Vol 45 No 1 - Women in Ceramics by Studio Potter

Winter/Spring 2017 | Vol 45 No 1

WOMEN IN CERAMICS

In honor of our 45th year, and all the women who have contributed their voices to Studio Potter since 1972, we are pleased to be able to publish this special, longer issue, made possible by the generosity of our donors, underwriters, and with extra support from the following champions of women in ceramics: Mary Barringer Leslie Ferrin Marge Levy Robbie Lobell Nancy Magnusson Sandy Simon & TRAX Gallery Northern Clay Center

See inside back cover for captions to cover photos. Right: Jessica SteinhĂ¤user. Franconian KachelĂśfen (detail), 2016. Decorated by hand in a traditional Franconian slip-trailing technique. Cobalt slip, glazed clay, and refractory brick. 32 x 32 x 87 in. Installed in Barrie, Ontario, Canada. Photo by Dean Palmer Photography.

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Centered in studio practice, Studio Potter promotes discussion of technology, criticism, aesthetics, and history within the ceramics community. We are a non-profit organization celebrating over forty years of commitment to publishing the Studio Potter journal. We welcome hearing from potters, artists, scholars, educators, and others with special interests in writing and reporting on topics and events that matter in their personal and professional lives.

Studio Potter

Mission

VOL 45 NO 1 WOMEN IN CERAMICS

In This Issue

ARTIST NARRATIVES

HISTORY

08 | Ruth Rippon, Her Story Swedish Ceramist 14 | Celebrating Hertha Hillfon

BY NANCY CATHERWOOD MAGNUSSON

BY SHELLEY SCHREIBER

BY BECH EVANS

BY MEAGHAN GATES

Jan McKeachie

Johnston. Caterpillar Vase, 2016. Hollowed and carved, woodfired stoneware. 20 x 8 x 7 in. Photo by Peter Lee.

BY KIT CORNELL

BY ASHWINI BHAT

BY NANCY M. SERVIS

BY FAYE S. WOLFE

Karen Karnes, 42 | Remembering writings by: ANNE SHATTUCK BAILEY SUZANNE STAUBACH JACK LENOR LARSEN ROBBIE LOBELL LESLIE FERRIN MARIA DANZIGER MARY LAW MARY BARRINGER MAREN KLOPPMANN

Q&A

“There is still a tremendous amount of work to do toward bringing about equality in regard to gender and minority representation.”

Heidi Kreitchet preparing to stoke a kiln

Young Hertha Hillfon (1921-2013) working in her studio.

COLUMNS the Torch: The Legacy of 19 | Passing Woodfire Women in the U.S. BY LAURYN AXELROD

Steinhäuser’s 82 | Jessica Kachelöfen BY BARRY GUNN

38 | The Balancing Act Jenkins: Mother, 59 | Sallah Artist, Creator

87 | Rock-Hard Feminism

75 | Elspeth Owen

04 | Word from the Editor 07 | The SP Update 73 | Underwriters

BY MARION ANGELICA

BY SARAH MCCANN

BY JUNE RABY

Different Views from 78 | Two the Same Window BY OLGU SÜMENGEN BERKER AND ELIF OKUR TOLUN

BY DANI SIGLER

BITS & PIECES

We Find Time LEANNE MCCLURG CAMBRIC TALKS WITH KARI RADASCH AND BETH ROBINSON

BY ELENOR WILSON

 Ruth Rippon. Three Figures and Three

Shields, 1953. Stoneware, sgraffito through brown and white engobe. 12.5 x 6.5 in. Photo courtesy of ServisArts.

studiopotter.org

ART DIRECTOR Zoe Pappenheimer zoe@zoedesignworks.com CIRCULATION Josh Speers membership@studiopotter.org COPYEDITOR Faye Wolfe PROOFREADERS Hayne Bayless Tiffany Hilton Josh Speers FOUNDING EDITOR Gerry Williams EDITOR EMERITA Mary Barringer PUBLISHING PO Box 1365 Northampton, MA 01061 413.585.5998 DESIGN Zoe Design Works www.zoedesignworks.com PRINTING Penmor Lithographers PO Box 2003 Lewiston, ME 04241-2003

INDEXING Studio Potter is indexed by Ebsco Art and Architecture Index (ebscohost.com), and distributed to Libraries digitally through Flipster (flipster.ebsco.com). BOARD OF DIRECTORS Hayne Bayless Joe Bova Ben Eberle Hollis Engley Bonnie D. Hellman, CPA Fred Herbst Jonathan Kaplan Robbie Lobell David McBeth Jonathon McMillan Nancy Magnusson Josh Teplitzky

WORD FROM THE EDITOR

CONTRIBUTING ADVISORS Michael Boylen Doug Casebeer Neil Castaldo Louise Allison Cort Steve Driver Leslie Ferrin Lynn Gervens Gary Hatcher Tiffany Hilton Doug Jeppesen Brian R. Jones Chris Lyons Mark Shapiro Julia Walther

Volume 45, Number 1, ISSN 0091-6641. Copyright 2016 by Studio Potter. Contents may not be reproduced without permission from Studio Potter. Studio Potter is published in January as the Winter/Spring issue and in July as the Summer/Fall issue. For permissions, corrections, or information about digital versions of back issues and articles, please contact the editor. The views and opinions expressed in the articles of Studio Potter journal are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the editor, the board of directors, or the Studio Potter organization.

Illustration by Zoe Pappenheimer.

EDITOR Elenor Wilson editor@studiopotter.org

hen my mom was young, the only sport her school offered the girls was recreational kickball. When I was young, choosing which sport I wanted to play was a tough decision. Thank you, Title IX. After competing in soccer, track and field, swimming, diving, and gymnastics, I chose to continue competitive gymnastics in college. (Admittedly, that is probably the “girly-ist” sport of any, second only to ice skating, but don’t pretend Simone Biles wasn’t one of the most amazing athletes at last summer’s Olympic games.) That 1972 Amendment allowed the total amount of scholarships for female athletes at my college to be the same as that of the male athletes. Score! But there was a problem—an epidemic, really. Female athletes at the turn of the twenty-first century were experiencing injury rates many times that of male players of the same sports. The reason: they were being trained in the same manner as male athletes. In his book Warrior Girls (Simon and Schuster, 2008), Michael Sokolove presents compelling evidence that when

“Culture does not make people. People make culture. If it is true that the full humanity of women is not our culture, then we can and must make it our culture.” —CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE, WE SHOULD ALL BE FEMINISTS (LONDON: FOURTH ESTATE, 2014.)

even in the right to determine the value system that governs communications, working styles, and aesthetics [. . .] is a chance for all of us—men and women—to question our beliefs and actions and include a broader range of people and ideas in building toward common goals.” I vow to continue questioning, including, and building, not only in my studio, but also in editing this journal and in being a human in the world. It’s a challenging world, but who is better equipped to take charge of it than women in ceramics?

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needs to be rethought and honed for and by female artists. The articles in this issue show that women ceramists, from rookies to veterans, are doing just that. Young women have female role models (that’s role models, plural, with an s!) and male role models who empower them to develop techniques appropriate for their bodies, environments, families, kilns, and artwork without fear of being shunned. Importantly, though, ceramics communities exist within much broader, complex cultures and socioeconomic structures where there is still work to be done in creating the kinds of environments that move beyond “equality,” to focus on humanity. This issue of SP has that goal. Our last issue dedicated to “Women and Clay,” Volume 20, Number 1, December, 1991, also had that goal, as stated by guest editor, Clary Illian: “Readers must understand that the demand for parity in opportunities, rewards, and

female athletes are trained with respect to their anatomy—particularly their hip and knee joints—their injury rates drop and years are added to their athletic careers. Women athletes gained equality in terms of being included, but then suffered (and are still suffering) from a definition of that equality which relies on the implied words that follow it: with men. Being an athlete prepared me for my second career as a ceramist in many ways, and one important way is that it enabled me to handle the physical demands. I had the strength I needed to wedge and throw clay, schlep raw materials, brick up doors, place shelves, and split wood the way all those jobs were typically done, that is, geared to the twenty-something male. Now, in my mid-thirties, I’m feeling the first twinges of “Well, there’s a limited number of times I’m gonna do [insert strenuous job] in my life.” Just as the status quo for athletic training needed rethinking for female athletes, the status quo for certain aspects of ceramics, especially kiln building, loading, and firing,

BITS & PIECES The January 21, 2017 Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s March, near Grand Central Terminal, New York City. Photo by Glenn Adamson.

The SP Update Remembering SP and all in the ceramics community mourn the recent deaths of Henry Tadaaki Takemoto (1930-2015), Manuel Pagán (1942-2016), and Akio Takamori (1950-2017), pictured below. Please read their remembrances at studiopotter.org/news.

RECOMMENDED READING

Don’t miss our author and artist recommendations for further reading on women in ceramics on studiopotter.org, including Jenni Sorkin’s new book Live Form: Women, Ceramics, and Community (University of Chicago Press, 2016). Sorkin’s book “shines new light on the relation of ceramics to the artistic avant-garde,” (press. uchicago.edu) focusing on the lives and roles of Marguerite Wildenhain, Mary Caroline (M.C.) Richards, and Susan Peterson.

POSTER INCLUDED

Annual print subscribers of SP will find a special, pull-out poster featuring women artists in this issue! Posters are available for purchase in our online shop. Members and digital subscribers, log-in for your discount. STUDIOPOTTER.ORG/SHOP

THERE'S MORE

CORRECTIONS FROM VOL. 44, NO. 2: PG. 24 The name of Marie Woo’s

teacher in Bizen, Kaneshige Toyo, was misspelled. PG. 22 The correct phrasing of the

second and third sentences in the last paragraph is: I think all students that studied ceramics in Michigan did. As a noted artist, Professor and Head of the Division of Ceramics at the University of Michigan, he was the nucleus of an ever expanding and altering community of Michigan artists and educators working in clay.

ONLINE

So, You Want to Woodfire . . . BY KRISTIN MULLER

Judge Not Artist/Mother BY KATE FISHER

Architecture in the Ceramic Landscape

Mud Season BY

BY SUSAN ZIMMERMAN

JULIE K. ANDERSON

Gunda Stewart Lives Her Dream

Musing on Making and Motherhood

BY MARY ANN STEGGLES

BY AYSHA PELTZ

Contributions of Women in the Development of Jaipur Blue Pottery* BY KHUSHBOO BHARTI

*Right: Chetna Arora. I Am Nature No. 1, 2016. Jaipur blue pottery coaster.

Upcoming Issues VOL. 45, NO. 2 Summer/Fall 2017 Boundaries and Borders This issue will be guest edited by Martina Lantin. She states, “Beyond geopolitical considerations, I am curious about perceived boundaries, whether in our studios, social circles, or histories. I look forward to working with writers to explore how these bounds are experienced, countered, and embraced.” VOL. 46, NO. 1 Winter/Spring 2018 Pottery Tours This issue will focus on the phenomenon of pottery tours in North America. As the St. Croix Valley Pottery Tour celebrates its 25th year, many other potters are organizing the first in their region. We invite your tour stories including legacy, economics, regional styles, local communities, successes and failures.

SUBMISSIONS DUE Apr. 1, 2017 and Oct. 1, 2017 respectively. CONTACT editor@studiopotter.org for more information.

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Heidi Kreitchet preparing to stoke the kiln at Pottery West, Las Vegas, Nevada. Photo by Kelly McLendon, 2010.

