on being useful

Browsing through Ceramics Monthly the other day two bits jumped out at me for their precision.  The first is from a notice for the Renwick’s Craft Invitational (link here), in the words of the Director:

“The artists in the 2009 invitational are allied to long-standing craft traditions in their mastery of materials… but each discards the baseline rationale of crafts – their functionality.  Performance and theater are now more urgent inspirations, signaling a new orientation in a fertile aesthetic crosscurrent.”

This makes me so incredibly, deeply sad.  What do I do with this?  How do I respond?  Is it true?  Is this just one of many truths?

There has to be something to this, or else it wouldn’t stand out to me.  I am afraid that it may actually be true.  What is the point of calling it craft if it’s lost it’s baseline rationale? If this,

lovely as it is, is now craft what do I call what I make?

This is my beef: if the premier institution to represent craft dis-avows the baseline rationale – functionality – then what rationale is it adopting?!?!  Mastery of materials??  That’s ridiculous.  Does that make Odd Nerdrum (link) a craft artist?  Mastery of materials is the baseline for professionalism, not the reason why craft exists.

If functionality is abandoned as a legitimate reference point (let alone endeavor) then craft ceases to exist.  It seems to me there is no other rationale.  If mastery alone is it, then Renwick becomes a department of the Hirshorn.

I was at the Bellevue Arts Museum last week and it occurred to me how unfriendly the museum format is to functional objects.  Nothing in the museum galleries attempts function.  Why am I surprised?  Why should museums be friendly to usable objects? (Two tangents: there was a jewelry craft show being set up in the lobby in an interesting twist on how and why different levels of craft are invited into the temple; and you are all going to thing I’m a total hypocrite when I reveal that I’m participating in a show at BAM in the fall, more on that later.)

I love museums.  I was raised going to them.  My father and uncle worked at the Guggenheim when I was little, I worked at MoMA when I was a little less little, I curated with the Director of the Rose Art Museum when I was in college.  I came thisclose to a museum career.

My problem is that I also love pottery – full on, useful, real actual pottery.  Objects that reference utility are fine and interesting (sometimes), but they do not tell the same story as objects that embrace utility (aka pottery).  I would not be bothered by all this if I did not think museums were legitimate, interesting places to have dialog about objects and experiences.  I am not a reactionary ruralist, and I’m not anti-art or anti-intellectual.

Why would the Renwick be so short sighted?  How can they tell me what inspirations are more urgent?  Is performance an urgent inspiration to these artists in particular or more urgent in the field in general?  Why are they called ‘artists’ if this is a craft exhibit?  If my inspirations are not perceived as urgent, what do I do?  Enjoy the folksiness of pottery and not worry about the rest?

I feel like the fact that I value utility (and making things by hand) completely puts me outside of the broader conversation about craft.  Any of you remember the Twilight Zone episode called Eye of The Beholder?

Here’s one solution:  Objects that abandon the baseline rationale of craft could be called Useless Craft, and objects that adhere to that rationale could be called Useful Craft.  Kind of like how there used to just be guitars, and now there are electric guitars and acoustic guitars

I’m out of time for the second thing that got to me…

 

more blathering

Walking to the studio this morning I realized that the computer is now at the center of my studio life.  Sometimes it feels I barely make pots, and spend more time emailing, writing here, office stuff.  What is at the center of my practice these days?

My bookkeeper is coming later today.  If I don’t actually generate work, I will not have anything for her to do. It seems odd to me that I actually make something.  Her work is dependent on me to generate objects, whereas most people’s work is not so directly linked to things emerging into the world.  We are a service economy.

The only thing this country really makes anymore is culture – Avatar, the Huffington Post, etc. If we stop producing culture then we’re done.  Maybe I am a culture producer more than I am a potter.  I don’t make objects; I make experiences.  Is this blog an experience?  Is it any better or worse than making pots?  Do I contribute more or less to the culture (to my well being, to my happiness) any more or less by blogging or potting?

What of all these other blogging potters?  Are we diminishing our work or expanding it by spending time at the computer rather than the wheel?  How would we know?

If I think of myself as a cultural worker then I don’t have to feel guilty about not being productive, which is how I feel with my empty shelves.  I am also teaching these days (also a form of cultural production) and I always take a big hit in my studio work when teaching.  So how do I value blogging, teaching, making?  Which endeavors sustain me, economically and emotionally?  Is this really something to write about here?

It’s time now to start working.  Or to stop working and start making.

 

Since this is allegedly a pottery blog I thought I’d actually write something about pots.  I am also fully making things now, sewing machine is pushed aside, hands are dirty.

