Vol 44 No 2 - Function/Architecture

Summer/Fall 2016 | Vol 44 No 2

FUNCTION /ARCHITECTURE

Note to issuu.com readers: This version contains only select articles from the full issue.

Visit studiopotter.org to view or purchase the full issue.

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Masjid-I Shah (Royal Mosque), Isfahan, Iran, early 17th century. See Paul Mathieu's article, "Shelter: Ceramics & Architecture," p. 25.

Photograph by Patrick Ringgenberg.

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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.

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Mission

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VOL 44 NO 2

FUNCTION/ARCHITECTURE

In This Issue

ARTIST NARRATIVES

08 | Order and Entropy

BY CARY ESSER

46 | Architectural Ceramics Talk About Building(s)...

65 | Let’s Architectonically Speaking

BY SUSAN TUNICK

BY JONATHAN KAPLAN

HISTORY

14 | Harry Holl John Stephenson 20 | Remembering Writings by:

BY STEVEN KEMP

GEORGETTE ZIRBES PAUL KOTULA SUSAN CROWELL MARIE WOO DEBBIE THOMPSON

25 | Shelter: Ceramics and Architecture

BY PAUL MATHIEU

Slides of Harry Holl's work from the mid 70s. See more p. 14.

Q&A

I’m most interested in directing [the artists’] standard biography offroad into creative territory that neither they nor I yet fully understand.

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"Shelter: Ceramics and Architecture"

by Paul Mathieu

"The Portland Brick Project"

by Ayumi Horie. Photograph

by Janine Grant.

COLUMNS

BITS & PIECES

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04 | 07 | The SP Update

Rebuilding the Salt Kiln at Tolne Gjæstgivergaard

BY GREGORY HAMILTON MILLER

Control in a 40 | Fuel Wood Fired Kiln

BY DAVID POTTER AND JOHN STEELE

42 | The Portland Brick Project 69 | The Sensual Arts

BY AYUMI HORIE

BY JULIE WILSON

Word from the Editor

BY ELENOR WILSON

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Tales of a Red Clay Rambler BEN CARTER TALKS WITH NINA HOLE, JACQUES KAUFMANN, AND MARK PHARIS

72 | Letters 73 | Underwriters 80 | Donors

Curved earthenware vase

by Mark Pharis.

Photograph by Peter Lee. See more p. 60.

studiopotter.org

ART DIRECTOR Zoe Pappenheimer zoe@zoedesignworks.com CIRCULATION Josh Speers membership@studiopotter.org COPYEDITOR Faye Wolfe PROOFREADERS Hayne Bayless Sophie Cornish-Keefe 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 Elizabeth Cohen Ben Eberle Hollis Engley Fred Herbst Jonathan Kaplan Robbie Lobell David McBeth Jonathon McMillan Nancy Magnusson Josh Teplitzky 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 44, Number 2, 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.

WORD FROM THE EDITOR

Illustrations by Rachel Ang (upper right) and Zoe Pappenheimer (lower right).

EDITOR Elenor Wilson editor@studiopotter.org

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hen I think of architecture, I think of buildings, as probably most people do. That may have something to do with the fact that any dictionary’s standard definition is something like, “the art or practice of designing and constructing buildings.” (Yes, the dictionaries consulted were actual, physical, bound volumes with pages, not just .com versions!)

In assigning “architecture” (with the additional prompt of “function”) to this issue of Studio Potter, my aim was to broaden that definition, exploring how it might not only include buildings, but also all kinds of other things: pots (duh), sculpture, even intangibles like ideas, or the future.

Delving into my research – OK, technically my intern’s research – I discovered Eliel Saarinen’s 1948 book, The Search for Form in Art and Architecture.

Saarinen (1873-1950) was an accomplished Finnish architect, whose book I probably would have read sooner had I attended Cranbrook Academy of Art, as he was the chief architect for the entire campus, located in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. In The Search for Form, he discusses architecture as the “art of space.”

Space […] means not only the inside space embraced by the structure but that

“The vibrations of music do not stick to the strings of the violin but fill the surrounding space with their melody.”

-- ELIEL SAARINEN

I’ve fallen in love with Saarinen’s take on architecture; the idea that even as a painter, your choices about the size of your canvas, brightness of hue, or broadness of brushstroke actually design the space in which people experience your creative vision.

Though seemingly invisible, space has a language vital to its visual, and sometimes tactile counterpart.

In terms of pottery, well, maybe this idea isn’t novel, as one of the first requirements for a pot is a balance between the interior and exterior that allows for an optimal volume to overall weight (aesthetic or actual) ratio. If a pot requires Popeye’s arms to lift when full of liquid, we’ve learned something about interior space. If it doesn’t fit inside the cupboard, or has all the visual weight of a cow pie on the dining table, then

we have learned some lessons about pots and domestic space.

Successful artistic expression, in any medium – painting, sculpture, utilitarian design, dance, music – and on any scale, requires careful consideration of not only the thing, but the spaces in which it is experienced by others. Often the experience of a space or place far outweighs the importance of the objects or material that define it. In fact, most of the stories in this issue are not so much about brick sidewalks, Islamic mosques, terra cotta facades, Scandinavian kilns, or plaster molds as they are about creating vibrant spaces within which we learn, pray, eat, work, and make.

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than the sphere of light, shadow, and atmospheric effects within which form must be conceived, and within which form exerts its influence.

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space embracing the structure as well.

Namely, there can be imagined a certain “concavity” of space enclosing the pyramids, towers, monuments, and what have you. With these two space conceptions - within and without - architecture must be understood. […]

Sculpture also belongs to the art of space, at least insofar as the embracing “concavity” of space is concerned. […]

And the “art of color” is more than a flat surface covered by color – for nobody looks at a painting with his nose tight to the canvas but always maintains a certain distance between the painting and his eyes. Thus even the art of painting has its “concavity” – if you please – within which its influence vibrates. […] And the vibrations of music do not stick to the strings of the violin but fill the surrounding space with their melody.

Thus form, whatever the means of expression, always must be understood in connection with space. And this socalled embracing “concavity” – and why not “convexity” as well – is nothing else

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BITS & PIECES

CARY ESSER, Veil (16-1-1), 2016, detail. Glazed earthenware tile, 16.5 x 7.5 x .25 in. Photograph

by E.G. Schempf.

Read about Esser’s architectural influences in her article, “Order & Entropy,” page 9.

THE NEW SITE IS HERE!

studiopotter.org Our new site hosts the full catalog of back issues, shareable online articles, author profiles, and bonus images. Plus, we have weekly news posts and an online shop featuring SP merchandise and our Pots-for-Membership program.

Members receive a personal studiopotter.org account, access to PDF versions of each back issue, the ability to bookmark articles for quick reference, discounts on downloads and store items, and the option to be listed in our online member directory.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We’d like to thank our interns, Monique Desnoyers, Spring 2016, and Sophie Cornish-Keefe, Summer 2016, whose energy, organizational skills, and intelligence has contributed immensely to our ability to continue publishing while developing our digital archive and new website!

