NOVEMBER 20 – DECEMBER 30, 2016 NORTHERN CLAY CENTER MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA
CURATOR AND ESSAYIST: NORA VAILLANT EDITOR: ELIZABETH COLEMAN
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Fore word Sarah Millfelt Director
Northern Clay Center was honored to be the host site of a remarkable exhibition featuring a lifetime of work created by John Reeve. Curated by the energetic and talented Nora Vaillant, John Reeve: Some Hidden Magic, showcased pots and stories and behind-the-scenes insight into a man whose artistic imprint runs deep in this part of the country, the Midwest. This exhibition is unique in its kind, as no other comprehensive exhibition of Reeve’s work has before been mounted by any venue. Nora Vaillant approached local pottery legend Warren MacKenzie with her idea for this exhibition some three years ago. Reeve had worked closely with MacKenzie at his home studio in Stillwater, Minnesota, beginning in 1962. However, the seeds for this project were planted by Reeve himself during a series of meetings he had with Vaillant, in Vancouver, before his passing. Northern Clay Center worked closely with Vaillant these past few years to create an exhibition that went beyond the traditional pots-on-pedestals approach. The Emily Galusha Gallery served as home to 69 examples of John’s early-to-late works as a potter, which represented a lifetime of striving to capture what Reeve called “the soul of the pot.” Examples of his work in stoneware, porcelain, and earthenware — all accomplished over the course of his fifty-year career — were on view at NCC throughout the holiday season.
© 2017 NORTHERN CLAY CENTER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS BOOK MAY BE USED OR REPRODUCED IN ANY MANNER WHATSOEVER WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION, EXCEPT IN THE CASE OF BRIEF QUOTATIONS EMBODIED IN CRITICAL ARTICLES AND REVIEWS.
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
FOR INFORMATION, WRITE TO: NORTHERN CLAY CENTER 2424 FRANKLIN AVENUE EAST MINNEAPOLIS, MN 55406 WWW.NORTHERNCLAYCENTER.ORG MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES FIRST EDITION, 2017 INTERNATIONAL STANDARD BOOK NUMBER 978-1-932706-41-0 UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED, ALL DIMENSIONS: HEIGHT PRECEDES WIDTH PRECEDES DEPTH.
This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund, a grant from the Wells Fargo Foundation Minnesota, and by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
In conjunction with this exhibition, Nora Vaillant traveled to NCC to work closely with photographer Peter Lee to capture the nuances of Reeve’s pots, which are included in this publication. She collaborated extensively with NCC’s exhibition manager, Mike Arnold, to present a gorgeous and thoughtful viewing of Reeve’s work. And, she shared her own passion for Reeve’s work and knowledge of his “story” with a packed house of 50+ clay enthusiasts, collectors, and fans of Reeve as a potter and a person. A community of supporters ensured the breadth of this exhibition was possible through the loan of pots from their collections, the sharing of stories of Reeve’s life, and contributions towards this publication. We’d like
to extend a special thanks to the following individuals who loaned us pots and helped to support the production costs of this catalogue: Loans of Pots: Anonymous, Joseph G. Brown, Lisa Buck, Linda Christianson and Jeff Strother, Nancy d’Estang, Delia and Doug Jurek, Meg and Jim Lorio, Warren MacKenzie, Mark Pharis, and The Weisman Art Museum. A sincere and deep thanks to Dr. Phyllis Blair Reeve, John’s widow, who so willingly loaned several pieces and made many available for sale during the tenure of the exhibition. Financial supporters: Anonymous, Joseph G. Brown, Linda Christianson, Dick Cooter, Tim Crane, Guillermo Cuellar, Anne Curtiss, Nancy d’Estang, Clary Illian, Delia and Douglas Jurek, Jim and Meg Lorio, Warren MacKenzie, Stephen Mickey, Marcia Tani Paul, Bernie and Sue Pucker, Will Ruggles and Douglass Rankin, Anne Vaillant, and Jim and Judy Walsh. On behalf of Northern Clay Center and the thousands of individuals who had the opportunity to view this exhibition in real time, I’d like to thank Nora Vaillant for her vision and tenacity towards this project. She worked tirelessly and gratis to bring Northern Clay Center and its community a gorgeous array of wares by Reeve. I’d like to also thank Mike Arnold, exhibitions manager, for his grace under pressure, his leadership, his own creative vision for this show, and his ever-accommodating approach to collaboration. Finally, this particular activity and all of NCC’s programming, is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund, a grant from the Wells Fargo Foundation, Minnesota, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
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Intro duction Warren MacKenzie
I first met John in 1961 when he was on his way from St. Ives, England, to Vancouver to teach at the University of British Columbia. My wife and I were sitting talking and there was a knock at the door. When I opened it this man said, “Hello. I’m John Reeve and Bernard Leach said we should meet one another.” We spent a great evening together talking about pots and in the morning he was off to British Columbia. The following year, John called and we made arrangements for him to come and work in my studio. Things hadn’t worked out as he had expected in Vancouver. My wife had died and I thought that it would be good to share the space and continue to have an interaction with another potter. This could have been a disaster, but it wasn’t. Somehow John and I were on the same wavelengths. It was not necessary to discuss problems since they did not arise. We worked about a seven-hour day and all of our energies went into pots. John was very quiet, working in bursts of intense concentration, then stopping — off the wheel for a cigarette — while assessing what had been done and planning what was to come. We both had a strong feeling of responsibility for the shop and there was never a need to discuss jobs that needed doing or what approach to take to any problems that arose. To make pots was the job and anything that interfered with that was wrong. We worked hard, but played a bit too, and made lots of pots. It was a wonderful nine months before John and his family took off for England where he hoped to establish his own pottery. I had a sabbatical from the University of Minnesota and also went to England where I rented space from Marianne Haile and worked for six months. By that time, John was looking for property to buy where he could start his pottery. Weekends were spent bouncing in the back of his old Bedford van with Glenn Lewis as we followed estate agents’ directions to derelict mansions out on the moors, farms that had been abandoned to thistles and burdock, or old mills set along rivers and estuaries.