I am starting off with a big pile of little jars, and I am finally figuring out what kind of knobs I want to see on them, and how to make them.  Knobs like this one:

appeal to me these days.  What is new is that they are making it on to smaller and smaller jars.  They are hollow at the top, and after making ones that cracked where I had joined a coil here’s how I’m making them now:

I roll a fat coil, then cut off a section with a fettling knife.  I use the brush handle like a dowel, pushing it through the coil.  Then I roll the handle around to open up  a small tube.

Once I attach the tube it looks like this, almost closed up on the top but not quite.  Here’s that mug I like again too, lurking around.

After it gets to leather-hard I cut off the mushy lumps with a knife, as I do on the walls of the pots themselves.  I also hollow out the inside a bit with a knife so it has an entirely cut surface.  In this pic you can also see the regular knobs I’ve been making for the last 4 years or so.  Same idea, but with a solid coil cut at leather hard.

Here’s my source of inspiration:

 

state of the high school

A recent high school graduate and college student interested in pottery told me the other day that one semester in high school he made $700 in pottery class. I thought that was great, imagining he had had a sale of some sort at the end of all the work he had made.

Nope: he sold his work to the other students in the class for them to hand in as their own! Crazy, no?!? Apparently the pottery teacher was also the football coach, and he was a little more focused on the team. This is arts education in America, folks.

I likely would have done exactly the same thing as the student, but it is so appalling that the teacher let it slide. How could he have not known what was happening??

In other miserable high school news, I heard a different young student describe with pride how she failed all of her classes on her year abroad in Germany (including English class!). Setting aside the issue of boasting about this, what kills me is that when she came back she received credit at her local high school and graduated!?!?! So a FAILING grade in a German high school earns you credit and a diploma at a US high school!!

How can this country not fall apart?? To the zillions of high schoolers whom I’m sure read this blog: don’t be an idiot! have fun, enjoy life, but don’t be an idiot!

 

Axis of Pottery

I’ve been reading about Lucie Rie lately, here’s an example of her work:

One thing I came across was that Hamada (link) stayed with her for about two weeks on one of his trips to England, I think in the 1960s or late 50s.  Isn’t that odd??

Lucie famously lived in this one carriage house in London for 60 years, studio downstairs small apartment upstairs.  To think that the most famous potter in Japan would have slept on the couch of (maybe) the most famous potter in England, for two weeks, when they were both in their 50s strikes me as really odd.  On  top of that he was Japanese and she was Austrian (emigrated to GB in her late 30s). Where did they change clothes?  Where was Hamada’s entourage? What did his wife think/know? Could no one afford a hotel?  What did they talk about?  Did they drink?  How did she serve tea (a la Vienna? England? Japan?)? Did he work in her shop downstairs?

Both Rie and Hamada have struck me as somewhat formal people – maybe a little bohemian but not like all out free love folks.  I mean, does being progressive in the 1930s mean sleeping on a couch in the 60s??  Guess so.  Austria and Japan had such strict codes of etiquette for upper class folks in the 1920s (both grew up wealthy, surprise)  it’s bizarre to think of the shift in world view that would have physically and conceptually brought them together as potters sleeping in the same room.

Apparently Bernard Leach slept on the same couch about every two weeks for years and years when he would make trips to London.  Did he wear a suit and tie?  I have not seen a floor plan of the apartment, but I recall it’s described as one room, as in a studio apt with a bed in the corner.  And Hamada on the couch.  Sorry for not citing this well, but I think I must have read it in Tony Birks’ fabulous book Lucie Rie (link).

Frankly this sounds like a fabulous puppet show.  Each of the three are such characters visually it would be really funny.  An allegory of pottery in marionettes.

Back to work.

 

Visitors

About 70 students from Evergreen came to the studio yesterday, here are a few of them below.  They are from a class called “Madness + Creativity” that’s studying artmaking and psychological instability.  Hmmm.  Why do you think they came to visit me?

It was an interesting morning, actually.  These types of demos and talks help me crystallize my thinking about what I make.  So at one point I stated rambling on about a few little cylinders I had thrown that may become mugs.  These feel like weird shapes to me, mugs I had not made before, and that they were happening in response to a mug in my studio sink that was not washable by hand because the opening was too narrow.  As I was talking I realized the shape was also the inverse of the mugs I’ve been making recently.  The pic here shows the greenware one next to my recent fave shape.

What makes this anything other than monotonous minutia?  I think it speaks to the nature of creativity: the synthesis an idea (access to the interior and how that impacts functionality) with a response to the lived world (the mug that had to be brought in to the dishwasher) and with the memory of making (my recent mug shape).

Simple as it is, this is the nature of making.  Pottery for me is not concept driven, but rather relies specifically on this interveawing of living, making and noticing.  At the risk of going overboard, this is what gives craft its power: it is not about anything other than our response to the lived world.

In this case the process became evident because I happened to be speaking about it to a group of students.  Normally it just happens, just below the level of consciousness.  I see glimmers of it when I look, and under the harsh glare of the blog maybe I’ll see more, but it is still a process that happens largely outside of conscious intent.  That’s why we rely on mastery, without it we’re too dependent on thinking.