Thanks to our Donors p 80

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SEPT

The SP Update

UTILITARIAN CLAY VII SEPTEMBER 21-24, 2016

SP is proud to be a sponsor of Utilitarian Clay Symposium at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, Gatlinburg, Tennessee More information at:

arrowmont.org/visit/events

POTS FOR MEMBERSHIP Building community, one pot at a time! Artists are invited to submit their own artwork for sale on our website in exchange for a one-year membership for themselves or someone else. studiopotter.org/membership/pots-membership

On the contents page, Jane Herold’s article “The Path,” was incorrectly titled, “My Definition of Useful.”

Also, in her article the photograph on page 8, was taken

by Susan Stava, not Javier Salinas.

Oops! a correction from Vol. 44, No. 1 If you see an error in this issue, please let us know: info@studiopotter.org.

What a cover...

"Neo-Industrial Art Object" drawings by Jonathan Kaplan and Clark Willingham.

See Kaplan's article, this issue..

p. 65-68

Summer '17 VOL. 45, NO. 2, SUMMER/ FALL 2017, "Bounds: Real

and Imagined," will be guest edited by Vermont potter and assistant professor of ceramics at Alberta College of Art and Design. Martina Lantin. She writes, "I am struck by how borders affect artists’ transnational awareness. How have new technologies and social media expanded their relationships? What are the dialogues that stretch across borders and beyond limitations? How may we relate the experience of imposed boundaries through ceramics?”

Submissions due April 1, 2017. Contact editor@studiopotter.org for submission guides and more information.

Order & ▲ Cary Esser, Bray Parfleche Series, 2015. Slip-cast earthenware. 12.75 x 34 x 1.19 in. Photograph by E. G. Schempf. ⊲ Cave in Cappadochia, Turkey. Photograph by the author.

Entropy

BY CARY ESSER

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ansas City in 1974 was a wonderland. That year was the first time I’d lived in an urban environment, the first time off the East Coast. In my foundation year at the Kansas City Art Institute, the city was my resource for finding subject matter and gathering found materials to use in diverse projects in drawing, making sculptures, and performance.

This first year in college, during which I rarely touched clay, was a powerful influence on my art, not least because of the many hours I spent walking and

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Architectural Terra Cotta, Wyandotte St., Kansas City, Missouri. Photograph by the author.

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biking through residential neighborhoods and the often poor and decaying business districts of Kansas City. I began to observe what, for me, was unusual decoration on the facades of many older buildings – patterns, colors, forms, and motifs I had never seen or at least never noticed.

I gradually came to realize that I was looking at fired, and sometimes glazed, clay on these buildings – it was my first intimation of the formidable history of ceramics in architecture. I was familiar with the history of vessels and had been seduced by them and by the tactile and responsive nature of clay, yet here was the larger vessel, the architectural structure, often made partially or wholly from bricks. The surface was sometimes veneered by tile and relief that encompassed – on a monumental scale – the vessel’s fascinating elements of containment. It was this direct experience with viewing and even touching

ceramic ornament on Kansas City buildings, which I later learned was called architectural terra-cotta, that launched my investigation into clay as both a decorative and structural element of architecture.

I left Kansas City in 1980, and didn’t return for sixteen years. Now, I often drive or walk by my favorite terra-cotta haunts (though many have been razed). In their ornament, I see the point of departure for almost forty years of art-making. I see in its pastiche of styles a lineage of history and culture that reaches back through Europe – predominantly Muslim Spain – to the ceramics of the Middle East.

What energized my work in the study of Kansas City architectural ornament, continues to hold my interest and has sustained my art-making. First are the colors, shapes, and kinds of motifs present in the individual decorative components, and their repetition, that determines the surface pattern on a structure.

In regard to motif, I have an abiding curiosity about the origins of these images and why humans have chosen to enhance their shelters with images of plants, figures of humans and animals, geometries, tessellations, and shields that remained amazingly consistent over centuries of architectural embellishment.

As well, I appreciate the sculpted aspects of architectural relief that rupture, fold, and modulate over the surface of a building, that are highlighted as they respond to the shifting light of a day, and that often punctuate a window or doorway. There is a bodily characteristic to relief ornament that is like musculature on bone or an orifice that marks passage to the interior.

This mention of the body brings me to a point about the primary substances of ceramics, the moist clay and other minerals that are extracted from the earth and that can be manipulated and shaped. The relationship between clay, the landscape, and cultural form, espe-

cially of the built environment, relates back to my earliest experience of earthy substance – the iron-bearing soil of North Carolina’s Piedmont region, with agricultural fields of raw reddish-orange dirt interspersed with impossibly long and orderly rows of early green crops emerging from it. In Kansas City and elsewhere, I was looking not at the actual plants but at images and configurations of them embedded into fired clay blocks.

They are representations of growth, perhaps even a veiled, pagan appeasement of the gods. In retrospect, I see how the necessary organization of orange clay and green plants into pattern primed my eye to search for and recognize it in the fired manifestation of ceramics on architecture.

When I go to my studio, my memories of ornament and architecture are tucked away in my mind, and I have images of relevant sources posted on my studio walls. But, the primacy of my making starts with material, process, and experimentation. In the beginning of a new series, I operate on hunches, often with only a nascent notion of what may lie ahead. I pursue a material quality, a color palette, a shape of tile, a motif. Over a period of playful testing that may involve many false starts and frustration, an organization of visual and conceptual ideas will emerge. Glaze – its hues, textures, and light reflectivities – is a substance that is both physical and retinal.

Finding glaze qualities can be as motivating for me as finding form, in fact, I almost think of the glaze layer as form. Remarkably, or maybe not so remarkably, these ideas as they develop always relate directly to a powerful experience I’ve had with architecture, ceramics, or nature, and I sometimes see the relationship only in retrospect.

My Landscape and Topo series (2008– 2011) are examples of this approach to making. I began with two tile shapes that tessellate,

one five-sided and one seven-sided. I used the tile to test glaze bases with diverse consistencies, opacities, translucencies, and the potential for a broad range of color, then applied them to the tiles. I arranged the tiles horizontally in response to color relationships as well as to pattern, and then into compositions yielded by the complexity of the repeated units. The heights of the extruded tile range from one half inch to ten inches tall, generating topographies that seemed to be architecture and landscape, monument and miniature, aerial and cell. The final sculptures evolved through a process of discovery that began with two elements of shape and color.

A trip to Istanbul and the Cappadocia region of Turkey in 2013 had a significant impact on my work in ceramics. For many years I have pored over images of the tiles that have covered mosques beginning in the fifteenth century as well as the caves that, for millennia, have been carved into the soft volcanic formations of the Cappadocian landscape. Seeing these architectural features and spaces firsthand led me to two distinct series of works: Veils and Parfleches.

My Veil series is a response to the Iznik tiles that veneer the walls of Turkish mosques.

The repeated panels of tiles create a cool, liquid ceramic surface of brilliant color and image, suggesting to me the notion of the infinite in these spaces dedicated to spiritual reflection.

Up close, it’s clear that the Iznik potters and architects were not particular about flaws, such as glaze dripping from or pooling around their stylized images of flora. As part of the process of making Veils, I prick shallow pinpoint holes

into simple linear designs that are subsequently filled with cobalt. When covered with a low-temperature, runny crystalline glaze and fired at a diagonal, the glaze drags the cobalt into blue linear patterns, away from the original design and leaving an inverse trace of it. I collaborate with raw materials, gravity, and heat to create these glaze flows. I aim for them simultaneously to suggest and obscure an image, a memory, or a place.