Eventually we found a farm, “Longlands,” so old that it was in the Domesday Book (AD 1085 –1086). Much work turned this into a pottery where four of us worked. I had to return to Minnesota after four months and did not see John until 1966 when he came to teach for a term at the University of Minnesota. At that time he was working in porcelain and had an exhibition of his work at the University. Soft, lovely porcelains filled the cases. They were full of light with sensuous surfaces and translucent walls. They did not ignore the feel of porcelain, but at the same time had a freedom of workmanship that we had all come to expect from John. John returned to England, taught in several different schools, but finally sold Longlands in 1971 and returned to Canada. He built several studios, taught in many workshop programs in Canada and the US, and eventually moved to Abiquiú. In working with John, off and on over a period of more than forty years, the thing I have enjoyed most was that he maintained his sense of wonder at the medium with which he chose to work. His power to communicate this sense of serious play made him one of the outstanding people I have ever met. Those who came in contact with him often found their lives changed by this and seldom forget him.
“We were both seeking our own language. We shared the idea that pots should be made easily and quickly; they should not be elaborate things. We didn’t have to explain ourselves to one another… He was my best double.” — Warren MacKenzie
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Below: John Reeve’s stamp
John Reeve: Some Hidden Magic
“I’m not really interested in committing novelty upon the world, but only in making objects which have some hidden magic to them.” — John Reeve
Nora Vaillant Exhibition Curator
The first time I met John Reeve, he didn’t tell me about driving down the Oregon coast with Michael Cardew, firing wood kilns with Warren MacKenzie and Ken Ferguson, or throwing pots back-to-back with Gwyn Hanssen Pigott. He told me about getting his palm read by the minister’s wife when he was still a boy. She predicted he would grow up to work with his hands, but Reeve protested. He knew he was destined to take over the family business. “That’s too bad,” she said, “because you’d also make a fine preacher.”1 Decades later, when Reeve was an accomplished potter, his mentor, Bernard Leach, described him as part poet, part priest.2 John Reeve was born in 1929 in the small town of Barrie, Ontario, about an hour’s drive north of Toronto. Despite being a good student and showing an early talent for art, he was not encouraged to attend university. Upon graduating from high school, he dutifully worked for the next six years in his father’s jewelry store. From the beginning, it was clear he was not meant to be a businessman. Yearning for more, he took art classes at night and even began writing a novel, but it was still not enough, and so, at the age of twenty-four he took off for the west coast leaving behind his new wife and young son. Reeve arrived at the Vancouver School of Art with two oil paintings tucked under his arm. Older than most of the students there, he read poetry, talked about philosophy, and seemed to know what a Beatnik was. He even looked the part, already bald on top with horned rimmed glasses, moustache, and black turtleneck. During his first year, he majored in drawing and painting, but in his second year, initially intrigued more by the teacher than the subject matter, he found the small ceramics department. His instructor, Reg Dixon, a colorful character who had traveled the world and been in the Spanish Civil War, also happened to be Reeve’s guitar teacher.
