museum case in Stockholm. Mazanti articulately takes apart how and why the piece operates semi-autonomously. I kept wondering, though: How is this more effective than actual pottery?
Real pots have the same semi-autonomous capacity to create operational friction, perhaps from the other end of the spectrum. They also take less thinking to get there, which to me makes them more effective. I would love to read Mazanti writing about utilitarian craft. I have not seen the Tophoj piece/pieces in person so I can’t really say, but they seem to me, if anything, to bridge the idea of art (museum-bound autonomous objects) and the idea of life which to me is just less interesting than the bridging to actual life, and then sort of disappearing as an expereince.
That said, I hope I get to meet Mazanti at some point. She definitely has her thinking cap on.
January 12, 2012
I just came across this fabulous picture on the Northern Clay Center website, and could not resist re-posting it here. Patty Warashina and Warren Mackenzie (and a fellow named Don, apparently) are together for what seems to be a Regis Master Lecture event. This is sort of a universes collide image for me, as I have always thought about Patty and Warren with different parts of my brain.
I love that this reminds me of how intimate the ceramics world actually is. Work from all over the spectrum gets quashed together all the time in this wonderfully productive way. And I love that Ron Meyers’ stand in between them.
What do you think Patty and Warren would say to each other about Ron’s pots? Should we invent a dialogue?
PW:
WM:
PW:
WM:
Maybe we need potter-turned-animator Tim Foss to get things rolling…
December 30, 2011
I started reading Extra/Ordinary: Craft and Contemporary Art, an interesting new-ish book trying to make sense of contemporary craft. After an essay or two I felt like commenting on it, so here I am – this is what blogs are for, at least mine.
Honestly, I was put off by the title and avoided picking it up until now. Yes, clearly craft exists in relation to art and design and various other fields of cultural practice, but I am a little leery of always relating it to contemporary art. Enough already. The project seems more nuanced now that I’ve started reading, though, so we’ll see.
M. Anna Fariello’s essay “Making and Naming” has some really great aspects. She gives a really clear condensed history of studio craft, connecting it to Ruskin, education reform in the US, GI Bill, etc. Great for anyone wanting a ten page overview.
She also separates function from utility, arguing that utility is the basic act of performing a task whereas function is “an abstract attitude of material expression” (36). So, for example, the social function of containing, separating out and saving something special, is distinct and as significant as the actual act of doing it. Use is physical; function is metaphysical.
I can accept this I guess, but this definition of function removes the immediacy of the object. Fariello celebrates craft for its interactivity, vs the passiveness of visual perception of ‘art’, but her definition of function locates the meaning of craft in its metaphorical value, its ability to represent function rather than actually be utilitarian. To me this reduces the intensity of craft, making it more like art. I think craft is powerful when function (metaphysical) arrives through utility (physical) not just through the idea of utility. The metaphysical meaning of the cup is revealed through drinking from or washing or living with the cup, not through having an image of a cup on a tile. Actual engagement trumps the idea of engagement. How is an installation of ceramic wallpaper more interactive than a mug?
Fariello defines craft as an approach rather than a specific medium or technique. This is a lot like Glenn Adamson’s definition in Thinkin’ Thru Craft, which I also kind of accept and wonder about at the same time. This is an effective definition to theorize why installations with ceramics or weaving get called craft, but maybe less effective when thinking about utilitarian objects.
Fariello also argues for a lexicon for craft that is distinct from art history, but she doesn’t actually say what this would be, or really put it into play, other than listing “hand-marked, holistic, social, functional, tactile, material and spiritual” (40). I don’t see how these are distinct from art history, which can use all of those terms.
The essay ends before Fariello really gets going on any of this, so I’ll have to start reading Objects and Meaning, her own book from 2005.
December 13, 2011
Malcolm Davis passed away on Sunday, December 11. There is much sadness and fond recollection of him at the moment, as he was truly a funny, giving person.
In skimming the remembrances I was struck by SImon Levin’s sentiment to Malcolm: “You owned shino, you made it yours for your time.” I love the idea that none of us owns anything, like shino. We’re stewards of the things we take up, we hold them for a while, and then they continue or not.
This is rather different from the NYTimes article about Damien Hirst and his dot paintings today. People will own the paintings, maybe even steward them along, but there is little continuity outside the persona of the artist. Except the dot, of course. Is Hirst stewarding the dot through this point (ha, ha) in history? That seems like a stretch. Maybe he’s stewarding the role of ‘famous artist/courtier’ for this era. Maybe the notion of genius (famous) individual just isn’t about stewardship. Maybe stewardship is something we just create.
Getting back to Malcolm: my Malcolm story takes place when I ran into him my first year at the Baltimore craft show in 1998 (I think). We had met at Greenwich House Pottery (yay, Made in Clay this weekend) in maybe 1994 when he was a visiting artist one winter. We had a lovely conversation and then I saw him again at NCECA in Minneapolis a little later on. Cut to Baltimore, and he’s throwing a fit that I do not list him as one of my teachers on my fledgling resume.
Not that I had ever been his student. I assumed he was mistaken and I was too shy to correct him about it. Only later it occurred to me that he understood the experience of talking to me, being generous and frank with me, and sharing his knowledge and history as teaching. Which of course it was, but so not in the structured way I had understood education, even in craft. Teaching and being were not separated or formalized in his world view (it seems to me), and pottery as a field granted Malcolm the space to be a teacher in this way that many professions do not.
He expanded my understanding of learning, and of pots. Thank you!!