The caves in Cappadocia have organic, white, honeycomb-like interiors punctuated by archways, columns, and windows. Light from openings in the walls filters in and shifts around the softened shapes of the interior, creating changing envelopes of space. The Parfleche wall reliefs are influenced by my experience of the caves and by Native American bison-hide carrying cases called parfleches.

These are envelopes, too, in a literal sense: softened rectangles made of folded hide, painted with abstract designs, and used to store and transport provisions. Since seeing examples of these objects on display at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in the early 2000s, I have been fascinated by the way the leather folds and wrinkles and seems to organize the painted geometric patterns. I have never had the chance to untie and open a parfleche, I only know them from their exteriors, yet the slim, creased interior space implied by these wrapped cases captivate me in much the same way as do the Cappadocian caves.

My parfleches depart from my usual passion for the decorated and highly glazed surfaces of many architectural ceramics. They are solid-cast with slip in flexible molds that

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and architecture are tucked away in my mind.

NARRATIVE

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When I go to my studio, my memories of ornament

are configured to encourage what might be considered technical flaws. In these pieces, the markings and fissures left by their forming process contrast with grid lines that recede into the mass of the objects, aiming for a tension between order and entropy. They celebrate the raw clay surface and provoke me to consider the mysterious interior of a form.

An important practice in my studio, but one of the most difficult, is to see the work afresh as it is being made. Inviting others to visit can be a huge help in this matter, and being able to hear the comments offered is equally critical. Some of the most crucial decisions I’ve made in my work are a result of this watching and listening. The development of the Parfleche series is a prime example. The original purpose of making these forms was to prepare a surface for glazing and applying large decals of flora. A curator was in my studio one day just as I was preparing to brush a coat of glaze onto a piece. She called my attention to the form in its bisqued state, its monochrome, dry clay surface, its torn edges, holes, and splits, and proposed that the piece was complete. Her visit was one of several productive visits with local curators and artists.

I have been working on Parfleches and Veils concurrently for more than a year.

While they are visually divergent, a similarity between them comes from my striving to embrace accident and phenomena in their making, in the casting of Parfleches and in the firing of Veils. I have surrendered an aspect of control that has been an active part of my work until these present investigations. I produce objects more quickly than I’ve been able to in the past, but the process demands a subjective and rigorous exercise of post-production selection. Some pieces call to others to be paired or grouped together, while others stand alone. I must

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Cary Esser, Veils, 2015-16. Glazed earthenware tiles. Each approx. 16.5 x 7.5 x .25 in. Photograph by E.G. Schempf.

cull those that fall short yet remain open to unexpected results that may at first seem unacceptable.

Looking back at the Kansas City architecture and terra-cotta adornments that fueled my artistic passion for many years, I see a shift in my attraction to them. There is positive force of architecture in its solidity and strength, and the potential for this force to be expressed by an element of its whole, in other words, by the brick, the decorative terra-cotta block, or the tile. In retrospect, this sense of wholeness and completeness drove my work for many years. Architecture usually begins with a building up from the earth.

My interest now is equally in the end or memory of architecture, its inevitable succumbing to gravity and decomposition, and its return to the earth.

BIO Cary Esser has served as Chair of the Kansas City Art Institute ceramics department since 1996. She and her students and colleagues were presented in season two of the PBS television series, "Craft in America," broadcast in 2009..

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caryesser.com cesser@kcai.edu

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BY GREGORY HAMILTON MILLER

COLUMN

REBUILDING THE SALT KILN

Vendsyssel Nordjylland DENMARK

Illustrations by Rachel Ang, 2016.

This page: Janne on the Wheel, and page 39, RIP Salt Kiln.

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For the last four years building a center for ceramic art has been an evolving dream of Janne Hieck’s and mine. Janne is a German master potter who studied at the ceramic facility in Landshut, Bavaria, and I am an American who at one time lived, worked, and studied in Mashiko, Japan, with the Living National Treasure Shimaoka Tatsuzo. Our developing center, Tolne Gjæstgivergaard, sits in the middle of a beech forest in northern Denmark. We bought the property in July 2012, and since then we have been working to renovate it to be a home, ceramic studio, gallery, café, and meeting facility. We have plans to provide lodging and ceramics courses, too.

Together with colleagues in our area, we have been inviting other ceramic artists to come and work, lecture, and exhibit with us for much of the last decade. We both enjoy wood firing, salt glazing, and soda glazing and have built a variety of wood kilns to fire our work.

The first we constructed was the salt kiln, in fall 2012. Because we have a recurring wholesale order each year for salt-fired work, we fire it fifteen to eighteen times a year—a lot for a kiln to stand up to. It was constructed with an arch made of castable refractory material after the style of a Japanese

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AT TOLNE GJÆSTGIVERGAARD

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COLUMN

BIO With Janne Hieck, Gregory Hamilton Miller is co-owner of Tolne Gjæstgivergaard, located in Northern Jutland, Denmark, where they produce workshops and an annual international ceramics conference. tolneggg.com Rachel Ang is an independent illustrator from Melbourne, Australia. Ang was a resident artist at Tolne Gjæstgivergaard in March 2016, while the firing took place. drawbyfour.com Joel Stuart-Beck arvikakonsthantverk.se

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Emil Österholm emilosterholm.com

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itekoi kiln, and after almost fifty firings, the castable was dripping extensively onto our work during firing. In addition the materials we had used to repair the floor in the fall of 2015 didn’t hold. After only a few firings, the floor began to warp and disintegrate from the caustic atmosphere of heat and salt.

By January 2016, there was no question that we needed to rebuild our loyal salt kiln.

The final firing in the old one was disastrous. We were making samples for a big order, and as the kiln approached Cone 9, about 1,250 degrees Celsius, the floor melted away, and all our work made a long, slow journey toward the walls, then slid farther down the interior of the kiln, landing in a heap in front of the gas burner.

The previous fall, at an exhibition of our work in Arvika, Sweden, Joel Stuart-Beck, a potter and head of the Arvika Konsthantverk cooperative, had asked if he and his friend Emil Österholm could fire sculptural work in our salt kiln in the spring. When I had explained that the kiln needed repair, they had offered to help, and to donate ten nearly-new silicon carbide shelves to the project. The combination of good help, new resources, and good friends was impossible to resist, so we lined up dates for the rebuild and firing, starting at the end of February.

The original salt kiln was the ninth or tenth in a line of kilns that I had designed to fuel with wood, supplemented by gas.

Yet during the many firings of the last three years, we had fired the kiln without using any gas at all. We decided that the rebuilt kiln would be an exclusively wood-fueled kiln.

We made two major alterations to the original design. First, we designed a sprung arch with more elevation. Second, we filled

in the trench under the kiln with ceramic block and bricks, leaving air ports but eliminating the firing channel (the large passage underneath the chamber), to reduce the risk of the floor melting away. These modifications would make it possible to preheat the kiln using a small fire or weed burner with a controlled, distant flame, which is important because we raw-fire most of our work.