Reeve’s intense response to the physicality of working in clay took him by surprise. And, once he got on the wheel, “everything changed.”3 Proving the palm reader’s hunch, he realized he loved working with his hands. When the semester ended in 1956, he went to Mexico with Reg Dixon, eventually making his way to a village near Guanajuato, where he drew and painted amid living craft traditions, observing a different way of being. His five-month stay left a deep impression on him, further cementing his desire to become a potter. This was the end of art school and the beginning of his education.4 Eager to start, he set up his first pottery, the Blue Mountain Craft Shop, not far from his hometown in Ontario, and was soon joined by Donna Balma, a fellow Vancouver art student and painter who became his second wife. Together they quickly discovered they preferred making to selling. Reeve also realized he had much more to learn about his craft. Having read A Potter’s Book, he decided Bernard Leach was one of the best in the world to study with, so they set off for England. Fearing rejection from Leach, Reeve chose not to write ahead from Canada. And he was right: Leach refused him twice. Reeve responded by honing his throwing skills. By chance, he found a job in a monastery at a pottery begun by Leach’s son, David, and run by the talented Colin Pearson. Feeling discouraged while helping out at Harry Davis’s pottery, Reeve finally went in person to see Leach. The chemistry between them was instant. “Leach and I really took to one another … I knew within that first hour that I would be staying there, and I did, for two and a half years.”5 Reeve’s apprenticeship began in November 1958. Shortly after he and Donna arrived in St. Ives, their daughter, Hannah Bernadette, was born. Also at the Pottery were Leach’s wife, Janet Darnell; Kenneth Quick; Shoji Hamada’s son, Atsuya; Richard and Dinah Batterham; and later, the Australian potter, Gwyn
1 John Reeve, interviewed by the author, Vancouver, BC, June 19, 2007. 2 Bernard Leach, Beyond East and West (New York: WatsonGuptill Publications, 1978), 249. 3 John Reeve, interviewed by the author, Vancouver, BC, June 19, 2007. 4 John Reeve, interviewed by John Flanders, Halifax, NS, June 12, 1979, TS 3, private collection. 5 John Reeve, interviewed by the author, Vancouver, BC, June 19, 2007.
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Three wise monkeys: John Reeve, Warren MacKenzie, Ken Ferguson, circa 1975.
6 Gwyn Hanssen Pigott, interviewed by the author, Vancouver, BC, November 3, 2012. 7 John Reeve, unpublished papers, n.d., private collection. 8 John Reeve, Letter of application to The Canada Council, November 19, 1962, private collection. 9 John Reeve, interviewed by the author, Vancouver, BC, June 19, 2007.
Hanssen Pigott. She made the bottoms and he made the lids of the standard ware casseroles. Just months before her death, she exhorted me to tell Reeve’s story, recalling their shared experiences at the Leach Pottery: He had a wonderful voice — my memory is he was always singing when he threw pots — old torch songs. Very charismatic person. Big eyes, very handsome, very sexy, wore black clothes. He was a like a black panther!...I used to be jealous of John’s pots….they were free and relaxed; they had a softness. Yes, even at that time you could see John’s style. I wanted to make pots like that.6 Reeve and Pigott both attended Michael Cardew’s Geology and Raw Materials course at Wenford Bridge in 1959, a challenging immersion into the nitty-gritty of clay and glaze chemistry that informed Reeve’s future teaching and publications. Reeve wrote7 movingly about his time as an apprentice, describing the first six weeks as one of the hardest things he ever did (other than learning to meditate). At the Pottery, apprentices made the standard ware pieces that were ordered from the catalog. When given his first assignment to make soup bowls, he would throw fifty or sixty a day. These would be looked at and discussed with the foreman, Bill Marshall, and then, one after the other, destroyed. Reeve remembered something “breaking” in him, but the resulting discipline enabled him to acquire exceptional skills. During their free time, the apprentices worked on individual pieces that were critiqued by Leach. Toward the end of his apprenticeship, Reeve’s independent work evolved to incorporate eastern aesthetic elements, visible in the way he turned a foot, and an overall “looser” style. Plans were being made for him to go to Japan and possibly study with Hamada, when, ironically,
Reeve ended up being hired as Hamada’s replacement to teach the 1961 summer session at the University of British Columbia, back in Vancouver. After less than two years at the university, Reeve felt uncomfortable being “a big fish in a small pond.” He knew he had more to learn from the experienced potters he had left behind in England, where a respected and well-established tradition of handcrafts still flourished. He received a fellowship from the Canada Council for the Arts to gain more skills abroad with the expectation that he would eventually return to share his expertise. His application lays out his vision for a new kind of communal artist pottery, “not a commercial pottery in any sense, but a pottery where artist-potters would work in separate studios and where young potters could come to work after they’ve had their basic training,”8 and learn how to set up potteries of their own. “It’s not good enough,” he said, “to take the goodies and run” after receiving the privilege of being trained at the Leach Pottery. “In exchange for getting that kind of transmission, that blessing, part of what I owed was to pass that on to other people.”9 For his own pottery, he envisioned an apprenticeship-type workshop, more cooperative and less hierarchical than the Leach Pottery, presaging the interest in communal ventures that sprang up later in the decade alongside the counterculture movement. In 1962, there were few options for practical training of this kind. Reeve’s proposal aimed to fill the gap he perceived in art education; his thinking was ahead of his time. That year, on his way back to England, Reeve took Leach’s advice and stopped in to see Warren MacKenzie in Minnesota. This began a deep and lasting friendship. Reeve and his family lived for nine months in Stillwater where he worked in MacKenzie’s studio to complete a large commission of ceramic objects specifically
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John Reeve at Longlands Pottery, Devon, England, circa 1964.