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PASSING THE TORCH: The Legacy of Woodfire Women in the U.S.

fired with the help of fellow potters, friends, family, or neighbors. Still others have become mentors and teachers, passing the torch to subsequent generations. I recently had the great honor of talking to many contemporary American women woodfire artists about their experiences. Of course, there are many other women that I did not have the chance to speak with, and their contributions to the lineage of wood-firing are equally important. Each makes the collective light of the fire grow brighter, and each has a few intrepid women—our godmothers—to thank for bringing the flame to our shores and lighting the way. GODMOTHERS

While firing with wood has been one of a few ways to finish pots for thousands of years (and in many countries, still the only method), wood-firing as an artistic choice is relative-

ly new in the U.S. Many believe it started with the importation of the Leach/Hamada aesthetic in the 1950s and the influence of early adopters of the Asian style. But, by some accounts, it was a woman who ignited the interest in wood-firing in this country and two other women who advanced its popularity. Ann Stannard may have been the first woman to bring wood-fire to this country. As an art teacher in the United Kingdom in the 1960s, she was researching and building wood kilns with elementary school students and other teachers. In 1968, Mary Caroline (“M. C.”) Richards was studying in the U.K. and attended an experimental kiln-building workshop that Stannard led. The next year Richards invited Stannard to lead a similar workshop in Pennsylvania at the farm Richards shared with Paulus Berensohn. Karen Karnes was at that workshop, and it was the beginning of her interest in wood-fire, and a

Let’s face it: wood-firing is hard work. Days and weeks of sawing, splitting, and stacking wood, cleaning shelves, and making pots to fill the kiln. Then come the long hours of loading and firing—hot, laborious, physically demanding work. And, this is after the heavy lifting of bricks, mortar, rocks, and steel required to build the kiln. The sheer effort it takes to get a fired pot, let alone a good one, is heroic. It’s not for the faint of heart. And historically, in the United States, it’s been a man’s world. Since the 1960s, women in the U.S. have been wood-firing against the odds. They have persevered through such challenges as discrimination, child-rearing, marriage, divorce, education, apprenticeships, aging, and the intense physical effort that it requires. Some have done so quietly, building their kilns in the backwoods with little or no help, making and firing in relative obscurity. Others have

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BY LAURYN AXELROD

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lifelong partnership with Stannard. From that event, the sparks of wood-fire spread. Stannard went on to spend twenty-eight years with clay, championing the Bourry Box kiln—the type of kiln that many women today prefer. To this day, she downplays her remarkable influence, saying, “I was just following what interested me . . . it was easier for us back then than it is now.” Karnes became an inspiration to many, many clay artists, and her sister-in-flame, Mikhail Zakin, a well-known teacher and potter, mentored and fostered the development of generations of wood-fire ceramic artists through the Art School at the Old Church in Demarest, New Jersey, and its annual pottery show and sale. We can call these women our godmothers, matriarchs to four subsequent generations of wood-firing women. Because of their indomitable spirits and perseverance, their passion and commitment, women are now wood-firing, building kilns, and contributing to innovations in the field in increasing numbers.

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FORGING AHEAD ALONE

“I never had a female teacher, ever, in any of my college classes,” remembers Linda Christianson. “I didn’t even really know anything about wood-firing.” This is a common recollection of many early women wood-firers, who, though they were already in love with clay, had no exposure to wood-fire until some fateful moment. At the Banff School for Fine Arts, in Alberta, Canada (now Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity), Linda was the studio tech when John Chalke came to build a wood kiln. “He pulled the plans out of his pocket on a scrap of paper, and we made our own bricks and built a two-chambered kiln. It was mostly women on the crew, and it was delightful.

Most people were unhappy with the results, but I discovered something very intriguing about the surface.” After graduating, Christianson moved to Minnesota determined to build her own kiln and studio. “I didn’t know anyone who had a wood kiln when I built mine. I just found some bricks, and a hovel to live in.” Her first kiln, built in 1977, was a “crappy little wood kiln, it was pretty awful.” It wasn’t until 1980, when Linda was doing research on other types of kilns that she discovered an article in Studio Potter on Ann Stannard and the Bourry Box kiln. “It was a revelation,” she remembers. “I had been doing this all on my own. By then, I knew of one other person with a wood kiln, but I had no idea there were other women wood-firing.” Such was often the case in the late 1960s and 1970s. Wood-fire was fairly new to the country, and there were few opportunities to learn. Eva Kwong, who began wood-firing as an undergraduate at the Rhode Island School of Design in the seventies, recalled that at that time, women like herself were routinely passed over for recommendation to schools, and entering the field was hard. Many early women wood-firers were simply forced to forge ahead solo or look elsewhere. After studying at Sarah Lawrence College in the late 1970s, Jane Herold went to England to work with Michael Cardew. She was his last apprentice. She had to persist in asking him to accept her until he agreed. “Michael didn’t easily take on women,” says Herold. “He never came out and said anything, and we got on very well, so it was only later that I realized I had to overcome his resistance to having a female apprentice.” After Cardew died a year into her threeyear commitment, Herold returned to the U.S. to set up her pottery and kiln on property

she rented from her friend Grace Knowlton, a sculptor and painter. Herold still lives and works there today. Others looked to the East for opportunities to learn wood-firing. Asia proved even more challenging. Joy Brown, who grew up in Japan, studied fine art at Eckerd College in Florida. After graduation, she sought out an apprenticeship at a Japanese pottery when apprenticeships for women were uncommon. “In 1974, I was back in Japan to visit family and was also visiting kilns and potters. I visited the famous pottery town of Tachikui, in Hyogo Prefecture, where Tamba ware is made, and asked the Ichino pottery—a thirteen-generation pottery family—if I could work there. Janet Leach had once spent time at this pottery, and I was passionate and young. I thought it would be easy. The first two times they said, ‘No, but you can come back to visit.’” The pottery was changing hands, passing from one generation to the next. The father, Toshio, was against having a young female foreigner in the studio. “He didn’t think I’d amount to anything, and it was a waste of time.” But the son, Shigeyoshi, had worked with the Leach family in England and was more open-minded. So after her third visit, they agreed she could come for one year. Brown spent that year as a traditional apprentice, firing the Tamba-style wood kiln and making thousands of identical little sake cups. During that time, the father never spoke to her. “Not once,” she remembers. She then apprenticed for another two years with Morioka Shigeyoshi, the husband of a childhood friend, in Wakayama Prefecture, where she was far more included. After returning to the U.S., she fired in Paul Chaleff’s kiln for five years before she built her own thirty-foot anagama kiln on

LEADING THE WAY

In time, these women made headway, and younger women could look to their older sisters for inspiration and education. From the late 1980s to the mid-1990s, there was an explosion of wood-firing activity. More women were building kilns with one another and starting their own wood-fire potteries. Louise Harter was instrumental in mentoring a number of women during this period. In 1989, she was teaching with Maxine Krasnow at the Supermud clay studio in New York City, and they shared a “wood kiln fantasy.” After Harter participated in several wood-firings with Mark Shapiro at Stonepool Pottery, she became convinced that her and Krasnow’s dream of building a kiln could become a reality. She and Krasnow decided to build one on property in upstate New York. “But neither of us knew how to build a kiln,” Harter remembers with a laugh. Krasnow charged Harter with building the kiln and leading the building crew. So, in 1991, Harter signed up for a kiln-building class offered by Will Ruggles and his wife, Douglass Rankin, at Penland. “That was a really important class in terms of feminist leadership and identity in clay. With Will and Douglass, it was very important that as leaders there was one man, one woman. It

made a difference. They were so wonderful at explaining the technical things I didn’t know,” Harter says. That class also helped Harter learn a vital skill: “Without intention, the guys were holding all the tools, and we had to figure out how to redistribute the tools so that the women could have a hands-on experience. The guys were sympathetic, but we, as women, had to learn to self-advocate.” It took another year of fundraising before the largely female crew built the noborigama kiln in 1993, and many of the women who participated in that kiln build went on to build their own kilns and mentor others. Jody Johnstone was one of them. After assisting on the kiln-build upstate, she looked for an apprenticeship in the U.S. but didn’t find many opportunities for women apprentices. Potter Jeff Shapiro told her, “Go to the horse’s mouth,” and helped her arrange a two-year apprenticeship in Imbe, Okayama Prefecture, Japan, center for Bizen ware. “In 1994, there were 400 potters in the Bizen Potters Guild,” she recounts. “And six of them were women.” Her teacher, Isezaki Jun, was one of the more open and progressive potters in Japan. He had several female apprentices before and during the time she was there. “I was given the same responsibilities as the men, but as a woman and a foreigner who spoke fluent Japanese, I was treated very well. I was given special opportunities, like going to tea ceremonies or visiting other potters.” Upon her return, she looked for property to build her anagama kiln and found it in Maine, an old homestead that was advertised in Ceramics Monthly. She built her first anagama, a twenty-four-foot kiln, by herself in 1996. “I got a few dubious looks at the brick

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Joy Brown. Kneeler, 2015. Stoneware, 17 x 10 x 14 in. Photo by Steve Katz.

cause I was a nobody, or a nobody because I was a woman,” explains Brown. “But in the early years, I was often passed over at conferences or invitational shows. Men got all the slots, or I wasn’t invited. Maybe it was because I wasn’t as pushy or ‘out there’ with my work as the men; I used to think, ‘Sure, he deserves it, but so do I!’”

property she and her husband purchased cheaply from a friend. “I am deeply grateful for the men in wood firing who invited me in close into their process and from whom I learned just about everything I know,” Joy says, but like many women at the time, she found it difficult to succeed. “The bar for women was incredibly high back then,” recalls Christianson. “Sometimes I got hit on and not taken seriously. It wasn’t enough to be an equal. I had to be better. I had to work harder. Keep my head down. I didn’t want to be seen as a target.” Keeping her head down meant that for her first exhibits, she just used her first initial. “More than a few times, people said, ‘I thought you would be a man!’ It was as if they were disappointed.” Jane Herold remembers feeling very uncomfortable at early conferences, where she was one of the few women. “Most of the networking took place after hours, when the men would go out to bars,” she explains. “So, if you didn’t go drinking with the boys and act like them, you were excluded.” “It was so subtle that it was hard to know if it was prejudice because I was a woman, or be-

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supply and lumberyard, but those guys all came around,” she remembers. “No one said I couldn’t do it. I had so much energy when I first started. I was single-minded. I came up here by myself and hit the ground running. I think when people are energetic and doing their thing, [others] are supportive.” Though Mikhail Zakin was her first teacher at Sarah Lawrence College in New York, Liz Lurie also caught the bug at Louise Harter’s kiln-build. “Her enthusiasm was contagious,” recalls Lurie. “Camping out and building this kiln all summer with a group of women—it was a great first experience. I had no experience with tools, but Louise was amazing in how she made everyone feel included and confident. Seeing a woman being so skilled in her role as leader in a large construction project definitely had an effect on me.” Soon after, she began firing with Jody Johnstone. “I learned so much from Jody. It was clear she was the leader, but she always solicited conversation about the firing. Through those dialogues we began to understand more clearly why different choices were being made.” Linda Christianson was an early mentor of Lurie’s. She met Christianson while at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts as a work-study student, and is deeply grateful for her support and encouragement throughout her career, and particularly early on when she needed it most. “I owe a huge debt to all three mentors,” she says. A few years later, as the studio tech at the Worcester Center for Crafts, Lurie and another young wood-firer and kiln builder, Julie Crosby, fired a small hybrid-style kiln together almost once a month. “We got to make all the calls around the kiln, and I gained confidence,” Lurie says.

Lurie moved to Texas to be with her husband and fellow potter, Peter Beasecker. There she met Louise Rosenfield, who was interested in building a wood kiln on her rural East Texas property. “After doing research on many different wood kilns and talking at length with John Neely and Judith Duff, we settled on the train kiln because of it’s apparent ease of firing, and variable surfaces. There happened to be a group of women who were interested in building the kiln with us,” Lurie says. “It was a wonderful building experience; it felt like I had come full circle from when I had helped at Maxine Krasnow and Louise Harter’s kiln project. To be a part of providing an environment where everyone felt open and comfortable to learn was important. The Rosenfield kiln was based on Judith Duff’s design for a train kiln; it fires with ease and predictability.” Because of that experience, the train kiln became Lurie’s kiln of choice. Lurie now lives in central New York, where she has built what she calls her “Old Lady Kiln,” another train kiln with a moveable, arched, lid so she can load the kiln without having to be crouched for hours on end. She works in the studio while her son is in school, offers community classes at her home studio, and hosts community firings with a crew that often includes students from Syracuse University, where her husband teaches. She hopes to host all-student firings and all-women firings in the future. Julie Crosby discovered wood-firing and kiln-building by accident during college at the University of Hartford in Connecticut. “I was an art major, thinking I was going to study two-dimensional art. I knew nothing about ceramics, but my first work-study job was cleaning the kiln room. The department was building a Ruggles-and-Rankin double-chamber wood kiln, and I was amazed. I took my

very first ceramics class the next semester, and we got to fire the kiln. I just loved how it worked and felt [honored] to be by the kiln and to be working with something so ‘romantic’.” Crosby began learning about kiln-building in 1998 and credits a woman for helping her get started. Lisa Stinson was the studio tech at the University of Hartford, West Hartford, Connecticut, and Crosby’s first mentor. When Stinson became the ceramics department head at Louisiana Tech University, she invited Crosby there to help build kilns for a year. “She is the person who taught me to build kilns. She’s not a wood-fire potter herself, but she taught me about wood-firing at Hartford. She gave me permission and confidence to do it . . . and do it on my own. Only the guys in the department were firing the wood kiln, but she told me that didn’t matter and that if I was interested in wood firing I should sign out the kiln and fire it. In Louisiana, she taught me about kiln building and design, including brickwork, and encouraged me to keep building kilns if that was something I wanted to do. I owe a lot to her.” Crosby has gone on to build almost twenty kilns, many of them for other women, and is a potter, mother, and wife. Though she feels confident in her skills and more so with each kiln she builds, as the only professional woman kiln-builder currently working in this country, she sometimes feels insecure. “To be honest, as a kiln-builder, I feel like I’m not worthy when I am talking with male kiln-builders. I wouldn’t jump into a conversation on kiln-building with guys. And sometimes I feel like if I get a call for a job, I have to give a disclaimer—not saying, ‘I’m a woman,’ but, ‘I haven’t built as many kilns as Donovan [Palmquist],’ almost explaining myself out of a job. I don’t want to have to

Kristin Muller in her anagama hybrid kiln built in 1995 by Takao Okazaki. Photo by Jacklyn Scott, 2016.