We were lucky to have assistance from English potter Adam Beales, who cleared away the rubble in the floor and took out the former cast arch, readying the kiln for reconstruction. Remaining were the double-layer soft brick walls, hard brick foundation, and chimney of blocks. The insulating bricks were no worse for the wear, with a thick layer of salt glaze on them, so we decided to leave these in place. All the kilns at Tolne have been built from the remnants of a tunnel kiln in which a nearby brick factory, closed a decade ago, once fired earthenware bricks for houses.

We considered creating the new arch with homemade castable and insulating brick scraps but eventually settled on refractory block, filled with an insulating mixture of fireclay, sawdust, and Leca (light expanded clay aggregate). Leca was being spread at the train station across the street to prevent slippage, and piles of it had been swept off and discarded by the side of the platform. Once the blocks forming the arch were in place, the insulating mixture was rammed inside them, then the arch was covered with ceramic fiber remnants and bricks of diatomaceous earth (a high-density, low-porosity siliceous material). We dried the arch overnight with the gas burner.

Our next step was to build the floor of the kiln. We accomplished this by using the refractory block as an air channel, then filling

in the floor with hard brick, and finally installing the kiln shelves. With this arrangement, we now had a primary source of air, which would be preheated as it flowed under the kiln, then up into the middle of the firebox.

And we were able to dry the massive floor easily using the gas burner, thus avoiding steam explosions during the first firing.

Sodium impinges on almost everything in a salt kiln over time. We decided that because we had new shelves, we should make new props, too. We cut the props from new firebricks given to us by a neighbor, who had some left over from a masonry oven project.

We coated all the shelves and posts with kiln wash. We were ready to load the kiln.

Because the rebuilt kiln floor was slightly lower, and the arch taller, than it had been in the original kiln, we had added an extra twenty-five centimeters of stacking space height.

While the kiln does fire unevenly, Janne and I like adjusting the placement of the work to fit the space, an approach I learned working with Warren Mackenzie in his studio. One of the advantages of a cross-draft kiln is that it allows a temperature range of Cone 3 to Cone 11 within the stack. We hoped that this would become even slightly more variable with the design changes.

After stacking both raw ware and bisque ware into the kiln, we closed up the door with two layers of soft bricks. Because of the raw ware, we spent the first night preheating with gas. Snow began to fall during the evening; by the morning a deep layer had covered the green lawn. We moved wood next to the kiln to supplement the supply of dry wood already stacked there, our intention being to using the damp wood first.

To get the temperature from 300 to 600 degrees Celsius, we used hardwood, which has a shorter flame and burns more slowly, plac-

following day, we were pleased to see that this was in fact the case.

Joel’s work, owl jars along the lines of the Martin Brothers’, was made of German clay from Westerwald. The jars came out heavily salted, which enhanced the details of orange peel on the cobalt and iron brushwork.

Unfortunately, Emil’s work had not fared so well. Because of the Gotland clay’s high iron content, it had turned quite dark, and some of the forms had not stood up to the fire’s early heat and had cracked from its intensity.

We deeply appreciated having the chance to spend the week with these two young potters from Sweden. We had our kiln repaired and fired, with a lot of great meals, company, and discussions along the way. We’re looking forward to the next time that Joel and Emil return to Tolne, and a bunch of great salt firings in the near future in our rebuilt kiln.

Joel Stuart-Beck (left) and Emil Österholm in front of the newly rebuilt salt kiln at Tolne Gjæstgivergaard.

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The cones were down in the front and back of the kiln, but there were still quite a lot of embers in the firebox. After a discussion, Joel, Emil, and I decided to seal up the firebox and leave the dampers open for another half hour or so. The clay Emil uses, from the Swedish island of Gotland, is high in iron, and we suspected that it would be overly sensitive to the post-fire reduction atmosphere that would be created by closing the damper immediately. After sealing the firebox, it was time for chicken soup and a nap!

The firing in the rebuilt kiln was some twelve hours longer than our previous firings.

For fuel we used donated and salvaged wood, also an extra expense of our time.

Because we salted in smaller batches, in the firebox, and over a longer time, we hoped that we would have a nuanced, fairly heavy salt layer throughout the kiln.

When we unloaded the kiln the

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ing less stress on the raw items in the period before red heat is reached. After 600 degrees, we switched to old pine and spruce, which took the kiln up to approximately 1,100 degrees. We did create somewhat of a reduction atmosphere at about 850 degrees, mostly by stoking more frequently with smaller amounts of wood and by closing the dampers and air intakes. But the damp wood did not help the kiln climb, and Joel and Emil maintained the temperature through the night at about 1,100 degrees. In the morning, I got some very dry wood from our neighbor. When Janne took the shift from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m., the temperature increased by about 100 degrees, knocking down Cones 7 and 9 in the front of the kiln and leveling Cone 7 in the back.

Janne said it had been really difficult to get above 1,150 degrees, but that after it did, she felt she had it in a good balance or rhythm. “I was gaining temperature, even though it was slow. It was still consistent, so I didn’t drop. With this kiln, it’s such a delicate balance, so that when you get it, it goes, but if you lose that, it drops.” It made sense for her to continue, rather than hand it back to Joel or Emil, who weren’t so experienced with the kiln.

In the past, Janne and I have salted both in the fire box and on the work itself, using rust-free angle iron, something I first saw done during my apprenticeship at the studio of Shimaoka Tatsuzo, where lengths of green bamboo were used. However, over the years, we have had significant damage to our kiln shelves and posts as a result of dumping salt directly on them, and sometimes to the work itself. With the rebuilt kiln, we elected to salt only in the firebox, and in smaller amounts over a longer period of time at the end of the firing.

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ALL PHOTOGRAPHS BY THE AUTHOR.

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ased in the India Street neighborhood of Portland, Maine, Portland Brick is a collaboration between storyteller Elise Pepple and me. The project celebrates the everyday stories of the city’s residents. Historic, contemporary, and “future” memories are stamped into bricks that repair sidewalks with the city’s own stories. Instead of commemorating the famous “fathers” of the city, our project highlights the immigrants, the women, the marginalized, the voices that typically are not heard. We aim to rewrite the historical narrative that too often upholds the values of the privileged, rather than telling the real stories of the people who lived there.

An area that boasts the first street settled by Europeans, the India Street neighborhood of Portland, Maine, was originally mostly residential, before becoming mixeduse (business and residential) and falling into economic decline in the mid-twentieth century. Over the past few years, it has been undergoing massive gentrification, with new, upscale restaurants and luxury condos taking over what were abandoned lots. Historically, it was an ethnically and socioeconomically diverse neighborhood, home to African-Americans and people of Irish, Jewish, Italian, and other European heritage, some of whom were involved in anti-slavery causes.

The challenge for us became how to create

Installed Portland Brick Project bricks in the India Street neighborhood of Portland, Maine.

Heilo Anderson reading a brick.

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a more personal vision of a neighborhood through Tweet-length phrases about human connections. Making stories tangible as physical objects gives them a new life and a new importance. Some stories will shift from being a story told within a family circle to one that inhabits a public space, while others contain long forgotten facts that will be revived from the dead. We hope that the bricks will generate a new cycle of audio stories shared between strangers, friends, families, and visitors.

Through local organizations, online submissions, historical research, and the efforts of Maine College of Art students, Elise collected stories that often came in multiple forms. Fragments of gossip, oral interviews, newspaper clippings, and historical records all contained information that on first impression might seem dry and generalized but was rich in narrative below the surface.