designed for the new Massey College at the University of Toronto. In 1963, Reeve arrived at the Leach Pottery in St. Ives where he spent the summer making pots and acting as kiln-master. Planning his return to coincide with an extended visit from Hamada, Reeve relished the hours spent with this “short, fat man full of laughter and wisdom,” saying that he had never met someone “so completely conscious of his abilities, his virtues, and his weaknesses, and so able to speak of them simply and directly.”10 The simplicity and forthrightness of Hamada’s pots were not lost on Reeve either. Thus inspired, Reeve founded Longlands, his pottery in the Devonshire village of Hennock, with help from MacKenzie, and fellow Canadian apprentice, Glenn Lewis. During the first “magical” years at Longlands, several potters, including Clary Illian, passed through and stayed awhile to make pots and fire the temperamental wood- and oil-fueled kiln. Reeve discovered he had a knack for drawing community to him and that he preferred working in the company of others, finding it energizing and stimulating. His work matured during this highly productive period and, with a show at London’s prestigious Primavera Gallery, critical attention followed. Recalling the pots Reeve made at Longlands, Illian remarked, They had a robustness that wasn’t in anyone else’s work at the time: chunky, sensuous, soft, but austere. They had a character. So many of us make pots in that tradition and they can begin to seem interchangeable, but not John’s. There is something about them that is unmistakable — about the meat of them, the touch on the surface, the pacing of a curve, the choices of the thickness of the wall, the edges.11
At Longlands, Reeve began a quest to develop a translucent porcelain clay body suitable for use by studio potters. This unique material, inhabiting the “transition between the opaque and the transparent, between earth and air,”12 captivated him. For Reeve, the single most important feature of porcelain, distinguishing it from merely white stoneware, was the ability of light to pass through it. [I]f it isn’t translucent, it isn’t porcelain. Translucency means, of course, transmitting light, not necessarily that you can see the shadow of your fingers…through the ware. Any material which transmits light has an internal glow because of that, a luminous quality which might be compared with that of pearls or marble.13 Indicative of his ease and facility with clay, whether working in porcelain or stoneware, Reeve made pots with an immediacy and directness. Many of the forms he threw in the mid-60s echo shapes he continued to explore throughout his career, such as his large round vases. These generous, volumetric orbs with rolled rims of varying widths and slopes, expansive bellies, and unselfconscious imperfections evoke the Korean full moon jars beloved by Leach and Lucie Rie. At Longlands, Reeve also tried his hand at making earthenware in the English slipware tradition with a contemporary twist, adding Beatles’ lyrics, or pop culture patterning. And, he had fun with lugs and handles. Their casual, asymmetric placement suggests human attitudes, lending a playful, humorous quality to the pots. As one friend put it, he “gave himself up to the clay,”14 its potential and the sheer enjoyment of doing it. In 1965 Reeve described a pot he had made, which was particularly pleasing to him and which he knew would not find favor with Leach. Referring to the Chinese wares from the Sung Dynasty so highly praised by his mentor,
10 John Reeve, Report to The Canada Council, January 8, 1964, private collection. 11 Clary Illian, phone conversation with the author, February 25, 2016. 12 John Reeve, “More Notes on Porcelain,” The Studio Potter 6, no. 2 (1978): 19. 13 Ibid. 14 Tam Irving, “Remarks at John Reeve Memorial Service,” Vancouver, BC, November 29, 2012, private collection.
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John Reeve and Michael Cardew, Big Creek Pottery, California, 1976.
15 John Reeve, letter to Glenn Lewis, November 25, 1965, private collection. 16 John Reeve, letter to Glenn Lewis, November 17, 1965, in Thrown: British Columbia’s Apprentices of Bernard Leach and Their Contemporaries, eds. Scott Watson, Naomi Sawada, Jana Tyner (Vancouver: Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, University of British Columbia, 2011), 225.