COLUMN Julie Crosby. Basket, 2016. Wood-fired stoneware. 6 x 12 x 12 in. Photo by Alex Solla.

fight my way to be the female kiln builder out there.”

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AGAINST THE ODDS

Not all women wood-firers began as young women. Some had families and careers before discovering wood-fire, and still others began even later in life. For them, a passion for learning and a drive to succeed were even more important. Kristin Muller was introduced to raku and wood-firing in college, but it wasn’t until after she married, had kids, and divorced, that she began her wood-fire career in earnest. “In 1994, I was working at the Brookfield Craft Center in Connecticut and saw a flyer for a wood-fire workshop with Bob Compton in Vermont. It looked really exciting. So my friend Chris Alexiades and I said, ‘Yes, we can make eighty pots, find babysitters, and

go to Vermont.’ We packed up the station wagon and spent four days with Bob. It was life-changing.” At the workshop, Bob told her that if she was really interested in wood-firing, she needed to go see Peter Callas in Belvidere, New Jersey. Muller took a two-day workshop with Callas, and he encouraged her to return. She and Alexiades became part of his regular crew. “For six or seven years, Chris and I cleaned the kiln and shelves, split wood, and worked hard,” Muller recalls. “We would arrange babysitting, go for the day and come back. One-hundred-and-fifteen miles each way! During firings, we would put the kids to bed, go do a night shift, come home, and put the kids on the bus for school.” Because Muller had two young daughters and three part-time jobs, graduate school or

a traditional apprenticeship was out of the question. “I did what I could to learn,” she explains. That informal apprenticeship led to others, including one with Mother Perpetua Giampietro, a Benedictine nun and potter with a passion for wood-firing, and a lasting friendship with Okazaki Takao, a Japanese potter who had built a kiln in Dingmans Ferry, New Jersey. Muller eventually purchased the property and the kiln from Okazaki and began firing, while embarking on a part-time graduate program at Hood College in Frederick, Maryland. Now, as the director of Peters Valley School of Craft, Layton, New Jersey, Muller fosters the development of countless other artisans. Like Muller, Susan Beecher, director of Sugar Maples Center for Creative Arts in Maplecrest, New York, didn’t start wood-fir-

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Far left: Tara Wilson loading her train kiln.

Left: Tara Wilson’s all female crew for a firing. Left to right: Doris Kelson, Gabrielle Wallington, Christine Cole, Christine Gronneberg, Tara Wilson, Alison McKinley, Breena Buettner.

documented in Beecher’s 2005 book, Susan Beecher: Wood-fired Pottery. CHANGING TIMES

Recent generations have had the benefit of a more inclusive field, with formal education, craft schools, and residencies that truly fostered their development as wood-firers. Though still largely the only women in what is still a man’s world, these young women have achieved widespread success at earlier stages than their predecessors. Tara Wilson came out of the gate running. As an undergraduate at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, she began wood-firing in her very first ceramics course and was drawn to wood-firing’s physical nature, to the pots and the process, and to the “romance” of it. But, she says, “I was usually the only woman firing.” She went directly to graduate school at

Studio Potter

For ten years, Beecher studied kilns and dreamed of building her own, while simultaneously trying to talk herself out of it. “It was a huge expense at my age,” she explained. “And I had this voice in my head that kept asking if I deserve this. Is my artistic expression valid enough to warrant this? I think that was a very common thought for women my age.” In 2001, she gave up her career in publishing and started making pots full-time. With the help of a hired building crew, including Julie Crosby, and many female volunteers, she built a Ruggles-and-Rankin-style noborigama on her property in the Catskills. A two-year legal battle with a neighbor, who thought the kiln was a “nuisance” and wanted it shut down, drained precious resources and prevented her from firing, but ultimately she prevailed. The case set a precedent in support of wood-firers across the country and is well

ing until later in life. After making pots as a young mother in New York City in the 1970s, she had a successful twenty-year career in publishing and marketing. In 1991, she took a workshop with Jeff Oestreich that included a wood-firing and realized it is what she wanted to do. “I started reading whatever I could on wood-fire and figuring out how I could learn this by taking workshops and finding people I could fire with and learn from.” An early mentor, Malcolm Davis, introduced her to Mikhail Zakin. “She was very encouraging and we began a friendship,” Susan recalls. “Mikhail was a tough lady. She was very much like Karen Karnes; she took making art very seriously. [Mikhail] had a big, huge kiln in her backyard, and she was firing it. At the time, I was in my fifties, and they were in their seventies. They were there doing it, so it gave me hope that maybe I could do it, too.”

Studio Potter

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the University of Florida and built a small catenary arch kiln there. But as was true of her undergraduate experience, she was the only person wood-firing. “I was kind of doing it all by myself.” She completed two successive residencies, first at the Archie Bray Foundation, in Helena, Montana, then at Red Lodge Clay Center, Red Lodge, Montana. “Even at the Bray, I was the only long-term wood-firer,” she says. Undaunted, she moved back to Helena, opened her own studio, and built a train kiln, one that she could fire with little help, and continues to be a prolific maker and teacher. “I feel like I got a lot of support and recognition early on,” she says. Recently, she has begun scaling back her teaching, though, to focus on studio work and other interests. “All I did for years was work in the studio. Now, I have different priorities. I want to go biking or skiing. I’m more productive in the studio if I get a break.” Lindsay Oesterritter also started firing and building kilns as an undergraduate and went on to Utah State, where she worked closely with John Neely. “I never had a female ceramic instructor,” she says. “All my formal education was with male [teachers]. I didn’t realize that there weren’t other women at the time. There were other women at the kilns to fire with sometimes, but I never thought about it in terms of ‘where are the other girls?’ My teachers never treated me differently because I was a woman. If I felt any kind of gender issue, it came from peers, not teachers.” Following residencies at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and in Australia, she joined the faculty at Western Kentucky University (WKU). “Most of the people who ended up being lovers of wood-fire were women,” she said. “The pro-

gram had more women [than men] in it.” Oesterritter gave up her position at WKU in 2015 to build her studio and kiln and now teaches workshops around the country. She has seen a definite increase in the number of women interested in wood-fire. “I remember the first wood-fire workshop I ever taught was at Mt. Hood Community College [in Gresham, Oregon], and they were really excited that I was a woman because they had a lot of female students interested. I do have a lot of female students, and I think they appreciate the approachability and the collaborative way I teach. On the flip side, I sometimes have male students ask questions that they would never ask a male teacher—fundamental questions that maybe they wouldn’t ask a man, in order to save face.” Oesterritter is a model for many young women wood-firers in other ways. As a new mother, she brings her infant daughter to workshops and conferences. “When I taught at Penland recently, I was nursing. Lots of women there said how glad they were to see me there with my daughter and how nice it was that I was able to show the generation below me that you can do this.” Heidi Kreitchet studied ceramics in high school, but never thought of it as a career option. After a semester at community college in Colorado, where she first experienced wood-firing, she changed her mind, and went to study at Northern Arizona University (NAU), which has one of the few undergraduate ceramic programs that focus on wood-firing. “I applied to NAU, and I never went to see the program. I just packed up my stuff and went. It blew my mind. I was so excited to learn. I spent most of my time wood-firing. It was mostly all male students. It was definitely kind of a boys club. It reminded me of when you were a kid, and it was ‘What’s the pass-

word to get into the boys’ fort?’” But, like most young women who woodfire, she wasn’t going to sit back. “I remember going to [Don] Bendel, my teacher, and saying, ‘I came here to learn how to woodfire, and I really need to be included in the loadings, firings, and unloadings.’ He was so supportive. He really encouraged me to be more outspoken. To say, ‘Hey, it’s my turn to get in the kiln.’ I was young. It was intimidating to take that initiative.” While at NAU, Kreitchet met Joanne DeKeuster, an NAU alumnus and wood-firer. “She still is a mentor,” Kreitchet says of DeKeuster, “She was the only woman at the time firing the kiln. She would explain what was going on in the kiln, really taught us what was happening. She spoke differently than the guys. She was the one person at these firings who would reach out to me and say, ‘Come on over here’.” After working for Don Reitz for two years and receiving her graduate degree from Utah State University in 2009, Kreitchet became the first director of the community clay center at the American Museum of Ceramic Art (AMOCA) in Pomona, California, where she now mentors hundreds of aspiring potters, young and old. The example these women have offered has given other young women, such as Hannah Meredith, the courage and confidence to pursue a life as a wood-firer. At twenty-eight, Meredith is already making a name for herself. As Simon Levin’s first full-time female apprentice in 2011-2012, she assisted on three kiln builds, one at the Bray. From there, she was a resident artist at Taos Clay Studio, in El Prado, New Mexico, and has gone on to apprentice and build kilns with Nick Schwartz at Flynn Creek Pottery in Comptche, California, and Scott Parady

At the recent International Wood-fire Conference at Waubonsee Community College, Sugar Grove, Illinois, Mark Hewitt raised the question during his opening address of why there are still so few women in the field. When Jane Herold took her turn on the podium during her scheduled presentation, she answered: “We don’t have wives.” That statement provoked a number of passionate responses from both men and women, some of whom took offense or disagreed. But Herold’s answer contained a profound truth: to be a wood-firer requires support, especially for women who want to raise families. Even without children, wood-firing

women, Linda Christianson remembers the first time she fired a kiln with all [Karen] was such women. “We were firing a a model for how Tozan kiln on Vancouver Island. There were twenty of we, as women us—all women. There was so much sharing, taking care artists firing with of each other, and looking wood, can move out for each other, putting gracefully through each other’s best interests at heart. The incoming shift all the stages of even cooked for the shift our lives.” that was leaving. Every six hours we got a fabulous meal!” Joy Brown fires with a mixed-gender crew now but recalls discovering the difference in a female-led firing at her kiln: “Ten years ago, we were at the end of my firing, and there were flames shooting out of the chimney. We were all lying around watching the fire, and Chris, this guy who was on the crew, said, ‘I like a women’s firing!’ Half the crew was men, so I didn’t know what he was talking about. But he meant that the energy of this kiln was different from a man’s kiln. It was more collaborative. There was flow of connection and collaboration between the people.” Jody Johnstone’s crew has been largely women from the beginning, and it’s a cooperative process. Her kiln has smaller shelves that make loading easier, and the crew takes frequent breaks for eating and stretching. “Everyone brings pots, and we lay it all out. We take more time to load, and talk about where we want pots, and honor that. Everybody’s pots go on every shelf. We really share the kiln. And it’s so valuable for my daughters to see all these strong women around the kiln.” For Louise Harter, it’s always been about giving women leadership roles at the kiln:

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Studio Potter

FIRING WELL WITH OTHERS

is time-consuming and demanding, both physically and economically. It is, by definition, a collaborative activity. Although some women have worked with minimal assistance, most fire with a community of others, large or small, to help with the workload and costs. Jan McKeachie Johnston has been firing with her husband, Randy, for thirty-eight years, and their strong partnership is what makes it all possible. “It’s teamwork,” she explains. “We share the physicality of it and all those responsibilities. We share a studio and an aesthetic, too, so it’s a stimulating environment for me, and so valuable.” The Johnston›s noborigama was first built in 1972, and has been rebuilt twice. They built an anagama in 2002 as a teaching kiln so that they could include students in their firings, and Jan loves the community aspect of these firings. “The part of the process that I value as much as the finished product is a group of people coming together to expend so much energy for a final product.” Both Johnston and Liz Lurie have husbands with teaching jobs that help support their work financially and their roles as mothers. Lindsay Oesterritter’s husband helped design and build the kiln shed. Kristin Muller’s daughters participate in each firing, and her partner, John, has been profoundly supportive of her work physically and artistically. Others have husbands, boyfriends, wives, girlfriends, or partners who help with wood, construction, or childcare, and fire with friends, family members, neighbors, students, and assistants. Increasingly, though, women are sharing the load by firing with each other. It’s not that they exclude men, but there is a different dynamic around a woman’s kiln that seems to foster collaboration and communication . . . and great meals. Though her firings include both men and

at Cobb Mountain Art and Ecology in Cobb, California. For her, there’s simply nothing she can’t do as a woman. “Wood-firing is male-dominated, and it does require a lot of hard physical work, so I throw myself into it headfirst. I make sure to put myself into the hard work that the men are doing, too. I don’t just do the easy stuff. If I’m the only girl here, and I don’t know how to use a chainsaw, I am going to find someone to teach me. No one has ever refused to teach me.” Meredith sees that things are changing for her generation. “The new and established generations of wood-firers are far more accepting of women,” she says. “The space is available, if women will step up and take it.” Still in the early stages of her career, Meredith is already passionate about being a leader and a role model: “When I am at a wood-firing, and there are younger boys and men learning how to wood-fire, I just step up and take the leadership role and show that women can do it. Just by doing it, I am showing that women are one-hundred-percent capable.”