Through a story-telling event in the neighborhood, a TEDxDirigo talk, and through social media, we have been able to further connect with residents.

We walk to work on brick sidewalks, we build our homes beside them, we live our lives on them. I love the alchemy of transforming the ground beneath our feet into the brick beneath our feet. Fifteen thousand years ago, at the end of the last ice age, Maine was covered by a glacier. As the ice retreated, it pushed down the coastal shelf, flooding the southern shoreline of Maine and depositing a layer of mud, hundreds of feet thick in some places, above and between bedrock. This layer is what Portland is built on, and it’s a city largely made of brick.

The clay used for this project was saved from the excavation of the land that my new

studio was built on, and is commonly called Maine Blue Clay. After the Great Fire of 1866, most of Portland and its sidewalks on the peninsula were rebuilt with this clay. I considered carving the words into clay and the now-common practice of using water jet methods on commemorative bricks, but these techniques felt too harsh and would under-utilize the beautiful plasticity of clay. I wanted to retain the puffiness of soft clay in the fired brick. The appearance of stamped clay, on the other hand, has always reminded me of flesh pressed down by a finger or the shape of a pillow after a head has rested on it. I wanted these bricks to show that they were made by people, full of tiny imperfections and the unevenness of the human hand.

To make a custom stamp for each brick, I first drew letters using the same sgraffito technique that I use on low-fire pots: I poured white slip onto slabs of nearly bonedry earthenware, then scratched through the slip with a sharpened pin tool. I drew the letters in different sizes, scanned them into Photoshop, and cleaned them up. Next, I typeset each stamp. Sam Richardson, a recent graduate of the New Media department of Maine College of Art, converted the stamp images into 3-D files, then milled and printed them at Engine, a nearby fab lab.

Rochelle Garcia, Molly Spadone, Janine Grant, and several other students helped fabricate the bricks. After slaking the bonedry clay, they blunged in red grog to help with shrinkage and warping, and then sieved the mixture. Using David Peters’s method of drying slurry in wooden frames lined with bed sheets outside, they wedged the clay. Traditionally, bricks were made using a

sand-struck or water-struck method, where soft clay was slapped into wooden molds that then released the clay. After a lot of trial and error, we found that the simplest of methods was the most effective: we threw a ten-pound block of clay into a thick plywood mold reinforced with clamps, and then unscrewed the clamps to pop the brick out.

We wanted each statement to refer to contemporary digital culture. We wanted our stories to be as brief as a Tweet and as succinct as an Instagram caption, so that they would read like poetry—and fit within the bricks. Using hashtags was a way to insert more information and sum up the phrase, and we liked their playfulness.

Of course, the bricks’ hashtags would not work as hyperlinks, but they could be Googled, because the full phrases are also on our website. For instance, the sentence “On this spot in 1911, mothers could pick up free fresh milk for their babies. #pasteurization” provides just enough information to pique curiosity about the history of public health and the importance of pasteurization. The hashtag also connects our brick to every other online reference to pasteurization. Other hashtags include #torrone and #panettone (Italian sweets) #redhotdogs, a classic Mainer food, and #newmainer, a term that’s intentionally inclusive. One bilingual brick reads, “On this spot in 1898, Jun Sing operated one of the first Chinese laundries #goldmountain #金山”.

In this instance, the hashtag works from an insider’s point of view, being the moniker that Chinese immigrants gave to America in the nineteenth century.

Rather than use the stuffy, formal language endemic to traditional monuments, we chose to use vernacular wording more

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Using a sgraffito technique, Ayumi carved out letters in clay, which were digitally scanned, and then used to create a custom stamp for each brick.

fronts, so that the words can be caught from either direction. It’s no coincidence that the second numbered brick reads, “On this spot, every year, Ghassan Hassoon celebrates becoming a U.S. citizen #newmainer.” We live on layers and layers of history. Through this project, we underscore the diversity of Portland and how meaningful this neighborhood is to all the individuals and groups of people who have lived here for more than four hundred years.

We hope the Portland Brick Project will be reimagined and replicated in other cities as anti-monumental monuments to everyday citizens. As a potter, I feel that the transformation of clay to brick adds a crucial layer of complexity to the project.

The humor, poignancy, and specificity of the stories make it successful and highlight what we love about our city.

BIO Ayumi Horie is a studio potter in Portland, Maine.

In 2015 she was named a Distinguished Fellow in Crafts by United States Artists. She runs Pots In Action, a global curatorial project on Instagram. She has served on the Archie Bray Foundation board and is currently on the American Craft Council board. portlandbrick.org portlandbrick@gmail.com

Studio Potter

in to accommodate rail lines, and Commercial Street was constructed. Long ago immigrants disembarked from ships docked in the harbor, and walked up India Street; today, this spot serves as a gateway to the city for the thousands of visitors from cruise ships every summer.

The bricks are numbered, with the first one reading, “All of these spots are on Wabanaki land,” a pivotal and too-often-forgotten fact about whose place this first was. Given all the recent political jockeying around issues concerning immigrants and refugees, we rarely look back far enough in our country’s history to see the shakiness of our own entitlement to citizenship.

All the other phrases begin with, “On this spot in . . .” or “On this spot every. . .” This introductory phrase sits perpendicular to the rest of the sentence and to the building

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in line with those we want to honor and the contemporary audience that we want to affect. With the sentence, “On this spot in 1956, Priscilla and Loretta’s shoes could be heard click clacking on their way to church,” we hoped to evoke a specific image and a second sense in order to paint a more holistic picture of the neighborhood.

(India Street was a fairly noisy neighborhood because of the nearby railroad tracks and the Crosby Laughlin Foundry, which manufactured heavy marine equipment.)

“On this spot in 2014, 1 snowy owl took up residence #grandtrunkrrblg #pigeonsupper” reads another brick, the number “1” being a less formal, more appropriate solution than “one.” Composed in the great tradition of Twitter and Instagram, #pigeonsupper connotes a well-fed owl.

Composing each phrase was a linguistic challenge that Elise and I worked on. Which word would stand alone, which word or words made large? What might catch someone’s eye as they walked down the street?

Among the largest words are “lost,” “elephants,” and #celebrates.” Who wouldn’t stop to find out more? Our intention was for the bricks to function like shiny coins noticed out of the corner of one’s eye, or twenty-dollar bills found on a sidewalk, turning a so-so day into a lucky and thoughtful one. Some people will come across the bricks as visitors to the city; others will come to regard the bricks as reliable old friends who age and weather with each winter that passes.

The largest cluster of bricks is installed at the intersection of India and Commercial Streets. At one time, India Street ended on a point of land that jutted out between two coves, but in the 1850s, the coves were filled

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Tales

OF A

RED CLAY * RAMBLER *

BEN CARTER

NI NA HOL E

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JACQ UES K AUF F MAN

IN

P. 56

Conversation

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M ARK PH A R I S

W ITH :

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My role as the interviewer is to cast a line of deliciously loaded questions, hoping the person sitting across from me grabs the hook. The process is exhilarating but painfully organic.”