Reeve characterized his pot as “Holy Sung, but all out of whack.” “It’s not very cool or professional-looking,” he wrote, The expected classic rhythms are not there… instead, its rhythms change from inch to inch, not predictable, not smooth...the top, in scale with another size of pot ….Most of these things I see as the reasons to like it. It’s all very well to claim that your work is mainly influenced by the Japanese and all that jazz; which is true, but here you are engaged in a tearing-away from all the classic canons….I don’t think it denies any of Bernard’s teaching…indeed, I think it DEPENDS on the groundwork of Leach-Sung-Japan et al., but it surely is NOT what they mean in England by the Leach tradition. I think that if there is a valuable Leach tradition, it will be carried on into the future by a few of us who have used the tradition, not [been] used by it.15 According to Reeve, British pottery in the 1960s was, by definition, inoffensive and nice. Chafing at the limits of a market unwilling to accept work that stepped outside of or questioned the norms, Reeve found himself in an existential quandary: One of the signs I see which tells me that my pots are still somewhat what I want them to be is that people are affronted by them, and find it necessary to come to terms with them….they cannot just slip them into their world without any sort of consideration. I cannot reconcile myself to becoming a maker of nice things. This is why I am so…financially shaky. I know what to do to make it smoother for myself, but if I do, it somehow takes away the whole point of my existence, and I might as well be back in Barrie, Ontario, selling nice engagement rings.16
To solve this dilemma, he turned to teaching to help pay the bills, spending the 1966 spring term at the University of Minnesota and the next six years at Farnham School of Art in Surrey, England. In charge of creating the nondiploma studio-based program, Reeve played a part in the craft education revival underway across the United Kingdom that resulted in schools like Harrow. But, with increased responsibilities at Farnham, he had less time for his own pots and he decided to make a fresh start in Canada. Armed with another grant from the Canadian Arts Council, he made plans to move his pottery operation to British Columbia. Arriving with pots made at Longlands, Reeve was welcomed back for a solo exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 1972. While looking for land, he taught at the Vancouver School of Art and finished writing Book One: A Potters Way to Understand Glazes. As the first Canadian to apprentice with Leach, Reeve had paved the way for others to follow. In total, four Canadians completed two-year apprenticeships: Reeve, Glenn Lewis, Michael Henry, and Ian Steele. Upon their return to the west coast, they influenced a generation of British Columbian potters, defining the Canadian Leach diaspora, akin to Warren MacKenzie’s influence in Minnesota. Meanwhile, Leach now in his eighties and going blind, hoped Reeve would become his successor. In October 1973, Reeve returned to St. Ives to take on the position of studio manager, with Janet Darnell remaining as the business manager. It seemed a good arrangement since Reeve, a favored student, had a close relationship with Leach. However, over the years as Leach’s level of engagement with the Pottery ebbed, both the quality of standard ware and the general morale had deteriorated. Reeve’s broad experience teaching, writing, and running his own pottery, prepared him well, but as he poignantly described, “It became apparent quite soon that Bernard was put in the impossible position of having two
managers, one a wife and one a close friend, who gave him conflicting accounts of what was going on and how to fix it.”17 The untenable situation concluded after just one year with the last parting between Leach and Reeve, one of sadness and grief that remained in Reeve’s heart, In the eye of my mind, I can see The Old Man by his window on Porthmoor Beach, blind Tiresias raging against the dying of the light, seeing new visions now that he is not encumbered by the sight of walls and trees and faces and the waves on the beach — trying to put it all together while there is time. And my own desertion of him I carry with me to these trees, these rocks, and it hurts me, even though I could not stay, even though what I was called to save was already lost beyond saving, beyond my saving.18
workshops across the United States and Canada, leading some to say he was the ultimate gypsy potter. He was a charismatic teacher, vividly remembered for talking not just about pots but for wrestling with life’s mysteries. People were attracted to this side of him, as well as to his obvious talent and passion for ceramics. His system of marking his pots with two stamps, one to indicate where the pot was made and one with his own back-to-back “open R” symbol, provides clues to trace his peripatetic path. In 1975 he was a visiting artist at the Kansas City Art Institute, taught again at the University of Minnesota, and worked in MacKenzie’s studio. Not interested in self-promotion, Reeve disliked marketing his pots, but his sales at MacKenzie’s were always good. Although he sometimes sold through galleries, he generally regarded the art world and dealers with suspicion.
John and his family moved back to British Columbia again, this time up the coast, an hour’s ferry ride from Vancouver, where they bought communal land with a group of artists in picturesque Roberts Creek. This appeared to be the perfect place for Reeve to establish his pottery, a project he undertook with Martin Peters, another Canadian who had studied with Leach. Reeve named it Cold Mountain Pottery after Gary Snyder’s translations of a Tang dynasty poet and monk named HanShan, a wise man who wandered the countryside in search of enlightenment. HanShan lived on Cold Mountain and he took its name; there, his state of mind became Cold Mountain, a Zen concept Reeve found appealing. Although bricks for a large wood kiln were stockpiled, the kiln was never built and the pots that were made for a short time at Cold Mountain Pottery had to be fired elsewhere. Unable to settle down, Reeve, like his alter ego HanShan, felt the pull of the road.
During Michael Cardew’s 1976 North American tour, he convinced Reeve to drive him from Vancouver down the coast to Big Creek, California, where a legendary workshop was held at Bruce and Marcia McDougal’s pottery, an old dairy farm in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Reeve’s performance as Cardew’s assistant earned him an invitation to return the following summer to lead a porcelain workshop with Warren MacKenzie: thirty participants, three weeks, three tons of porcelain. “Sunny, crazy California,” one participant reported. “John Reeve taught us that porcelain could glow not just from the sun shining through, but with a light and a life of its own.”19 Some Notes on Porcelain, his series of technical articles published in multiple countries, captures his pioneering work in the field. According to Aaron Nelson, formerly of the Archie Bray Foundation Clay Business, “Reeve’s formulas for porcelain are pretty much the blueprint for many commercial bodies produced by clay companies across North America today.”20
Well known in the ceramics community of the 1970s and `80s, Reeve accepted invitations to teach and give
In 1979, after two years at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Reeve concluded that he was more effective
17 John Reeve, unpublished papers, n.d., private collection. 18 John Reeve, “Twenty Years Later: In Search of the Ordinary,” unpublished papers, n.d., private collection. 19 Kathleen Cerveny, “A Porcelain Workshop: Warren MacKenzie, John Reeve,” Ceramics Monthly (April 1978), 41. 20 Aaron Nelson, email to author, December 8, 2016.