ARTIST NARRATIVE AUTHOR BIO Lauryn Axelrod is a wood-fire potter, writer, and owner of Three Trees Pottery and Stone Bowl Farm in Vermont. She is in the process of building her community anagama and small “Pajamagama” and will host retreats, workshops, residencies, and firings on the farm. threetreespottery.com stonebowlfarm.com

“Men would say, ‘I can do this or that, so you have to invite me to fire.’ I didn’t exclude them as a general rule, but my criterion was always that they were able to accept leadership from a woman. I like to create an environment where women, especially older women, can learn, take leadership and master a task.” While the younger generation has had supportive experiences firing with men, they are also finding women’s firings appealing. “It’s nice to see a group of men pal around,” says Heidi Kreitchet. “It makes me happy that they are so tight, but I don’t know if it’s necessary for me to be in this situation anymore. As I’ve gotten older, I want a different experience. I’d rather be in a smaller, more intimate group, that is more focused.” Tara Wilson has recently hosted all-female firings, including one on International Women’s Day, and Liz Lurie says her husband’s female students often ask for women’s firings, which she is considering hosting.

Studio Potter

PASSING THE TORCH

In their roles as teachers and mentors, kiln builders and kiln leaders, artists and mothers, women wood-firers are encouraging other women, passing the torch to the next generation. Joy Brown says she takes her role as a mentor “very seriously.” Whether it’s through her firings or her nonprofit arts organization, Still Mountain Center, she is passionate about sharing the art she loves with others. “My parents were missionaries, and this is my missionary zeal!” As one of the elder wood-fire women, she also sees herself as a model for aging gracefully in this arena, and credits Karen Karnes for leading the way.

“Karen would fire with us when she was in her eighties, and she would often lament that she was useless, saying ‘I can’t lift. I can’t help.’ At one point, she said, ‘I just don’t feel like making pots anymore.’ I was stunned. How could she stop making pots? Put her tools down? But she helped me see how to navigate these changes, and got me thinking, ‘How am I going do this when I’m ninety?’ She was such a model for how we, as women artists firing with wood, can move gracefully through all the stages of our lives.” “I recently had hip replacement surgery,” explains Brown. “I’m not supposed to lift heavy things. This is where I’m at now; I have to let go of some things and find someone else who needs this lesson.” As the director of Peters Valley, Kristin Muller encourages women to pursue all the options that are now available: “There are so many more resources, opportunities, and different aesthetic choices . . . there’s lots going on and lots of myth-busting. There’s so much more out there than there was twenty years ago, when it was all a mystery. I love talking to young women about it. I tell them, ‘You can have it all. You can have families and children and kilns and careers. It’s all about the choices you make’.” Louise Harter also continues to mentor women in community clay centers but focuses on working with older women and lesbians: “It’s part of the feminist project for me. There are a lot more opportunities for young than for old, for straight women than for lesbians, or for others who, because of disadvantage, are excluded from the field.” Susan Beecher, who teaches numerous workshops at Sugar Maples and other craft centers and at her local community clay center in California believes, “One of the

most important things I can do is to mentor. At this point in my life, it gives me great joy to provide encouragement for young people and women who become my students in a world that doesn’t offer much.” Susan was the curator and organizer of the Women With Wood: Three Generations exhibition at the National Conference on Education for the Ceramic Arts in 2008, a pivotal event that brought women wood-firers into the spotlight. Many of Jody Johnstone’s female firing crew have gone on to build their own kilns, and she considers it a great honor to have helped them find their way. As she recovers from a recent bout of breast cancer, former firing partners have returned to help her, and she relies more heavily on her crew. And for Julie Crosby, passing on the skills she has learned and encouraging more women to build kilns are almost obligatory. “It’s important that I teach someone else, preferably another woman or women. If I could be a mentor to someone, that would be an important part of what I call success.” “I see that the women in my studio are so grateful for having a woman there,” says Heidi Kreitchet. “They are looking for the same things we were looking for: advice, help, encouragement, and guidance. There are more and more women coming into it, but it’s still not enough, so I think it’s so important to encourage young women.” Encouragement comes naturally to our Godmother, Ann Stannard, who has always seen herself as a teacher before anything else: “Just listen to yourselves. Do not be caught up in social media or magazines or be concerned about men or women or what anyone else thinks. Just find your own expression and do what interests you.”

Staying centered no matter what life throws at you.

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NINE AUTHORS PAY TRIBUTE TO

Karen Karnes ANNE SHAT TUCK BAILEY 43 |

SUZANNE STAUBACH 44 |

JACK LENOR LARSEN 45 | ROBBIE LOBELL 46

LESLIE FERRIN 47 | MARIA DANZIGER 48 | MARY LAW 49 | MARY BARRINGER 50 | MAREN KLOPPMANN 51

Remembering Karen Karnes by Anne Shattuck Bailey This essay was adapted from Anne’s eulogy at Karen’s Celebration of Life, September 17, 2016 at The Art School at Old Church, Demarest, New Jersey.

This is a very personal remembrance that I’d like to share today. To me, it is about the connectedness of all things and the power of those connections to shape lives. Yes, life is an amazing journey, and after a while there is a story to tell. Once I was very young, just like some of you, and I was a full-time potter. My name is Anne Shattuck Bailey, co-owner of Bailey Pottery Equipment (Anne Shattuck was the potter.) Karen Karnes was a very important person in my early adult life. Being asked to talk about Karen at this celebration of her life made me think back on some very happy times we shared so long ago. To this day, I live in gratitude for things she did and things she said that helped me become the person I needed and wanted to be. Her spirit lives on in so many parts of me. Her friendship, help, and inspiration shaped many things then and later. Karen and I first crossed paths at the Rhinebeck Craft Fair in 1976. Of course, I was aware of who she was when she stopped by my craft fair display to look at my pots. I really admired her work. Like her, I was a salt-glazing potter. Unlike her, I was trying—more often than not, struggling—to make a living as a fulltime potter. It was not easy, but I was optimistic, and I had been competently trained in England in the Leach

tradition. And hey, it was the seventies: handmade was in! And guess what? I was an Old Yank, don’t you know! Coming from farmers, sailors and merchants, I knew the value of hard work. At Rhinebeck, Karen asked if I would be a part of her group show at Old Church. Me showing with Karen Karnes? Okay, I think I can do this. Rhinebeck was my first big craft fair, and I was beyond thrilled that she wanted to help a young potter like me. It was truly one of my life’s most memorable moments: a woman I deeply admired, a fantastic potter and a visionary, was asking me to show my work with her. It was just what I needed at that point in my life. Yes, yes, yes, there is a pottery god! Thank you, Karen, you were it. The following year, I was in my studio when I got a call. What! Was I hearing this right!? Me? Twelve place settings . . . luncheon party . . . White House . . . Washington, D.C.? I almost fainted. It was during the Carter administration, and Joan Mondale, the vice president’s wife, was commissioning twelve potters in the United States to make twelve place settings each for the White House. All of twenty-three years old, I was amazed, dazed, and totally confused. “Will you do it?” the voice over the phone asked. Are you kidding me? You bet. Later I found out Karen was behind my being asked. She said to me, “Oh, I don’t do that sort of thing, why don’t you do it!” She gave me her spot, and my career was born. Thank you, Karen, for that amazing gift of lifting up my life and making my career blossom. My gratitude to Karen for her generosity and her belief in my ability has never left me. After that day, my life became a revolving door of shows, invitations, and media events. I worked very hard to make those twelve place

settings, which to this day—metaphorically speaking—belong to her. They launched my career, gave me tremendous confidence, helped me soar. Thank you, Karen, for believing in me when I hardly knew what I was doing or even who I was. That was the kind of person Karen was. I went to the Demarest show for many years, made many friends, and sold a lot of work, too. Thank you again, Karen. We always had dinner at Mikhail [Zakin]’s house before the show. It was great fun and full of camaraderie and good feelings. I bought my third pot at Demarest. It was a beautiful piece by Karen. I think it cost me eighty-five dollars, which was a lot of money for me back then. Never a regret; it was the beginning of a fantastic collection of pottery. Sadly, many of the great potters from our early Demarest group are no longer with us. Along with our remembrance of Karen, I’d like us all to send a warm thought, to the beautiful, talented Angela Fina, exuberant potter and philosopher Malcolm Davis, and the passionate, enthusiastic Mikhail Zakin. They were all friends and great potters. Karen’s ambition and dedication to Old Church brought all of us together. In the mid-eighties, after my first child was born, Karen and Ann [Stannard] would stay with us in Kingston sometimes. Karen and I had many heartfelt conversations back in those years. My first child was severely disabled, and I had to stop making work to take care of him. I know Karen was disappointed that I had stopped making pots. She would often write and ask, “Just one or two bowls? Please, please, please, for our show?” just to keep me encouraged and make me feel missed. But over time, I know she came to understand. In fact, Karen and Ann told me about Camphill

Anne Shattuck Bailey is co-owner of Bailey Pottery Equipment and splits her time between community service and day to day operations at Bailey.

Village, an intentional Waldorf-style community where my thirty-one-year-old son now lives and has become an amazing weaver. I’d never have known about Camphill without Karen and Ann. I volunteer a great deal of my time there now. I have even started and support a pottery program there. So Karen, and Ann, too, I thank you: You’ll never know how much that simple conversation back then meant to me later in life. It saved my son’s life. In this volunteer work and in the work of building community, I have found my bliss again. Karen, please know that you are with me when I am volunteering, you are with me when I look at great pots and bring them to our Bailey collection, you are with me when I help someone else here in the community, you are with me when I look at your wonderful pots. I can see that twinkle in your eye, that Mona Lisa smile, and your determination. Your spirit of determination is alive in me. Your influence works in ways seen and unseen, like deep currents of the ocean. Your life changed my life and made possible for me the deepest kind of fulfillment and joy. At different times and for different reasons you let the light shine in on my heart. Thank you for your generosity, your friendship, and your beautiful work, which will live on forever. Previous spread: Karen Karnes working on a molded planter, 1957. Photo by Ross Lowell. Opposite page: Outdoor showroom, Karnes’s Gate Hill studio, 1977. Photo by Robert George. Far right: Karen Karnes’s chop mark, c. 2010. Photo courtesy of The Marks Project (themarksproject.org).