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INTERVIEWS CONDUCTED AND INTRODUCED

BY BEN CARTER, TRANSCRIBED BY HEATHER WANG, AND EDITED BY ELENOR WILSON

Conducting a long-form interview is a pursuit full of duality. Both parties need to be focused and casual, open and self-reflective, expectant and flexible, all the while embracing the fact that nothing special might happen. It’s a lot like fishing. My role as the interviewer is to cast a line of deliciously loaded questions, hoping the person sitting across from me grabs the hook. The process is exhilarating but painfully organic, with many dead ends and redirections within each conversation.

I try to push the pulse of the dialogue by presenting the artist with topics that might feel like new ground to them. Many interviewees fall back on the nostalgia of their biographies. Documenting their lives is important to me, but I’m most interested in directing their standard biography off-road into creative territory that neither they nor I yet fully understand. I want to present my listeners with

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genuine moments of discovery that reveal new understandings about the artists’ lives and the work they do.

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The excerpts presented in this article originate from full-length episodes of the Tales of a Red Clay Rambler podcast. Since the show started in 2012, I have conducted about 150 interviews with designers, makers, and collectors from ten countries. Studio Potter editor Elenor Wilson thoughtfully chose and edited these particular interviews because they address architecture as an aesthetic influence. All three of the master artists included investigate architectural structure, space, and scale in their ceramic work. Danish artist Nina Hole and French artist Jacques Kaufmann both use basic ceramic units to build complex monolithic works that exist in large outdoor spaces. American artist Mark Pharis works on a smaller scale, using CAD to design hand-built objects that are better suited for domestic spaces.

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Ben Carter

Ben Carter, 2016. Photograph by Tim Robinson, courtesy of Voyager Press.

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Mark Pharis during his interview by Ben Carter.

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MARK PHARIS

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I interviewed Mark Pharis in his home outside River Falls, Wisconsin, in the spring of 2015. I was in the area visiting artists connected with the St. Croix Valley Potters Tour, of which he has been a regular participant for many years. Known for his striking geometric vessels, Pharis has developed a system for slab-building soft forms using templates and computer-aided drafting. In this excerpt, we talk about his transition to hand-building and the need to understand the role of “inside hand” in creating volume in a form. In addition to being a studio artist, Pharis is an art professor at the University of Minnesota, where he has been teaching since 1985.

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BC: Would you talk about why you started to hand-build, in terms of developing an individual voice?

MP: I had been making some teapots and cov-

ered jars that were altered on the wheel, and then I shaved them completely so that there wasn’t a throwing mark on the outside. Once I started to make those a little bit larger, I thought, “There’s no evidence of throwing here, visually, except on the inside.” They weren’t pots that were about insides. They were pots that were all about outsides and form, not necessarily decoration or surface or painting.

I very gradually started to work with slabs and tried to figure out a way of measuring and holding form. That led to making things with patterns or using patterns as a means of making shape and volume.

BC: Can you describe, very basically, those early processes of working with a flat pattern, then animating the object around a volume?

MP: I had been throwing some – if you look

at them from the top – diamond-shaped vases. They were two-sided, wider and flatter than they were deep. I made one quarter of that shape into a pattern that, if I had four of those, could make this volumetric, diamond-shaped vase. I had the thrown objects already, so it was a matter of just figuring out how to make a flat shape that would make the volumetric shape.

That was pretty easy, but then I wanted to make forms that had more complexity in profile and volume. The process got murky pretty quickly. I spent a lot of time, just trial and error, making things in two dimensions, then forming them into three dimensions. I should’ve gone to a library earlier. [laughter] Because the information is out there. It’s not that the world hadn’t made patterns before; it’s just that I didn’t know about it.

When you start to see something, and you become passionate about it or deeply interested in it, you begin to see it everywhere. It’s already there in the world in some form, or there’s something analogous. If you’re open to

intuition probably isn’t part of directly. For example, you know that a circle is round.

And then there’s the intuitive world that lets you draw a circle with an interesting tool, and you give it some emotional credibility because you like the way the line wiggles, or its thickness or whatever. [laughs] So I’m sure there’s a reservoir of stuff we all draw on, but because we’re different people, we see different things in the world.

BC: And so, when you found those manualsMP: Foundry patterns and sewing and

tin-smithing are all interrelated. The math is kind of the same, and at its core it’s pretty basic. It doesn’t even really have to be math, but once I started to do some of this, I needed a little math. Then I understood how I might have taught plane geometry differently if I had been teaching it at that time. It was always taught in the abstract. The math was in the service of the math, as opposed to the math being in the service of a product. And once the latter happened, I was interested in the math of it. I would find my way around using math any time I could, but a pragmatic relationship was really important in having it stick for me.

BC: There are mathematical principles humans are attracted to, like the Golden Mean. Have you noticed any mathematical

do a sketch or a drawing and ten years from now draw something else that will have similar proportions. So there’s something kind of embedded. It may be connected to our bodies, our physical size, the way we relate to the world; how tall, how short, how heavy, how fat. I think we end up seeing the world differently because of our physicality. So does our physicality affect the way we, you know, draw a line? Sure. I think you could roll that out in a bunch of different ways.

BC: You started off doing a lot of throwing, and as you moved to hand-building with these patterns or templates, did those proportions or the things that you find attractive about form, generally stay the same?

MP: The things that I like about form have

stayed, generally, the same. Before I totally switched, I was kind of going back and forth, and they informed one another.

There’s no doubt that throwing has informed hand-building.

An example of something that I think is important in pots, whether they’re hand-built or thrown, is the sense of an inside hand. You can feel it in thrown work, almost always – not universally always, but most of the time you can look at an object and you can sense the activity of the inside hand; a sense of tension or looseness or whatever is there. It’s not an outside-handed activity.

In hand-building, or at least working with slab, often there’s something kind of neutral about that. You don’t necessarily feel a pressure either way, or a sense of volume coming from the inside. That’s really critical for me, to create a sense that there is some kind of pressure from the inside, that it’s not all work that’s done from the outside.

BC: That softens the forms tremendously. Like this yellow teapot over here. And in that body of work is something very mechanical, and at the same time very human. I think it’s hard to strike that balance between something that feels flesh-like but also feels metal-like, or tense, or stretched.

MP: Well, that’s a good example of having

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some compression on the outside, having some fullness from the inside. In a way, that is uniquely associated with the wheel.

Rigid, slip-cast work, for instance, doesn’t have that sort of mutability of volume; a sense of plasticity.

BC: I was trained as a production potter, and there are all these rules that are kind of thrown around as if they were the truth.

But they’re usually only the truth for that specific situation you’re in. One of those is that you want to be able to have smooth, even surfaces for your slips or your glazes.

By the time that you started [creating those dry surfaces, almost like light-salt surfaces, in an electric kiln], is it because you have left doing functional pots or because you don’t believe in that “rule” anymore?

MP: I don’t think I’ve left functional pots.

I think I want to see what the edges of functional pots are about. I know what the center’s about, but knowing what the edge is about is an ongoing experiment. On the continuum of utilitarian ware, what you said about smooth matters in some instances, but in others it doesn’t matter at all. If you’ve got a cup and you’re sticking it in your mouth,

You can look at an object and you can sense the activity of the inside hand; a sense of tension or looseness.

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BC: Do you feel like intuition is somehow a recycling of cultural knowledge that the individual picks up on? Or, what do you think about intuition in your own creative process?