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John Reeve walking with pots in the mid-1980s.
21 John Reeve, unpublished papers, n.d., private collection. 22 Ibid. 23 John Flanders, The Craftsman’s Way (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981), 24.
as a teacher in an intensive workshop format rather than a university setting. Divorced from Donna, with his daughters grown and fewer family responsibilities, Reeve spent more time in the United States, and even took a break from making pots while living in California, where he completed meditation and therapeutic body massage courses. But by 1982, he was again leading workshops, and traveling back and forth between studios in California, Denver, and Vancouver with frequent visits to MacKenzie’s Stillwater studio, an important touchstone. In Denver, Reeve joined Castle Clay, a cooperative group studio. This marked the beginning of another fertile period as Reeve embarked on what he called “low-fire, high-color experiments.”21 Exuberant yellows and brilliant turquoise entered his palette. Their vibrant, playful spirit along with Reeve’s renewed interest in earthenware, hearken back to explorations undertaken twenty years prior at Longlands. Now in his mid-fifties, Reeve exhibited a freedom reminiscent of his younger days riffing on the classical white Korean full moon jar with his mesmerizing acid-yellow, full sun jars. In 1987, Reeve hit the road again, this time bound for New Mexico. He lived in the state for the last twentyfive years of his life with his third wife, Phyllis Blair, a psychotherapist. Reeve created the studio-based program at Santa Fe Clay, as it transformed from a clay-supply business into the multifaceted organization it is today. He played an instrumental role organizing the teaching facility, originally known as Clayworks. Reeve continued to teach periodically at Santa Fe Clay, after moving to the rural town of Abiquiú, and he kept making pots, although not quite as many as he got older and his health suffered. During those years, soft, matte pastel pinks, yellows, and blues graced familiar forms, and new shapes appeared, including tiny porcelain oil lamps inspired by Yi Dynasty wares. He would also visit pottery friends like MacKenzie, Jim Lorio in Colorado, and Martin
JO H N REEVE: SO ME H I D D EN MA G I C
John Reeve, Vase, c. 1988, stoneware, 12” x 6” x 5”. Collection of Dr. Phyllis Blair Reeve. Made at The Ranch, Santa Fe, NM.
Peters in Vancouver, sometimes staying for a month or two, working in companionship. For Reeve, making pots was a calling and, when throwing on the wheel, it was about his body, mind, and spirit being given fully to the very physical nature of it, completely immersed in “the rhythm of approaching the same INTENTION over and over... TRANSFORMING an idea into form every time it is repeated…so it can be like a dance or a song.”22 Reeve strove to capture what he called “the soul of the pot,” the charged air contained by a whirling orb. Sometimes quirky, sometimes cutting edge, they reflect an unorthodox stance best described by Reeve when he said, “I’m not really interested in committing novelty upon the world, but only in making objects which have some hidden magic to them.”23
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John Reeve, Yellow Vase, c. 1983 –1987, earthenware, 15” x 6” x 6”. Collection of Dr. Phyllis Blair Reeve. Made at Castle Clay, Denver, CO.
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John Reeve, Yellow Covered Jar, c. 1983 –1987, earthenware, 12” x 6” x 6”. Collection of Meg and Jim Lorio. Made at Castle Clay, Denver, CO.
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John Reeve, Covered Jar, c. 1983 –1987, stoneware, 9” x 6” x 5”. Collection of Meg and Jim Lorio. Made at Castle Clay, Denver, CO.
John Reeve, Vase with Handles, c. 1966 –1970, earthenware, 7” x 5” x 4”. Collection of Weisman Art Museum. Made at Longlands Pottery, Hennock, Devon, England.
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John Reeve, Vase, c. 1990s, stoneware, 10” x 9” x 9”. Collection of Dr. Phyllis Blair Reeve. Made in Santa Fe, NM.
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JO H N REEVE: SO ME H I D D EN MA G I C
John Reeve, Yellow Vase, c. 1983 –1987, earthenware, 12” x 11” x 11”. Collection of Dr. Phyllis Blair Reeve. Made at Castle Clay, Denver, CO.
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John Reeve, Vase, c. 1988, stoneware, 8” x 7” x 7”. Collection of Dr. Phyllis Blair Reeve. Made at The Ranch, Santa Fe, NM.
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JO H N REEVE: SO ME H I D D EN MA G I C
John Reeve, Vase, c. 1975 –1986, porcelain, 6” x 5” x 4”. Collection of Joseph G. Brown. Made at MacKenzie Pottery, Stillwater, MN.