Magic: Karen Karnes, M.C. Richards, and their Remarkable Circle By Suzanne Staubach

When I learned that Karen Karnes would be speaking at Wesleyan Potters, a co-operative crafts guild in Middletown, Connecticut, I immediately decided to attend, though it meant driving at night in my highly unreliable VW bug (this was the seventies). I had been admiring her pots ever since I first became entranced with clay. I never tired of studying the photographs of her work that appeared in books and magazines on ceramics: a demitasse set, a bottle with an ever-so-slightly curved rim, a platter, and, of course, the covered jars with her famous wire cut lids. At the gathering, she was quiet, exuding serenity and calmness, her hair swept up, away from her face as in the pictures of her I’d seen, her long-fingered hands gestural. Potters clustered around her, awestruck, vying for her attention. I hovered shyly on the outskirts. The lights dimmed, and she began her slide presentation. Yes, there were her beautiful pots. But there were surprises, at least for me. During her talk, she showed us a fireplace she had made. Not a surround, but a freestanding fireplace—handbuilt— that you could actually use to burn logs; and a garden seat, with a slightly concave top for comfort and a slit so rain wouldn’t puddle; plus, a wonderful kitchen counter made of her tiles. I discovered so many pos-

sibilities for clay that I had not imagined before. I drove home dreaming of making such things myself. Shortly after, I made a grill for cooking outside, which cracked in half after its first summer in use, but eventually I made tiles for the kitchen counter and floor tiles for the solarium, inspired by that talk. Decades later, when Maryon Attwood, then-director of the Worcester Center for Crafts, asked me if I would write and edit the catalog for the retrospective exhibit of M.C. (Mary Caroline) Richards’s work, curated by Karen Karnes, I immediately said yes. Many people were involved in the M.C. Richards exhibit. My job was to write about M.C.’s artistic journey, which included poetry and pottery and, after she turned seventy, large, colorful paintings. In her eighties and frail, M.C. was living in California, but we talked on the phone frequently, and was eager to share the details of her life. Soon I was hearing stories about the goings-on at Black Mountain College, about the drive to New York City with David Tudor and Peter Voulkos, and what it was like to work with poet Charles Olson. I went with Ann Stannard, Karen’s partner, and Maryon to interview Paulus Berensohn, and listened to and recorded even more stories. Sometimes M.C. would say, “Oh, maybe you better not put that in,” an hour or two after she’d told me something, but mostly she was OK with what I was including and would call back with more details. But Karen did not think that the stories were appropriate for an exhibition catalog. She had high standards and firm beliefs about what it should be. M.C. spoke to me about the relevance of agriculture in her life and of caring for the soil. Karen made it clear to me that an exhibition catalog was not the place to be talking about compost. Or agriculture. But M.C. was not dissuaded. M.C. and Karen were lifelong friends who had sparked

Suzanne Staubach is a potter and writer in Ashford, Connecticut. Read an extended version of her essay on studiopotter.org

and encouraged each other over the course of many years. In a sense, the exhibition was a gift from Karen to M.C., a celebration. Still, there were times when M.C. and Karen didn’t see eye to eye. This was one of those times. I received a handwritten fax. M.C. had written her own poetically eloquent description of her relationship to agriculture and sent it to me for inclusion, settling the matter with grace and finality. Hers is probably the only artist’s catalog in the world with a list of compost preparations! She also wanted the word numinous in the catalog. We had long discussions about this word. In fact, Berensohn had used it, but I was not sure where I would use it. Another fax arrived from her with a handwritten “numinous” sentence. I slipped it into the text. Sadly, M.C. died after the catalog, Imagine Inventing Yellow: The Life and Work of M. C. Richards, was completed, but before the exhibit opened. Planned as a retrospective, it became a memorial. During the project, I became fascinated with the artistic relationships and friendships that Karen, M.C., Ann, and Mikhail Zakin had had with each other throughout their adult lives. I was in awe of how original each was, what strong, bold women they were, and the sheer number of great artists—in various fields, not just clay—with whom they interacted. Every generation or so, it seems to me, there are convergences, friendships that spur the people involved to immense creativity. I think of the Bloomsbury group, the music scene of the sixties, the nineteenth-century Concord group—Thoreau, Hawthorne, Emerson, Alcott—Black Mountain, and I think

Karen Karnes By Jack Lenor Larsen

of these four women. “Maybe that’s what I can write about,” I suggested to Karen later, “the four of you, your generation of artists.” She demurred. She did not see what I was seeing, they were just friends—but then, how could she, she was inside. When Thoreau walked to Emerson’s house for dinner, he was not thinking, “Oh what a special group we are!” No, they were just friends. But from our perspective, the friendship in Concord produced a great flowering of literature. Surely, the circle that included Karen and M.C. and Mikhail and Ann was also a flowering. Magic. A rare and special magic. Dare I say, it was numinous?

I knew Karen best during the years she was at Haverstraw (Gate Hill Co-op, Stony Point, New York). I had originally gone to see the work of her husband, David Weinrib, but became a collector of Karen’s work. I invited her to teach at Haystack for several summers in the 1950s and 1960s, and I exhibited her new flameware fireplace at the Triennale di Milano, then bought it and another for my Round House in East Hampton, New York. When I introduced Karen’s work to the third floor at George Jensen on Fifth Avenue, she had great success with her flameware casseroles. Then she began to complain of not being considered an artist, like Toshiko Takaezu. With long effort, she became one, then became comfortable making casseroles as well! What a winner!

Jack Lenor Larsen is one of the world’s foremost advocates of traditional and contemporary crafts and founder of The LongHouse Reserve. longhouse.org

The Gift By Robbie Lobell

In the early 1990s, I had been studying and living with Mikhail Zakin for a few months when her dear friend Karen Karnes asked her to review a new body of work and write the forward to a catalog for an exhibition. Mikhail invited me to accompany her to Karen and Karen’s partner Ann Stannard’s homestead and studios in northeast Vermont. On the beautiful drive north, Mikhail warned me that Karen could sometimes be sharp and dismissive, “So prepare yourself that she may not be overly welcoming.” OK. I readied myself for this possibility. We arrived at the farmhouse in the late afternoon. Karen ushered us into her studio, where a stunning group of pots were on display. It was the beginning, I believe, of her “Boulder” series: vessels large and strong, powerful and female, with small cavities or slits inviting my imagination to roam the fullness within them. I was totally wowed! Mikhail asked Karen and me to leave her alone with the pots. We left the studio and moved into the kitchen to cook dinner together. There was a sense of knowingness between us as we moved around the kitchen preparing the meal. Her parents and my grandparents were socialist Jews from Eastern Europe. We recognized things we already knew about each other. In Yiddish we call this mischpoke, meaning kin or family. Karen was friendly and

engaging. Mikhail’s warning proved moot as Karen and I found ease in each other’s company. Mikhail and I were there for two days. When it was time for us to leave, Karen put three cups on a table in her studio and asked me to choose one. I chose one that was very Karen in its full, round, and well-grounded shape. I do believe that was when we decided we would love each other. Over the years, my partner, Maryon Attwood, and I became good friends with Karen and Ann. We traveled together, spent time in each other’s homes, shared Passover and New Year’s together. Mikhail was with us for many of these times. We were a family. Each year during the first week of December, Karen and I, along with several other potters, would make Mikhail’s house our home for the Old Church Pottery Show. In 2000, Karen invited me to come to Vermont to work in her studio. As far as I know, she had not invited anyone outside her family circle to work beside her. (She had worked with M.C. Richards in the Stony Point, New York, studio, where she had also lived and worked with her former husband and fellow potter, David Weinrib, and then Ann.) Karen wanted to give me a gift of time, as I had not yet been able to work full-time in my studio. Unbeknownst to me, she also wanted me to work with her flameware. We decided on the six weeks following the 2001 Old Church Show. I arrived mid-December and settled into a sweet cabin on their land, where I dug a path through the snow each morning on my way to the studio. We

mixed and pugged flameware clay together. Karen didn’t actively teach me. I watched her work, and she certainly checked in on me. We talked about the way flameware responded to the potter’s touch differently from other clays, and about handles. She chided me about how much time I took to apply them to my pots, but I was at the beginning of my journey, and those handles needed my time. My ideas for and relationship to flameproof cooking pots, which I’ve since built my livelihood around, were being formed. Karen gave me not only the clay and glaze recipes for her flameware, but also the time I needed to befriend it. She offered me a way to make a living as a studio potter as she had done. She gave me these gifts out of love and friendship. They have been sustainable gifts—of time and material—for which I am deeply grateful.

There was a sense of knowingness between us as we moved around the kitchen preparing the meal.

Robbie Lobell is a full-time studio potter and pottery teacher living and working on Whidbey Island in Washington State. cookonclay.com

Remembering KK By Leslie Ferrin

In 1979, when I was still in college, I opened a studio and shop with two other potters, Barbara Walch and Mara Superior, in the basement of Thorne’s Marketplace, a renovated department store in the not-yet-revitalized city of Northampton, Massachusetts. None of us used a potter’s wheel, an act of rebellion at the time, and to further the insurrection, we named our shop Pinch Pottery. In our showroom, we sold our work and that of our friends—almost all wheel-thrown— at the Clay Art Center in Port Chester, New York, where Barbara and I had worked together. In the early eighties, we regularly observed Karen Karnes and her partner, Ann Stannard, from a distance as they walked by our shop on their way to lunch at Paul and Elizabeth’s, a natural foods restaurant, also in Thorne’s. Awestruck, we didn’t dare approach the formidable couple when they stopped to browse and examine the pots we were selling. Then came the day when Karen spoke to us. She asked us about selling her casseroles and Ann's flameware. Of course we said yes, but I remember naively asking, “You still need to sell your work?” I was incredulous that she had asked what we had hoped she would. Karen chuckled (as she subsequently often did when talking to me) and answered in her maternal and slightly defiant way, “Of course. It is how I make a living.” I think I had assumed that when you were as famous as she was, you no longer need to sell your work. I guess I thought it sold itself?

And I guess we passed the test, because asking us to sell their work meant that they supported us as three women working the way we wanted: using handbuilding techniques to make functional studio pottery, organizing ourselves cooperatively, and functioning independently as self-supported artists. Our friendship continued for many years through various business locations and shifting programs. Karen became quite fond of my business partner, Donald Clark, and befriended many of the artist-potters who worked for us, offering advice and opinions without much prompting. She would critically examine the work we were showing, asking for explanations and justifications. She was disapproving as we pushed past her comfort zone, showing work that used low-fire colorful glazes, and by artists who used slip-cast forms and, later, figural sculpture. She often strongly recommended potters to us whose work she featured at the Old Church Pottery Show and Sale, the community art school’s annual fundraiser and one of the most highly respected pottery sales in the country. She had her favorites and was not afraid to make them known. Ann was a little less outwardly opinionated, but our dialogues were always lively and stimulating. A few times a year through the nineties, the couple came by our shop, continuing to eat at their favorite restaurant and staying the night at the home of their dear friend and fellow potter Angela Fina. Our shop was halfway between their home and New York City; had it not been a useful rest stop for Karen, I doubt we would have established a relationship, although it grew even deeper after Garth Clark’s gallery closed in 2008, and we took on the role of being her primary dealer.

When I had my children, she confessed that she did not think she was a good grandmother because she did not enjoy “playing.” The increasingly chaotic interruptions of my family and business lives caused distance to grow between us. I was aware that while Karen did not judge me for splitting myself between work and family, she did not share my passion for the creatively messy world of children. In 2005, Karen and I gathered all her works from the galleries that had shown them—Joann Rapp in Arizona, Garth Clark in New York—and what remained after the devastating fire in her studio. Together with friend and fellow potter Mark Shapiro, we documented the works and chose a set of pieces to present as a career survey at SOFA Chicago. The resulting sale of tall vessels, iconic winged forms, and large, sturdy jars, was rewarding to all. While she was not one to enjoy the limelight or the stress of travel, she happily reconnected with many friends, and I think it was a great moment for her. Karen continued to come and go through our lives, at the gallery and then at our new home at Project Art in Cummington, Massachusetts, near our longtime neighbors, Mark Shapiro and his wife, Pam Thompson. As our gallery program expanded and was less focused on studio pottery, she chose to show her work at Lacoste Gallery in Concord, Massachusetts. It was a place where Karen felt a strong social and professional kinship with other studio potters, particularly those who were as devoted to their craft as she was. This change came as a relief to us both, and while our visits were fewer, it did not change how we felt about one another. She will always remain a deeply important part of my life and life’s work in ceramics.