MP: Well, there’s the objective world, which

principles that relate to the forms that you make or the things that you like?

MP: I revisit certain proportions a lot. I might

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slipping sideways, one way or the other, you probably can find something that helps you.

I ultimately ended up with some sheet metal instructional manuals.

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Mark Pharis. Vase, 2015.

Handbuilt earthenware, terra sigallata (combinations of Newman red and XX Saggar clay), alkaline glazes with copper, Cone 04. Photographs by Peter Lee; see color versions at studiopotter.org.

it matters. But if you’ve got the outside of a vase, no one cares. And vases are in a different location; they’re usually at a distance, not in your hand. There are all these things that would be true of a cup or a plate that aren’t true of a vase, so I think you can use context as permission to do things with a vase that wouldn’t be appropriate with a cup.

has really got lots of possibilities. It doesn’t have to be anything in particular. It’s got to hold some water, and it’s got to make sense with whatever goes in it. But there are no rules around that. It’s pretty wide-open.

BC: I noticed a simple distinction between a vase of yours without flowers and a vase with flowers; it sure did make a difference to see the irregularity of the flowers coming out of something that was so evenly considered. I think the edges of the utility, as you said, are often playing with what’s organic and what is rigid.

MP: Well, “utility” is one of those words that

if you will, using a straightedge, compass, and square, for a long time. I was making a two-dimensional thing that was gonna be a three-dimensional thing, but I didn’t know what the three-dimensional thing was gonna look like. It was a guess until I’d assembled it.

Trial and error was driving me nuts because I’d get it wrong so much of the time. And I thought, there’s got to be an easier way – a way of doing this digitally.

When I started hand-building these patterns, it was 1980. And by the time I thought that there’s got to be an easier way, it was about 1997. A long time had passed in the digital world. I actually went looking for something that would unfold a form. There were plenty of CAD programs out there, but they didn’t always allow you to flip back and forth between dimensions.

I found something at the time that was called Touch 3D, made in Sweden by a guy who was boatbuilding, and also doing product design, cereal boxes and stuff like that. I got a copy and let it sit for two years to kind of age before I actually learned it.

I had some apprehension about the departure from the hand to the computer, and what was that gonna mean to me as a thrower.

Even though I’d been hand-building

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sounds like it has rigid meaning, but the meaning is really quite flexible. I think the vase-cup continuum is an example of that. I do think about those vases functioning, but a vase that functions

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BC: How and when did you start to use CAD to help design objects?

MP: I was doing patterns longhand, or analog,

a little bit, my identity was all about being somebody who could throw reasonably well. I did eventually get to the point where I figured out a few things I could do with this program and began to use it.

What I wanted to do was to be able to see the object before I made it. Before the CAD program, I was making the pattern before I could make the object. With the program, I could make the object, and it would make the patterns. I could see what I was doing much more clearly, and that was the right way to do it. I mean, we don’t pound nails anymore, we use a nail gun. That’s the right way to do it. [laughter] It’s a tool that allows you to see things you can’t see, easily, and it gives you the confidence to do something that you don’t know how to do or that you don’t have the time to do. I probably could make analog patterns of most anything, but I don’t have that kind of time; I don’t want to do it that way.

BC: I would imagine CAD allows you to make mistakes digitally, change the design, and by the time you get to the pattern, you’ve saved yourself more time in another stage of the process.

MP: That reminds me of a question you

asked earlier, which had to do with intuition.

Throwing is an intuitive act. You’re watching the form rise in your hands. You’re watching the profile of the form because you can’t see the whole form. You’re watching a piece of it. You’re intuiting when it’s done or when it’s overdone or when you need to change a surface or remove a finger mark. These are all momentary decisions. You run out of clay, the clay’s in the air, you’ve got the form, more or less, and you decide: that’s good. It all happens within a certain time frame. The

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that form A or form B was going to be fifteen percent taller and ten percent wider than the next form. I had control over all three dimensions. I could just make up a formula and plug it into the same form or the same piece and do it again and again. It’s very simple math, but it has very real consequences when it comes to making an object or creating proportions and volume.

BC: So, that teapot and this vase here are made in similar ways, but there’s a different sense of volume in each, and there’s a very different way of approaching form. Can you talk about what changed?

MP: The teapot that you’re talking about is a

don’t necessarily need to see the other side to know what it looks like.

This bent-wedge vase behind me, I don’t think of it as sculpture, but it has some sculptural considerations, in that you can’t anticipate all the form from one angle. It’s interesting how little it takes to move into that arena, in terms of creating form.

The volume of the teapot is full, and there are a lot of assembly marks, points of interest that get in the way, for me, of doing much with the surface intentionally. The vase is two planes: there’s not a lot of volume, and so it’s much more like a sheet of paper that’s standing on edge.

pot that’s viewed on profile, like lots of pots are. There’s a sense of a center line, a sense of it being two-sided: you anticipate that the other side is like the side you’re seeing, so you

BC: Because the newer work has less volume, did you start thinking more about surface, in terms of breaking up color or enhancing the planes that make the form?

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judgment is made relatively quickly, based on, more or less, the profile and a sense of surface.

Using a CAD program changed that process enormously because you don’t have the material directly in front of you. You can do it by profile if you want, making those same kinds of judgments, or you can do it mathematically. Iterations are really easy because, like Photoshop, you can copy-paste, and then suddenly you’ve got a whole new object. You can change that object, and cut and paste again. You can create gobs of iterations in a very short period of time, none of which are actually objects, but they’re on the way to being objects.

[When I started using CAD,] I could [play with proportions] more objectively, meaning I wouldn’t intuit a form, but I would decide

Studio Potter

Mark Pharis. Teapot, 2015.

Handbuilt earthenware, terra sigallata, woodash glaze with Mason stain 6600 (a chrome bearing black), Cone 04.

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Q&A

To hear the full interviews, visit talesofaredclayrambler.com or download these and others from iTunes, Stitcher, or other podcast listening services.

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MP: The lack of volume has something

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to do with having flowers in the house all the time. You can go broke [laughs] if you’ve got a vase that takes twenty to twenty-five dollars’ worth to fill every time. So I was thinking, well, I can make something that’s small and narrow and hasn’t much of an opening and get by with three tulips and probably populate two vases out of one bunch. So part of it came from wanting to make something that would look good with not much in it.

The other part was feeling modestly more comfortable with surface. It doesn’t feel like decoration to me anymore. It feels more like a painting activity. I know that’s treacherous ground, but it feels like the considerations are more architectural, or they have more to do with color-field painting.

BC: Seeing them together, they feel similar to the way that homes that are close together feel, versus the way that pots that are close together in the cupboard feel. There’s enough angularity in the way that you handle the color that they feel monumental. They don’t have this sense of being handheld or being domestic, even though they can be used in a domestic space. It’s sort of a different wheelhouse in terms of the references.

MP: Yeah, I’ve hung around an architect

for most of my life. I was interested in architecture before Wayne [Branum], but got more interested after we started sharing a working space. Then there’s the artist Giorgio Morandi, who’s kind of a minimalist in many ways, in color field relationships, and also Luis Barragán, the Mexican landscape architect who’s using stucco, and others. All of their work seems really close to me in some ways.