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John Reeve, Cruet, date unknown, porcelain, 3” x 4” x 3”. Collection of Dr. Phyllis Blair Reeve.
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John Reeve, Cup, c. 1983 –1987, porcelain, 2” x 3” x 3”. Collection of Dr. Phyllis Blair Reeve. Made at Castle Clay, Denver, CO.
John Reeve, Small Vase, 1989, porcelain, 4” x 3” x 3”. Collection of Dr. Phyllis Blair Reeve. Made at Lorio Pottery, Boulder, CO.
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John Reeve, Elevated Pouring Vessel, c. 1991–1997, porcelain, 4” x 4” x 4”. Collection of Dr. Phyllis Blair Reeve. Made in Santa Fe, NM.
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John Reeve, Small Vase, 1989, porcelain, 2.5” x 3” x 3”. Collection of Meg and Jim Lorio. Made at Lorio Pottery, Boulder, CO.
John Reeve, Small Footed Pouring Vessel, 1989, porcelain, 2” x 4” x 4”. Collection of Meg and Jim Lorio. Made at Lorio Pottery, Boulder, CO.
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John Reeve, Champagne Flute, c. 1991–1994, porcelain, 5” x 2” x 2”. Collection of Dr. Phyllis Blair Reeve. Made in Santa Fe, NM.
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John Reeve, Oil Lamp, 1989, porcelain, 4” x 3” x 3”. Collection of Meg and Jim Lorio. Made at Lorio Pottery, Boulder, CO.
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John Reeve, Teapot, 1977, porcelain, 6” x 7” x 6”. Collection of Weisman Art Museum. Made at Big Creek, CA.
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John Reeve, Cup and Saucer, c. 1970, porcelain, 4” x 5” x 5”. Anonymous loan. Made at Longlands Pottery, Hennock, Devon, England.
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Below (left): John Reeve, Bowl, c. 1983 –1987, porcelain, 3” x 5” x 5”. Collection of Dr. Phyllis Blair Reeve. Made at Castle Clay, Denver, CO.
Below (right): John Reeve, Bowl, 1970s –1980s, porcelain, 4” x 6” x 6”. Collection of Mark Pharis.
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John Reeve, Vase, c. 1980s, porcelain, 6” x 5” x 5”. Anonymous loan.
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JO H N REEVE: SO ME H I D D EN MA G I C
John Reeve, Vase, 1963, porcelain, 8” x 7” x 7”. Collection of Weisman Art Museum. Made at Leach Pottery, St. Ives, Cornwall, England.
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John Reeve, Porcelain Cups on Yellow Saucers, c. 1983 –1987, porcelain and earthenware, 5” x 5” x 5” ea. Collection of Nancy d’Estang. Made at Castle Clay, Denver, CO.
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John Reeve, Pitcher, c. 1970s –1980s, stoneware, 9” x 6” x 4”. Collection of Mark Pharis.
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JO H N REEVE: SO ME H I D D EN MA G I C
John Reeve, Tea Bowl, 1963, stoneware, 4” x 5” x 5”. Collection of Weisman Art Museum. Made at MacKenzie Pottery, Stillwater, MN.
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John Reeve, Casserole, c. 1990s, stoneware, 7” x 9” x 8”. Collection of Dr. Phyllis Blair Reeve. Made in Santa Fe, NM.
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John Reeve, Turquoise Covered Jar, c. 1983 –1986, earthenware, 5” x 5” x 5”. Collection of Dr. Phyllis Blair Reeve. Made at Old Bridge Street Pottery, Granville Island, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
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John Reeve, Footed Shallow Bowl, c. 1984, stoneware, 3” x 12” x 12”. Collection of Lisa Buck. Made at MacKenzie Pottery, Stillwater, MN.