Leslie Ferrin is the director of Ferrin Contemporary, specializing in ceramics from the 1950s to the present, and Project Art, a residency program in Massachusetts. ferrincontemporary.com

Karen Karnes: The Decisive Path By Maria Danziger

We lost a giant on July 12, 2016. Karen Karnes, pioneer, potter, friend, and mentor, peacefully died in her home in Morgan, Vermont. Karnes was a revered ceramicist, the curator of the Old Church Pottery Show and Sale, and a dear friend of Mikhail Zakin, the founder of a community arts organization located in Demarest, New Jersey. When it was founded in 1974, the Old Church Cultural Center, now known as the Art School at Old Church, was a nonprofit art center in need of funds to support its art classes and faculty. As a loving and generous friend to Mikhail, a highly regarded potter herself, Karen offered to hold a benefit pottery sale at the school. Karen started the sale by asking nearby potters to participate in an event during the first weekend in December. And participate they did, that December and every December for decades after, lured by the promise of an exciting meeting with fellow potters, a bed for each in a volunteer’s home, and a delicious potters’ supper. Through the years, potter-friends recommended new clay artists and, as a result, the fundraiser gained a reputation as a showcase of both the best emerging and established potters in the country. Thanks to Karen’s keen eye for good pots and deep appreciation for their makers, the school filled with enthusiasts each year on that weekend, coming from near and far to see something that they would like to own. For

more than forty years, clay-loving collectors have always had a unique experience at Old Church. Karen had an instinct for pots, potters, and people. She was honest, respectful, and encouraging. Hard decisions seemed easy for her. Her inspiration for making pots and understanding people was always intuitive. Confident in her judgement about pots and life’s events, Karen was quick to make decisions. Her instincts were in full force after Hurricane Sandy. The Art School had been preparing for the 38th Annual Pottery Show and Sale when the storm hit New Jersey in late October 2012. Homes were damaged or destroyed, people were without electrical power, and regular daily living was put on a long pause. The Art School did not have Maria Danziger with Pottery Show curator and co-founder Karen Karnes at the annual Old Church Pottery Show and Sale. Demarest, New Jersey. electricity, and communication with its community of students, biggest fundraiser. Karen very confidently said, “Not faculty, and staff was nearly imto worry; we will have an even better, stronger show possible. Classes were reluctantly cancelled. Karen next year.” And Old Church did! called to see how the school and I [the executive As her health declined in 2013, Karen and her director] were faring. companion, Ann Stannard, set about planning for the I knew that the school could not operate at its best show to continue after Karen’s death. Karen asked and in one short month, produce the quality show Chris Gustin and Bruce Dehnert to co-curate it with that its patrons and exhibitors deserved. Without her for the fortieth year and beyond. Bruce is a pubhesitation, Karen decided to cancel the show. It lished author, ceramicist, instructor, and head of cewas not a light decision: the event was the school’s

Maria Danziger is the executive director of The Art School at Old Church, which has established a scholarship program in honor of Karen Karnes. info@tasoc.org.

ramics at Peter’s Valley School of Craft. Chris is one of the co-founders of Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts, an instructor, author, and a master potter. Bringing in co-curators was a major landmark in the show’s history. It had always been Karen’s voice and vision, but the move ensured a seamless transition. Together, Karen, Bruce, and Chris became a creative and inspirational force seeking out the best of the best, adding different styles, personalities, and visions. A perfect team, they collaborated on selecting artists and forged an aesthetic voice that will inspire generations of potters to come. Gustin and Dehnert will now continue this tradition with Karen in their hearts to guide them. Karen’s preeminent legacy will live on.

Karen Karnes By Mary Law

A single conversation with Karen Karnes is the reason I became a potter. In 1968 I was a naïve twenty-year-old who needed some summer art credits to switch my major to art (from modern foreign languages) just before my senior year at Florida Presbyterian College, now Eckerd College. I’d never worked with clay, but I’d seen two people throw a pot in the previous year, and I wanted to learn. I’d heard Penland and Haystack were good places to learn, and my parents, who lived in Tennessee, considered Maine too distant, so Penland was it. I enrolled in three consecutive sessions, knowing nothing of the instructors: Bruno LaVerdiere, Karen

Karnes, and Byron Temple. Upon arrival I discovered I was the only beginner in the class. Brother Bruno (then a monk) focused on coil building, but most of the students threw, so I had many teachers. I built one small slab pot, but spent the rest of my time on the kickwheel. The weeks at Penland were like a language immersion program. Karen’s session began the third week I was there, and what a revelation: while we’d all been hunched over our lumps of gray clay, Karen sat upright, throwing white clay elegantly off the hump. She wore a homespun blouse and tucked a sprig of honeysuckle into her pulled-up hair. I was smitten with the whole image. Soon she had us all making teapots. When it came time to assemble the parts, I sat next to her to learn how. As we worked, she asked me, “When you leave here, will you continue in clay?” I said yes (always trying to please my elders). Then, “Do you have a wheel?” When I replied that I didn’t, she said that the Penland kickwheels were excellent and that I should copy them and build one. I said I would, while thinking that it seemed an impossible task. Then she asked if I’d be there the next session, and when she heard that I would be, she said, “Good. Byron Temple is coming, he’s an excellent potter, and you should ask him if you can be his apprentice.” Well, I had no idea what that meant, but I said, “OK.” A couple of weeks later Byron arrived. Within an hour of meeting him, I knew she was right: I had to ask him. It took me the entire three weeks to work up my courage, but when he was packing his car on the last day I did ask. When he said he thought I’d be a

good apprentice, and to finish my last year of college and then come, I went from being a student who hadn’t had a goal or a plan to someone with a post-college job and a potential career. I had also met Cynthia Bringle that summer; the examples those instructors had shown me of living a life in clay meant everything to me. Meanwhile, during Karen’s session, I’d done careful measurements and drawings of the kickwheel, gotten the lumber cut and drilled, ordered the steel parts from the local machine shop, and basically had a kickwheel kit ready to tow in a trailer when my parents picked me up at the end of Byron’s session. My father and I unearthed his father’s tools and assembled it in our garage in Signal Mountain, Tennessee; it worked perfectly! We hauled it to college for my final year there. After graduating in 1969, I became an apprentice at Byron’s. It was an invaluable experience, one I’d never have had without Karen’s suggesting it. She had basically mapped out the next few years of my life with those encouraging words. Decades later, Karen and Ann Stannard passed through Haystack while I was teaching there one summer. Over dinner I mentioned that seminal conversation to Karen. She had forgotten it. What had proved a life-altering exchange for me had been, perhaps, a casual conversation to her. That knowledge brought home to me the potential import of a teacher’s comments, and recalling that dinner since has made me more aware of how an exchange that might seem casual to me may be received by a student in a wholly different way—a sobering thought.

Mary Law has taught at Contra Costa College for twenty-five years. She lives and works in Berkeley, California, with her dog, Doc Watson, and one chicken named Connie Francis. marylawpottery.com

The Woman in the Doorway By Mary Barringer This essay was adapted from the exhibition catalogue O Pioneers! Women Ceramic Artists 1925-1960, edited by Ezra Shales and published in 2015 by the Alfred Ceramic Art Museum at Alfred University, Alfred, NY.

It is January of 1971, and I am a student embarking on a road trip in search of contemporary American ceramics: its academic programs, its exhibitions, and the people who made the work I had seen in books and magazines. In those days you could put together an itinerary for such a trip by going to the old American Crafts Council offices in New York, next door to MoMA, and copying down the addresses and phone numbers of members, filed by medium and state. Arneson, Bacerra, Ferguson, Voulkos—all on 3 x 5 cards. My journey began in Stony Point, New York. I drove down a long road through winter woods, and at the end found a simple wooden building with a kiln out back. In the doorway stood a woman

in her forties, welcoming me, but also, it seemed, guarding her space. Behind her were many shelves of freshly thrown pots, and next to the workspace a showroom was crammed with finished pieces, mainly casseroles and salt-glazed jars ranging from hand-sized to almost half my height. The potter was Karen Karnes, and I had already seen and handled her work. My teacher, Stanley Rosen, had brought in a casserole and a lidded jar, and instructed us to look carefully at the firm stance, swelling volumes, and perfectly seated lids. He particularly wanted us to notice the weight of the pots. These were not thinwalled vessels; they were hefty, without seeming heavy. They felt balanced in the hand, and their weight was in perfect accord with their confident, voluptuous forms. The clay in their walls was exactly where it needed to be—a feat of skill and intent, we knew, because we were struggling with leaden forms whose walls tapered helplessly to fluttering thinness at the rim. Thinness from bottom to top—thinness as self-mastery and as virtuosity—was what we were all aiming for; it was, we felt, synonymous with rightness. We knew of thick pots, but they were either inexpert, like ours, or made with macho bravado. Karnes’s pots, on the other hand, were made with mastery, precision, and a generous amount of material. Their rightness was indisputable, and their strength and quiet self-possession conveyed a radical message—one I didn’t immediately absorb, but that I never forgot. It landed in a deep place in me: an idea about femaleness as much as about pots. The pots Karnes made in the 1940s and 1950s bear a strong family resemblance to other studio ceramics of the time. Their forms and stony surfaces connect

them to the Modernist and design ideas then circulating among the new generation of what Leach called artist-potters, and although they are handsome pots, they reflect their historical moment as much as their maker. By the early 1960s, though, she had begun to make work that was unmistakably hers. In these pieces, her handling of the clay is both sensuous and rigorous, and her forms radiate a powerful self-possession. Although the profiles of her iconic casseroles undulate subtly rather than dramatically, their forms spiral strongly from base to rim. At the lid, the handle catches that spiraling lift, twists completely around, and glides back onto the curved surface, sending the pot’s energy earthward again, while the walls clasp the interior volume’s outward pressure. Despite its modest claim of utility, it is an object that pulses with confidence and sculptural presence. But as much as I admired her pots, it was my encounter with Karnes herself that has stayed with me all these years. The clay world I entered in 1970 was a rowdy, testosterone-heavy place whose converts (myself included) worshiped at the altar of Leach, Cardew, and Voulkos. Prominent women tended to cluster at the helping end, pouring their energies into teaching or operating as half of an artistic couple. While I had envisioned for myself the life of a potter, I didn’t actually know any women living this life. Most of the makers I was to visit on this trip were male, and although it was thrilling to meet them and see their studios, it was hard to picture myself in their place. I could not have articulated the gap between their lives and my own young woman’s experiences, but when I met Karnes standing in her studio, so at home and in possession

Mary Barringer has been a studio artist for over forty years, making both sculpture and functional pottery. She lives and pots in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts. stupot@crocker.com

Karen Karnes photographed by Robert F. George; from Studio Potter, Vol. 6, No. 1, 1977.

of her powers, a door opened in my mind, one that until then I hadn’t realized was closed. The seed of my life as a potter took root at that moment. I am sure I’m not the only woman potter whose young dreams were given a decisive jolt by the example of Karen Karnes. Although she was a mentor to relatively few students, her calm determination to clear her own path was as important to our sense of the possible as the more direct and formal impact of teachers. Karnes has said, simply, “I follow my own impulse. I always have,”1 as though the voices surrounding female artists were not counseling otherwise. As though this were not an act—and a life—requiring unswerving focus, stubborn drive, and no small amount of practical skill.

1 Karen Karnes interview in Clay Talks: Reflections by American Ceramists, edited by Emily Galusha. Minneapolis: Northern Clay Center, 2004.

Tribute to Karen Karnes By Maren Kloppmann

In Detroit in 1988, Karen came as a visiting artist to Pewabic Pottery, and it’s then that the story of her influence on me began to unfold. Mary Roehm, Pewabic’s executive and artistic director at that time, organized a small dinner with just the resident artists, potter Susan Bankert, and me. It was a thunderous evening, the perfect night to meet the Dame of Clay. During our next encounter, years later, when I was interning at Northern Clay Center (NCC), Karen remembered me. I was so grateful for that and for the opportunity a couple of years later, as NCC’s exhibition director, to install a show of her work. For many years after, she invited me to participate in the Old Church Pottery Sale. Karen was tough,

with a keen eye. Getting to know her and having one’s work recognized by her was the ultimate honor for me. I feel blessed to have these and many more memories of her, including my being at Old Church during my honeymoon. I am so grateful to her for accepting me into the larger community of accomplished potters and inspiring both ambition and humility at once. A true mentor, Karen opened many doors for me during my formative years, and provided just the right spark of guidance towards a professional life in clay. Learning of her death was, for me, a moment to be still, to breathe, and to honor her awesome spirit. Karen’s influence and legacy live on in my work and the work of so many others, because of her voice, her support, and the way she moved clay—like Earth, she was Mother to many and will be dearly missed.

Born and raised in Germany, Maren Kloppmann is renowned for her architectonic wall sculptures. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she operates a full-time studio. marenkloppmann.com

Q&A

SUCCESSFUL WOMEN DON'T HAVE CHILDREN

This is a conversation between Kari Radasch, Elizabeth “Beth” Robinson, and me, Leanne McClurg Cambric, who documented it. We all are working artists and moms of young kids, who graduated from high-profile masters programs in the early 2000s and have had a running fifteen-year dialogue about our struggles to balance our personal and professional lives. Even finding time for a conversation like this one was a challenge, as we live in three different time zones. KARI: Most of the time I’d pay ten dollars for ten minutes [of kid-watching]!