It makes me sad that this level of subtlety is often missed.  Objects are not seen as traces of how we live through the world – a material reflection of how and the fact that we seem to exist.  Rather they are just things.  I had the unfortunate experience of being in a Toys R Us earlier today and it was packed to the gills with things, a grotesque reflection rather than a human reflection.

On a happier note, one person yesterday said this pot

looks like something from the Jetsons.  Phenomenal, no?I love that because to me it looks like a Han Dynasty bronze, and the fact that it aesthetically straddles the two is exactly what I’m going for.  This is one of my favorite pots right now.

Time to dive back in the pool.  Bon apetit!

 

CERF auction now live!

I just finished ‘lecturing’ to 70 students from Evergreen, the local college, so while I decide whether I want to post on that here’s a news flash:

The latest auction to benefit CERF – the Craft Emergency Relief Fund (link) – is now online – here.

Freehand Gallery in LA organized the auction – the same people who are behind the fab Craft in America series (link).  I have donated a box with a flowering onion:

And there are other great pieces by loads of people, so check it out soon – you have three days left to bid

 

Nothing, like Elizabeth Taylor

Am I one of these bloggers who starts of strong with loads of posts and then just fizzles a few months into it??

Maybe. I’ve had little inclination to post in the last couple of weeks, and I’ve been wondering why that might be the case. I think it has to do with identity.

I have not been making anything yet this year. I made my last pots in November, and since then I’ve been taking care of all the other aspects of living and being a potter rather than generating work. I say it has to do with identity because one interesting aspect abut blogging for me is to see who I turn into in this format, to find out what I want to say.

The good news is that I do not want to tell you about the movie I saw the other day, or the funny thing my baby did. Those apparently lay outside of my digital identity right now. What I do want to tell you is what I am making and what I am thinking about as it comes to objects. The trick is that I am not thinking about anything, so I have nothing to say.

Can I really say something about saying nothing?? Apparently so. It’s funny now, with blogs and web sites, how the act of saying something – how we create our identity – is changing. I think of Nixon on tv. Now we need potters who are articulate in this particular way because this is one of the ways that we communicate now. That is, the medium is the message.

I hope to start making pots again soon. January is always this funny inter-time, where I’m not really myself, or actually where I get to reassess myself. I’m thinking of starting with porcelain
before I get into really making things. Porcelain isn’t real: identity again.

I’ve also been thinking of Elizabeth Taylor recently.

 

Warming up

I do not have much to say today, so I’m going to post a few images of pieces that are available.  Get in touch if you’re interested.  Hope you’re having a lovely day!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m back!

I’m back after a bit of a blog lull, hope you’ll forgive my absence.  I have been in New York for the last few weeks visiting family, and while I thought I may post on many of the wondrous things I saw there I decided to let my digital being rest.

I love being in New York.  I was born there, in Manhattan, and raised mostly in Maine but going back and forth a lot.  Being in New York completely relaxes me in a way that living in the woods doesn’t.  The woods are beautiful and interesting, but on some level I am aware of them at all times, and that awareness keeps me self-conscious, or maybe just conscious.  It’s like the difference between gourmet food and comfort food.  New York is my comfort food, just relax right into it.

I did manage to go to the Bauhaus show at MoMA (link) which was interesting enough, but I have to say kind of depressing.  It’s depressing that the school went from this idealistic endeavor to a withered shell.  Bauhaus started with all these workshops in different media, including cermaics.  When they had to move about 5 years into their existence they scrapped their ceramics operation.  Also at this time they increased their committment to designing a future for everyone – meaning industrial replacing handmade.  Watch out.

Early Bauhaus work is amazing because it balances a completely new aesthetic (if you include the Weiner Werkstatte) with handmade execution.  After they start manufacturing everything they just look like pretty things. They’ve lost whatever inherent complexity there is to them.

Mondrian paintings are the same.  Looking at a picture of one it’s just a somewhat attractive series of lines and boxes.  Being with one, though, you see all the inconsistencies: it tells the story of its making, all the decisions and corrections, tonal shifts etc.  The tension in the early Bauhaus works is between industrial aesthetics and handmade production.  Once you make the production industrial there’s nothing left.  Get a Mondrian calendar.  Or actually, a Murakami calendar which is the same.

Anni Albers emerged as the genius of Bauhaus for me, her wall hangings blowing away almost everything else.  But once you get to the end, when they started making industrial upholstery fabrics they look like, well, industrial upholstery fabrics.  I’d love to replace their samples in the case with something from today, see if it reads any differently.

What’s the moral of the story?  American culture has this total blind spot for the handmade-ness of things making any difference.  What are we gonna do.

I’m teaching at the community college this evening, time to polish off the syllabus, that’s what.