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JO H N REEVE: SO ME H I D D EN MA G I C
John Reeve, Yellow Teapot, c. 1983 –1986, earthenware, 8” x 9” x 6”. Collection of Dr. Phyllis Blair Reeve. Made at Old Bridge Street Pottery, Granville Island, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
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John Reeve Chronology
1929 • John Reeve born November 30 in Barrie, Ontario, Canada
1947 – 1954 Barrie, Ontario • Works in father’s jewelry store where he is expected to take over the family business • Marries Joyce Elliot, 1952 • Son Michael born, 1954
1954 – 1956 • Attends Vancouver School of Art. Painting, drawing first year; ceramics second year
1956 – 1957 • Extended travel in Mexico. Opens his first pottery, Blue Mountain Craft Shop, Orillia, Ontario
1958 – 1961 England • Works for Colin Pearson at The Friars, Aylesford, and for Harry Davis at Crowan Pottery, 1958 • Apprenticeship at the Leach Pottery, St. Ives, 1958 – 1961 • Daughter Hannah Bernadette born, 1958 • Course with Michael Cardew, Wenford Bridge Pottery, 1959 • Marries Donna Balma, 1960 • Receives Leon and Thea Koerner Foundation Grant, 1961
1961 – 1963 Canada and USA • Daughter Soledad Maria born, 1961 • Making pots at University of British Columbia and Warren MacKenzie Pottery, Stillwater, Minnesota • Teaching at University of British Columbia and workshops across Canada • Receives Canada Council Senior Arts Fellowship • Awarded commission by architect Ron Thom to design and make all ceramic objects for new Massey College, University of Toronto
1963 – 1972 England • Making pots at the Leach Pottery, St. Ives (summer 1963) and Longlands Pottery, Hennock, Devon • Teaching at Farnham College of Art, Surrey, England (1966 – 1972) and University of Minnesota (spring 1966)
1972 – 1973 Canada • Making pots at Herman Venema Pottery, Matsqui, British Columbia • Teaching at Vancouver School of Art • Receives Canada Council Arts Award Grant • Self-publishes books: Book One: A Potter’s Way to Understand Glazes and The Potter’s Raw Materials, Some of their Characteristics and their Compositions
1973 – 1974 England Studio Manager, the Leach Pottery, St. Ives
1975 – 1986 Canada and USA • Teaching and workshops at University of Minnesota; Nova Scotia College of Art and Design; Big Creek, California; Kansas City Art Institute; various other locations across Canada and USA • Making pots at Cold Mountain Pottery, Roberts Creek, BC; Slug Pottery, Roberts Creek, BC; Tam Irving Pottery, Fisherman’s Cove, BC; Lee Creek Pottery, Chase, BC; Old Bridge Street Pottery, Vancouver, BC; Warren MacKenzie Pottery, Stillwater, Minnesota; Tom Donahue Pottery, Oakview, California; Jim Lorio Pottery, Boulder, Colorado; Castle Clay, Denver, Colorado • Publications: Some Notes on Porcelain (a three-part article) in Tactile (Canada, 1975), in Pottery Quarterly (England, 1975), and in New Zealand Potter (New Zealand, 1977); and More Notes on Porcelain in Studio Potter (USA, Vol. 6, No. 2, 1978) • Meditation and bodywork courses completed at Lomi School, California (1980 –1981) and Insight Meditation Society with Jack Kornfield and Joseph Goldstein
1987 – 2012 Santa Fe and Abiquiú, New Mexico • Founding member, Santa Fe Clay, 1992 – 1993 • Marries Phyllis Blair, 1996 • Making pots at Santa Fe Clay; Abiquiú home studio, New Mexico; Jim Lorio Pottery, Boulder, Colorado; Warren MacKenzie Pottery, Stillwater, Minnesota; Martin Peters Dunbar Pottery, Vancouver, BC • Teaching at Santa Fe Clay for various periods of time • Radiation treatment for benign brain tumor, loses sight in one eye, 2003 • Died June 29 at home in Abiquiú, New Mexico, 2012
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“For me, making pots is a vocation, not a skill or a trade…. The soul that goes into the pot comes out of it. When you are throwing pots there is…a letting go of and that’s where the pots come from…. It is a time to let your energy, your spirit, go into that activity.” — John Reeve
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Northern Clay Center
Thank You
Northern Clay Center’s mission is the advancement of the ceramic arts. Its goals are to promote excellence in the work of clay artists, to provide educational opportunities for artists and the community, and to encourage the public’s appreciation and understanding of the ceramic arts.
Thank you to the following people for making this catalog possible:
Staff Sarah Millfelt, Director Michael Arnold, Exhibitions Manager Brady McLearen, Exhibitions Assistant Board of Directors Lynne Alpert Bryan Anderson Nan Arundel Mary K. Baumann Craig Bishop, Chair Heather Nameth Bren Lann Briel Robert Briscoe Phil Burke Linda Coffey Nancy Hanily-Dolan Bonita Hill Sally Wheaton Hushcha Christopher Jozwiak Patrick Kennedy Mark Lellman Brad Meier Alan Naylor Rick Scott T Cody Turnquist Ellen Watters
Director Emerita Emily Galusha Honorary Directors Kay Erickson Warren MacKenzie Legacy Directors Andy Boss Joan Mondale
Unless otherwise noted, all photographs are by Peter Lee. Design by Joseph D.R. OLeary, VetoDesign.com
Anonymous Joseph G. Brown Linda Christianson Dick Cooter Tim Crane Guillermo Cuellar Anne Curtiss Nancy d’Estang Clary Illian Delia and Douglas Jurek Jim and Meg Lorio Warren MacKenzie Stephen Mickey Marcia Tani Paul Bernie and Sue Pucker Will Ruggles and Douglass Rankin Anne Vaillant Jim and Judy Walsh
And a special thanks to: Skooker Broome Guillermo Cuellar and Laurie MacGregor Gertrude Ferguson Lisa Richardson Brenda Ringwald
2424 Franklin Avenue East Minneapolis, Minnesota 55406 612.339.8007 www.northernclaycenter.org