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BETH: I was finally able to find someone really great for ten dollars per hour. It’s awesome. I’m hoping it will help take enough stupid stuff off my plate so that I can actually make pots again with regularity.

LEANNE: Are we trying to be twenty-four-hour women? Artist, mom, wife, educator, intellectual, and still stunningly good-looking in our forties? Did you two have a role model for being an artist and a mom? I had short interactions with several people in the field over many years but other than my mother, I can’t think

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of anyone significant—except for Lisa Orr. Seeing her balance motherhood and professionalism was a turning point for me. Through her, I finally had a flashlight and could see the road ahead, and I stopped hearing the voice that said, “You must choose between being successful in the field or being a mom.”

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KARI is a native Mainer, living in Portland with her husband, Ian Anderson, daughter age 7, and son age 4. She received her BFA from Maine College of Art and her MFA from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her work celebrates life, using earthenware clay, color as metaphor, historical references, and an occasional ironic nod to kitsch. kariradasch.com |

BETH: Lisa Orr was one of the first people I called when I got pregnant and was trying to puzzle out what this whole life-as-an-artist-with-a-child thing might look like for me. She was one of the only people I knew personally in the field who had both a career and a young family. Her advice helped me realize, among other things, it wouldn’t be a good idea to schedule a workshop a month after the baby was supposed to be born. Seeing her in action during Art of the Pot1 the year before I was pregnant helped put motherhood in the context of an active maker. Later, when I was completely in over my head with a colicky three-month-old, Sandy Simon called to invite me to be part of a two-person show in her gallery. I was so overwhelmed by my high-needs baby and some issues with my physical recovery from childbirth that I had given no thought to making anything. I told her, after making her listen to my whole sob story, that I couldn’t

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BETH is a creative entrepreneur, wife, and mother to two grade-school boys whose creativity constantly blows her mind. Born in D.C., she has a BS in Biology from James Madison University in Virginia, and an MFA from Ohio University. She is beginning an intensive focus on dinnerware in her studio practice in 2017. elizabethrobinsonstudio.com

believe I was saying it, but I would have to pass—something I never would have done before becoming a parent. As a mother herself, of grown children, she understood where I was at, and was encouraging and supportive. “You can do this,” she said, “Let’s just schedule the show a few months later.” This was a defining moment for me. Adrift in the sea of new motherhood, it was the moment when I started to see a bridge between my former and present life. I’ve always been so grateful to her for working with me then. It gave me courage to start making again and to learn how to be realistic about what I needed when dealing with other professional opportunities. I’ve found gallery owners and customers—male and female—to be understanding and supportive when I bring up my limitations, such as deadlines and availability of work, because of having small children. The thing I have struggled with most is the ability to gauge accurately what those limitations might be. Both motherhood and health issues that have become more burdensome over the last decade put me in a position where time I have set aside for work gets co-opted by other needs. It’s been a struggle to find a truly realistic approach to making commitments. I have tended to over-commit or overestimate what I can do, then failed to deliver, and that is obviously damaging to relationships with galleries and customers. I’ve been guilty of this more than I’d like to

admit. The solution I finally arrived at, albeit somewhat haphazardly, was to take a hiatus from making while I focused on taking care of other life and business issues and other creative projects. Have either of you totally “flaked out” when it came to deadlines? How have you handled this? LEANNE: I’ve probably “flaked out” on something and not even remembered because I had taken on too much. I can think of other moments that are the opposite of your experience with Sandy Simon; for example, when someone decided for me that because I had kids I was somehow not able to commit to something professionally, which I find a complete joke. I get a lot done in a day, and I would rather be the one to decide what I can and cannot do. I resent someone presuming I can’t be professional or productive because I have kids. Most of the time I find that bias comes from people who have not had to balance raising children with being a professional. While fathers generally play a bigger role in raising kids than they did in previous generations, I rarely see someone show the same bias towards father-artists; they are treated as being capable professionals because of a long-held presumption that the mom is the main caregiver. I think there is a good lesson in that Sandy story: help out by asking and encouraging, not presuming. The biggest reason I might “flake out” is because of

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KARI: In the last seven years I have over-committed, flaked out, and completely forgotten things. The worst was a few years ago when I had to bow out of participating in a well-known invitational show. I still have a pit in my stomach about it. I say “no” more comfortably now than ever before. I despise working manically, stressing out my family, and orchestrating a revolving babysitter door. I try my best to be realistic with the commitments I make, but the optimist in me gets carried away occasionally, and I have to circle back around for cleanup. As a young potter coming out of graduate school, I took a lot of pride in being an independent woman, at making a name for myself, and at being an entrepreneur. This was a big part of my value set, and my identity as an artist and as a woman. But as I got older, I wanted a family, and to experience my children growing up. At times, there is an overwhelming sense of impossibility to the jobs of being a full-time parent and an artist. They are irreconcilable on some level, but I will probably be able to make work until I’m seventy—long after raising kids. I’ve always been a planner, the kind of person that thinks about the future and what

BETH: It’s encouraging to realize I’m not alone in struggling—and sometimes failing—to find that elusive balance between different types of work which are also hard-wired into my identity: artist, wife, mother. Like you, Kari, I tend to take a broader view these days, trusting that making art will always be part of my life. So making less pots for a period of time does not define or sacrifice my long-term success. I agree with Leanne’s point that male artists seem to be able to navigate these challenges with a little more ease, perhaps because the ones I know often have the support of their wives in managing the nitty-gritty of their businesses. I’m guessing the differences in our three family scenarios play into this. [Leanne is the primary wage-earner with an artist spouse who works full-time, Kari’s husband is the steady employed one but is also a ceramic artist, and Beth’s husband is steadily employed, but is not an artist.] My husband and I depend on some income from me. I think relationship dynamics probably have a lot to do with how we navigate our artistic careers. That is another discussion, one I’d like to have with fathers as well. I moved at least every three years of my life until I planted myself in a tiny, remote town in Colorado twelve years ago. As I’ve put down roots and begun to engage more in civic life, I think of myself almost as much a “community artist” as a potter. I recognize that impulses that have always informed my pottery, such as a

connection to history and a nostalgic yearning for place-based identity, are at work in new ways. As you both have settled in one place and are raising a family, what role, if any, has local community played in the support, challenges, or development of your work? LEANNE: The nomadic part of getting an academic education in ceramics has not allowed me to be close to my [extended] family or to have a strong local community network for either raising kids or getting work out there. I can see how being a mom, an artist, and an academic would be totally different if I could just drop the kids off at Grandma’s house. My husband and I have been operating mostly on full-time swing shifts with the boys. I generally teach two long days a week, and his work is flexible, so those are his two days off. When the boys were babies, they were home with one or the other of us. There is some part-time preschool until they are four years old, but that means about eight years of serious boy-wrangling at home until full school days kick in. We have a sitter that helps out occasionally when I have show deadlines or meetings, but it is irregular. My current lack of the “village” it takes to raise kids has certainly had an effect on the amount of studio time I have. And my life now is very different from the thirteen years when we lived in Baton Rouge, where I enjoyed an abundance of local sales. Living in the Chicago area has been a fairly isolating experience. What that means is that I need to push harder to get out and show nationally, and to be more vulnerable and extend myself into new situations but also to build awareness of my work locally. I feel very fortunate to have had deep,

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the lack of affordable, available child care, not because I am incapable of deadlines and professionalism or uninterested in diving into the studio to make work.

I want in it. Choices may be clear to me, but often they are not painless. I look at things in the context of the overall arc of my life, and have realistic expectations for myself and my studio practice.

Adrift in the sea of new motherhood, it was the moment when I started to see a bridge between my former and present life.

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ongoing, and long-distance conversations with people I’ve known for fifteen or twenty years, such as this one.

KARI: We moved from Philadelphia to Maine because of a teaching job that my husband, Ian, landed eleven years ago. A strong community has always been important to us, so it was hard to leave Philly, where we’d had one instantly upon arrival. In Maine, we bought a house near Portland in an area that was touted as the “Brooklyn” of Portland. Over the ten years we lived in it, we renovated all 950 square feet, from top to bottom. I spent time teaching adult education classes in the teachers’ lounge at the vocational center, sitting on the arts and culture committee, organizing our town art festival, doing local craft shows, and hosting home sales. When the kids showed up, I was very grateful to have kept my home studio. I worked with supreme efficiency during their nap times and felt very fortunate that I did not have to commute with my kids to watch cones fall at all hours of the night. About two years ago, we bought a house in Portland that had more space, which we desperately needed. It is across the street from our dearest friends, who have children the same ages as our kids. This proximity has changed our lives—we share in childcare, meals, and many other domestic chores. The extra support has allowed my studio practice and teaching schedule to grow. I think that my family is at its most communal yet. It has all the benefits of “the village” but none of the fights over dirty dishes. BETH: How do you feel about having “made the choice” to wait until later to have kids?

LEANNE: I know I wasn’t “ready” to have a career and kids earlier in my life, but if both were to have happened then, I’m confident in my dedication to the field and that I could have made it work. The choice to have children after grad school, after years of teaching, was really more happenstance than calculated. The advantage for me as an older mom and working artist is that I am less anxious about where my career needs to be. I’m not an “emerging” artist anymore. I keep a regular studio practice and fold motherhood into that practice. When each of my children was a baby, I wore them wrapped in a sling, snuggled to the front of my body while I was in the studio. Now that they are older, they have their own table in my studio and they draw, or paint, or play in the basement.

I would rather make the dishes than do the dishes, and I am totally OK with not being perfect. Where age has been a real kicker was in my physical ability to have kids. That was no easy path. It took an emotional toll, but it has also given me an ocean of content for my work, which is autobiographical. I spent many years in a state of grief, mourning a future that [I thought] would never be and learning to accept what is. I am fortunate to be an artist, to have an outlet for understanding my experiences as human.

KARI: How has the juggling act of being a mom, partner, teacher, and studio artist affected or changed your work or practice? LEANNE: One of the most powerful lessons graduate school taught me was how to deal with intense pressure, deadlines, and multitasking. Those adaptability skills have allowed me to work heroic hours and still take the boys to soccer. Where I gloss over is housekeeping. I would rather make the dishes than do the dishes, and I am totally OK with not being perfect. I do the best I can with my strengths and learn to accept my flaws. On the other hand, not being able to dive as deeply into my work and stay extra-long hours in the studio has necessitated new techniques and ideas. For instance, I used to spend hours creating one-of-a-kind drawings on the surfaces of each piece. I started playing around with relief printing onto the clay about six years ago. I now make editions or series of similar pieces rather than making unique pieces. I spend more time designing, and creating more efficient work-flow systems, and have learned how to make more effective choices. My studio is in the basement, which means I can work in short bursts while the boys are sleeping or at school. I think the computer-fired electric kiln is a mom’s best friend. BETH: My studio is a mile from my home, and its separate location has always drawn a clear line between studio work and home life, albeit one that does manage to get crossed. As a functional potter, I intuitively see limitations as opportunities for creative problem solving. When my first son was born, I had to learn how to work in a completely different way. I

KARI: I have been extremely fortunate to have had predominantly female

BETH: I’m in between you and Kari in terms of experiences with women mentors. I primarily had very strong, very traditionally masculine teachers, who were respectful, motivating, energizing, and

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LEANNE is an assistant professor at Governors State University located in south Chicagoland, where she lives with her husband and two boys, ages 3 and 7. She grew up in Alaska, received her BFA from the University of Minnesota, and her MFA from Louisiana State University. She handbuilds in porcelain with a strong sense of allegorical autobiography. leannemcclurg.com

Studio Potter

LEANNE: Did you two have a female mentor in the field? I had almost exclusively male mentors.

mentorship in my career. Early on, I hit the jackpot. After undergrad, I moved to the Bay Area, and my jobs were working for Catherine Hiersoux, Coille Hooven, Nancy Selvin, and Sandy Simon—all women and all mothers. These were the first “professional artists” I had met in my early career. They made their careers in the studio and outside the walls of academia. They began their careers during a time when most “real” work was big, bold, physical, and hyper-masculine. I’m guessing, their incredible talent was surpassed only by their intense drive to be taken seriously in an environment which was probably not that welcoming of their perspective. Another mentor I have is Silvie Granatelli. I was not officially an apprentice of hers but was fortunate enough to spend two consecutive summers after graduate school working alongside her, Ian Anderson (now my husband), and Brian Jones, who was her apprentice at the time. This was the time in my life I was most unsure about what I was doing, and unclear about how I was going to move from the institution to the street, from the critique to the craft fair. At that time Silvie had been a self-employed potter for thirty years, and her commitment to everyday work, economic pragmatism, and unflinching idealism showed me how to live this life.

was used to long hours in the studio with an artistic process that cycled through phases of idea development, intensive making, rest, and recovery. There is no room for that type of cycle in family life. I have had to adjust my studio practice continuously over the years as the kids have grown, and I still struggle with it. Life with a new baby only allowed for an hour, or few, at a time to try to refocus on other tasks, and that was with sleep deprivation to contend with; whereas now that my kids are six and nine, and in school all day, four days a week, I have longer stretches of work time. Like Leanne, I have found ways to focus on efficiency in the making process as a solution to not being able to tend to pots daily. I still cycle through the same phases—develop, make, rest—but over much longer stretches of time. Streamlining and efficiency are good teachers and were novel challenges for me ten years ago when I was first married. At this point any novelty has worn thin, but I look forward to seeing what happens in the studio this first year when both boys are in school all day. They’ll probably walk into the shop from the bus stop when my arms are elbow-deep in my throwing bucket, and the shop will be open for two more hours . . . it’s exciting to think of this time as “our” creative time, and not just mine.

