PHOTOGRAPHER: Daniel Pidgeon
Life ceramics W I T H A R T 1 7 0
Artist Statement
I decided to try ceramics for the second time last year. The first time I was, I believe, 7. There had been a pottery wheel at summer camp, and for a few days, it was all I wanted to do, soccer matches and swimming in the lake be damned. Just before my 31st birthday, I had the thought that perhaps my adult self would find it as magical as my child self did. I was right. Immediately, I began committing significant blocks of time to blocks of clay, trying to make up for the more than twenty years I had missed.
Ceramics is, in fact, an umbrella of an artform encompassing countless related yet unique skills. Throwing on a wheel is done with one’s hands and requires the right amount of water; trimming on a wheel requires the right amount of drying, and is done with tools. Off the wheel, potters will build with slabs by hand, slicing and attaching things as they go. Making glazes involves chemistry, as base ingredients are weighed and mixed carefully in order to vitrify into a glassy surface when fired to a particular temperature. Applying glazes, though, when done with a brush, is most like painting. These are but a few skills ceramics involves, and it for each artist to be as widely or as narrowly focused as they wish.
All this to say I have a markedly higher appreciation of the artform, as well as other artforms, based on my short experience in ceramics. Much of my goal has been to craft functional pieces for my home, and six months after beginning, nearly all of the tableware I use daily I have made with my own hands. My first set of five bowls were truly terrible, at once too narrow and too heavy. My next two sets, however, were miles better. When I first felt confident enough to attempt my first set of five plates, they took me many, many hours of effort, not to mention weeks of patience – but they came out nearly perfect, and the time I invested has been repaid in pride, even when eating alone. The photographs I have taken demonstrate some of the above facets of the artform. Some reflect the work I’ve made, and some of those progress to their incorporation into my daily life. A cappuccino or a homemade meal mean more on something I’ve made; even when sitting in the sink, the dishes feel more personal. Less like tools, and more like pieces of me. There are also photographs of friends I would not know were it not for clay, images of focus, of failure, and of laughter despite that. I shoot almost all of my photographs with significantly higher contrast, highlighting the texture and angularity of my subjects. I also carefully adjust the exposure, brightness, and brilliance to a point that is slightly dark in pursuit of a look that is dynamic without losing detail, and push the saturation a bit to liven the images, especially ones with wood grain under or behind.