Studio Potter

Q&A

inspirational. But ultimately, our relationships were conditional on my participation as “one of the guys.” This was the dynamic in every program I participated in, academic or otherwise, through graduate school. I think the reason for this is partly generational, as early feminists initially gained opportunities and “proved their worth” by competing on the same playing field as men, with the same rules. As a female child of the seventies, I was programmed to approach work in this way. I worked hard to wield a chainsaw and sling fifty-pound bags with the rest of them and enjoyed every minute. With the privileges of youth, good health, and singleness, it worked for me during that time of my life. A couple of years into what I call my “nomadic young potter” period, between undergrad and graduate schools, I had a strong desire to study with a female teacher. I enrolled as a Special Student at Colorado University at Boulder to study with Linda Sikora, who had just accepted a teaching position there. A year or so later, I began to work with Diane Kenney at the Carbondale Clay Center (CCC), which she had recently founded in Carbondale, Colorado. While there, I became close to both Diane and her longtime friend, wood kiln partner, and CCC teacher, Peg Malloy. By the time I left for graduate school a year and a half later, all three of us referred to Diane and Peg as our “clay mothers.” They were, and are, influential and important to me on so many levels; but to put it succinctly, they modeled the grown woman I wanted to become but hadn’t yet had a role model for: Someone who is strong and nurturing, independent, while also community- and family- oriented, balanced, and ambitious. Our relationships no longer center around clay, but they remain my mentors and role models. Since graduate school, as life has become increasingly more complex and nuanced, I have intentionally maintained a circle of women—some

very close friends, some not—whose knowledge, experience, and resources I depend on as I navigate the layered and often conflicting roles of wife, mother, daughter, sister, businessperson, community advocate and volunteer, mentor, and artist. I occasionally work with young women, and I am conscious of the role I play in their lives and grateful for opportunities to give back and to continue to learn, as I engage the mentorship dynamic from the other side. KARI: What wisdom would you share with young women in the early stages of their careers? LEANNE: When you’re looking into what your future could hold, define professional success with an open understanding of your personal needs. A tenured position at a Research I university is not the only definition of success, and it may not be the best fit for you. I have defined success as the ability to prioritize a regular studio practice, have some financial stability, and maintain a connection with community and loved ones. BETH: Leanne, I couldn’t have said it better. As our perspectives have shifted, and as we’ve settled into the non-self-oriented roles of wife and mother, we’ve integrated and redefined our roles as artists. The “wisdom” I would share is this: Cultivate your relationships with women, on any level, so you have resources to lean on and learn from as complex life issues arise. Also, be patient; don’t be afraid to take time off. As an artist, focus on your creative growth and maturity, which may take many forms, rather than career milestones. This is what will ultimately feed you over a lifetime of making work. Trust your processes and don’t be afraid to let life and art unroll before you in unexpected ways. If you understand that the hours you spend pacing the floor bouncing a colicky baby is the same type

of meditative and visceral experience as wedging those eight-pound balls of clay over and over each day, you will understand that both activities feed your creative brain. Art and daily life will seem to be less in conflict with each other. KARI: Basically we are talking about having the maturity, wherewithal, and strength to define one’s life goals for ourselves, not according to some stereotype of being an “art star,” and to be able to sift through the noise of other’s expectations and to define success in our own terms. I've observed that in each of our cases, success still involves a studio practice. I don’t hear that any one of us is willing or able to give that up. I think that says something fundamental about how our identities, in fact, probably our whole being, is tied to making and committing ourselves to a creative practice for life. LEANNE: I would add that even though the ceramics field has strong female leadership and representation, there is still a tremendous amount of work to do toward bringing about equality in regard to gender and minority representation. I have seen, heard, and experienced some terrible acts of discrimination and bias, which can get muddled with our understanding of a ceramics community. Vigilance in promoting inclusion and representation is necessary. The conversation must be as recurrent and as thoughtful as conversations about firing practices, geeky shino love, or craft in contemporary society. It may be uncomfortable to look at the attrition rate of women, or the socioeconomic and racial make-ups of our field, but we have to “check in” to these conversations to ensure that our community is healthy. We can make room. 1. Ceramic Studio Tour and potter’s collective organization in Austin, Texas. www.artofthepot.com/

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THE EVOCATIVE

GARDEN GARDEN THE EVOCATIVE MARCH 4– APRIL 1, 2017 Reception: 6 PM–9 PM Thursday, March 23

CURATED BY GAIL M. BROWN AND PRODUCED BY NCECA

LEFT TO RIGHT:

Disjecta Contemporary Art Center Portland, Oregon www.disjectaarts.org

Cj Jilek, Jess Riva Cooper, and Jenni Ward

…earthy and earthly delights from 35 artists working with the garden as inspiration, subject matter, and metaphor.

WWWC Symposium in Roanoke, Virginia, explores the connections of the long history of women in cultures all over the world as vessel makers, artists, and artisans. Featuring, Julia Galloway, Gerit Grimm, Ayumi Horie, Patti Warashina and Donna Polseno, with keynote by Lale DilbaĹ&#x;.

WATERSHED

Natalia Arbelaez

Women Working With Clay Symposium at Hollins University | 7916 Williamson Road, Roanoke VA 24020 (540) 362-6021 | bfoutz2@hollins.edu | hollins.edu/wwwc

CENTER FOR THE CERAMIC ARTS

2017 RESIDENCIES & WORKSHOPS

learn more & register at watershedceramics.org Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts | 19 Brick Hill Road Newcastle, ME 04553 (207) 882-6075 | info@watershedceramics.org | watershedceramics.org

Watershed offers artist residencies and workshops for clay artists from May through October. Join Matt Wedel, Namita Gupta Wiggers, Jack Troy, and many other artists during a 1-, 2or 3-week session. Financial aid is available.

HAYNE BAYLESS SIDEWAYS STUDIO Hand-built, functional stoneware for sale at the studio and at these fine galleries: AKAR Gallery, Iowa City, IA The Clay Studio Philadelphia, PA

ARTAXIS

Crimson Laurel Micaville, NC

Artaxis is a non-profit art organization that promotes the professional pursuits of artists in the field. Admission to the site is peer-reviewed. Prospective applicants can find more information at artaxis.org/apply

Artaxis | contactartaxis@gmail.com | artaxis.org

Dowstudio, Deer Isle, ME Fairhaven Furniture New Haven, CT Freehand Gallery Los Angeles, CA Plinth Gallery , Denver, CO Schaller Gallery St. Joseph, MI Spectrum Gallery Centerbrook, CT

Ivoryton, CT | hayne@sidewaysstudio.com | (860) 767-3141 | sidewaysstudio.com

THE BARN POTTERY Kimberly Sheerin and Hollis Engley at The Barn Pottery in Pocasset, Massachusetts, join Studio Potter in celebrating women who work in clay. In 2017 we celebrate Kimberly’s twenty years of making and teaching pottery on Cape Cod. A show of Kimberly’s family’s wide-ranging creative work will open July 22 at the Cultural Center of Cape Cod.

359 Barlows Landing Road Pocasset MA 02559 | thebarnpottery@gmail.com (508) 380-3988 | thebarnpottery.com

SMITH-SHARPE FIRE BRICK SUPPLY Supplying the highest quality silicon carbide kiln shelves, kiln furniture systems and high temperature kiln building materials available at fair market prices. We are devoted to the needs of potters, clay educators, ceramic artists and glass artists.

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PLINTH GALLERY Plinth Gallery is a pristine exhibition space for contemporary ceramic art located in Denver’s exciting River North Art District.

JUSTIN ROTHSHANK rothshank.com

3520 Brighton Blvd., Denver, CO 80216 | (303) 295-0717 | plinthgallery.com

instagram: @jrothshank | jrothshank@gmail.com | (412) 478-3105

CORNELL STUDIO SUPPLY THE ORIGINAL HI ROLLER

Owned and operated by potters for potters. Books, clay, equipment, glaze, raw materials, and tools for every need. Affordable world class workshops.

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We manufacture just one product, it has to be awesome. Made in the USA Lifetime Warranty

2106 4th St NE, Hickory, NC 28601 | sales@originalhiroller.com (828) 308-2585 | originalhiroller.com

KELLY LYNN DANIELS

KIRSTEN OLSON

Heather Grills, Owner/Curator | Geoffrey Kunkler, Studio Manager

KRISTINE HITES

CHARLOTTE LINDLEY MARTIN

PHOENIX FIRED ART Phoenix Fired Art is a community clay center and fine art gallery established in 2012. The clay center offers year round classes, advanced workshops, and a residency program. Our gallery features functional and decorative work from over thirty established and emerging ceramic artists.

| 1603 N Main Joplin, MO 64801 | phoenixfiredart@gmail.com | T. (417) 437-9291 | phoenixfiredart.com

We help people make great things!

SKUTT CERAMIC PRODUCTS INC. The people at Skutt have been providing potters with quality equipment for over 60 years. For more information visit us at skutt.com.

6441 SE Johnson Creek Blvd. Portland, OR 97206 | skutt@skutt.com | T. (503) 774-6000 | F. (503) 774-7833 | skutt.com

STUDIO TOUR Oct. 7 & 8, 2017

THE PENINSULA POTTERS The Peninsula Potters are a group of recognized and emerging potters on the Blue Hill, Maine peninsula, a place of beauty and creative spirit.

THE 25TH ANNUAL ST. CROIX VALLEY POTTERY TOUR May 12, 13, 14, 2017

Members: Vivian Pyle Rakliffe Pottery Mark Bell Melody LewisKane David McBeth Melissa Greene Bunzy Sherman Marcia Kola Kathy Burton Barbro Chapman Brooklin Pottery Co-op

Celebrating 25 years of connecting our appreciative pottery audience with the makers themselves. Visitors will find sixty distinguished potters from around the nation, “open-house” hospitality, and thousands of pots.

Melody LewisKane | (207) 350-2320 | peninsulapotters.com

41421 Ferry Road, Harris, MN 55032 | (651) 674-4555 | minnesotapotters.com

Introducing... ThermalLite Shelves

BAILEY POTTERY EQUIPMENT

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Super Light Super Strong Super Thin Nitride Bonded SiC Round & Square for Electric Kilns & Gas kilns Great Selection.

Bailey Pottery Equipment | PO Box 1577, Kingston, NY 12402 info@bailey pottery.com | (800) 431-6067 | baileypottery.com

FRONT COVER 1 Hertha Hillfon. Photo by Dan Hansson, 2008, courtesy of TT/Sipa USA.

1 2 4

5 6

2 Linda Christianson, 1977. 3 Ruth Rippon. Photo by Zoe Lowenthal, 1952.

5 Ashwini Bhat. Photo by Hollis Engley, 2016. 6 Rebecca Goyette. Selfie, 2016. 7 Jessica SteinhÃ¤user, Dean Palmer Photography, 2014.

4 Dani Sigler. Photo by Keith Barraclough, 2016.

BACK COVER

1 Jane Herold. Photo by May Adzema-Herold, 2016.

6 Leanne McClurg Cambric. Selfie, 2016.

2 Kari Radasch. Photo by Lindsay Heald, 2014.

7 Nancy Catherwood Magnusson. Photo by Hal Magnusson, 2011.

3 Kristin Muller. Photo by Jacklyn Scott, 2016.

4 Joy Brown, c. 1993. 5 Katie Coughlin, 2016.

8 Sallah Jenkins, 2015. 9 Shelley Schreiber, 2008.