March 12, 2016

June 15, 2016

Another Great SP, and I really liked the "2 degrees C" analogy. I remember reading the '74 issue and thinking at the time we cannot count on governments to do this, we must do it ourselves. Thanks for reinforcing that reality. I also want to say that while all the articles were very timely, informative and inspiring, "The Canadian Mantra: Reuse, Repurpose, and Recycle!" by Maryann Steggles really struck a chord with me.

In the early 70s I built my studio using mostly repurposed materials.

(It lasted almost forty years and only cost about $125 – mostly for nails, insulation, and roofing materials). Little did I understand that I was just one of many who was a part of the "movement" at the time. For those interested, there are still a lot of wonderful resources available on the subject of sustainable building (sadly many are out of print):

I returned from Vietnam (War 1965-1975) in June 1970 being away from making pots for a year or more to work in the studio of Abraham Cotin in Milwaukie, WI until May of ’72. My wife (Nancy) and I moved to Reeds Spring, MO and started Omega Pottery Shop.

Mine is a one-person studio/sales gallery, another roadside aattraction in the Missouri Ozarks. Within 50 miles I count at least 25 potters of all stripes, some with galleries. Most are road warriors doing art fairs.

In an even more rapidly changing retail environment keeping a current awareness is difficult. Studio Potter Magazine still fills that void. I miss the stories of regional potteries and potters as a group.

Don’t turn the publication into a ‘how to do it’. I approach pottery as my art medium of choice, and not as a means to an end, to make mass quantities of production pottery.

TheShelterBlog.com Shelter, Lloyd Kahn Homework: Handbuilt Shelter , Lloyd Kahn Builders of the Pacific Coast, Lloyd Kahn Tiny Homes, Simple Shelter, Lloyd Kahn Handmade Houses, Richard Olsen The Craftsman Builder, Art Boericke & Barry Shapiro Handmade Houses, Art Boericke & Barry Shapiro Craftsman of Necessity, Christopher Williams Woodstock Handmade Houses, Robert Haney et al. ...and these are just a few.

I'm already anticipating the "Function/Architecture" issue.

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Chuck (Lawhon)

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June 3, 2016 Dear Elenor, Thought I would write you a short note to tell you how much better the last couple of issues of Studio Potter have gotten. $70 is a lot to spend on a subscription and I was seriously considering not re-subscribing last year.

Think I am a ‘charter’ subscriber and I always look forward to the arrival of the latest copy. I usually read it from cover to cover. After the change in focus & editors [in the early 2000s] I was really turned off by the content. Too much “art-speak” and B.S. I had to force myself to read an article, then was disappointed. Probably because I’m a functional potter who strives to make well-made pots that do what they’re supposed to do, I don’t need or seek the accolades of the “art” world and don’t want to use too many exemplifiers and adjectives to validate my existence.

Vol. 44.1 is a step in the right direction. I didn’t devour it immediately, but I have read the whole thing. Keep getting better.

Best regards, Bill Selanders

Mark Oehler

March 14, 2016 Hello, The new website is lovely. Please tell your team that they did a wonderful job.

I do have a suggestion to make: Archive cover thumbnails need captions or labels so that we know which issue is which.

I really really love the site. It's just gorgeous. I know how hard it is to do site overhauls but your team really pulled this one off beautifully.

Thanks, Kim Kimberli Munkres

What are your thoughts?

Contact the editor: editor@studiopotter.org PO Box 1365 Northampton, MA 01061-1365 Social Media: Comment on our Facebook page, Instagram feed, or tweet @thestudiopotter

Support Opportunities STUDIO POTTER WELCOMES WRITING ON

WOMEN Winter/Spring 2017 issue

25 years has passed since SP dedicated an entire issue to women working in ceramics.

Much has changed, and we think its time to revisit both contemporary and historical perspectives on the subject. We invite you to contribute your voice. Of particular interest are articles that shed new light on womens' contributions to the field and lesser-known, yet influential figures in the field, or that provide a unique view of the lives of women ceramists working now.

Supporting Studio Potter directly benefits our readers, who are a part of your communities and businesses, and subsidizes our publishing budget as an independent nonprofit. Learn more about all of our support opportunities, including underwriting, organizational memberships, partnerships, and about specific fundraising efforts such as archive development, author support, and capacity building, at studiopotter.org/support.

NORTHERN CLAY CENTER

For guidelines contact: editor@studiopotter.org

Deadline for submissions: October 1, 2016.

2424 Franklin Avenue East, Minneapolis, MN 55406 | (612) 339-8007 nccinfo@northernclaycenter.org | www.northernclaycenter.org

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Studio Potter

Featuring the American Pottery Festival, NCC’s 18th annual fundraising benefit and celebration of the art of the pot, as well as guest artist workshops, exhibitions, online shopping, and residencies.

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We help people make great things!

SKUTT CERAMIC PRODUCTS INC.

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

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

CERAMICS: ART AND PERCEPTION THE ORIGINAL HI ROLLER

CERAMICS TECHNICAL

The best tools... are well engineered are easier to use get better results last longer hold their value and ultimately cost the least.

Two international journals for everyone interested in the ceramic arts. Use Promo Code SP2015 for a 10% discount on print subscriptions.

23 North Scott St. - Ste. 19, Sheridan, Wyoming 82801, US 1ceramicart@gmail.com | (307) 675-1056 | ceramicart.com.au

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

WHEELS & EQUIPMENT

6060 Guion Road, Indianapolis, IN 46254 I salessupport@amaco.com (800) 374-1600 I brentwheels.com

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

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

JUSTIN ROTHSHANK rothshank.com

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

EUTECTIC GALLERY Eutectic Gallery features both rising and established contemporary ceramic artists as we explore the relationship between process, concept, and how the public interacts with the finished work.

1930 NE Oregon St., Portland, OR 97232 | brett@eutecticgallery.com (503)-974-6518 | instagram: @Eutectic_Gallery | eutecticgallery.com

HAYNE BAYLESS SIDEWAYS STUDIO Holiday Studio Sale Nov. 26-27, Dec. 3-4, and other studio visits by appointment.

Pottery, textiles, lamps, jewelry, prints, paintings.

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

THE BARN POTTERY

ARTAXIS

Kimberly Sheerin and Hollis Engley make functional pottery in Pocasset village on the western shore of Cape Cod. The gallery is open every day. Kimberly teaches adults yearround, and offers summer children’s classes.

Please visit us when you’re on Cape Cod.

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

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

Wood Fire Conference Oct. 6-8, 2016 Waubonsee Community College Sugar Grove, IL (45 miles west of Chicago)

Learn more and register at www.waubonsee.edu/woodfire

CORNELL STUDIO SUPPLY Owned and operated by potters for potters.

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

8290 North Dixie Drive, Dayton, OH 45414 | cornellstudiosupply@gmail.com (937) 454-0357 | cornellstudiosupply.com

Closing Lecture by Chris Gustin

Route 47 at Waubonsee Drive, Sugar Grove, IL 60554 | ceramics@waubonsee.edu (630) 466-7900, ext. 2505 | waubonsee.edu/ceramics

WAUBONSEE COMMUNITY COLLEGE Led by Associate Professor Doug Jeppesen, Waubonsee’s ceramics program has a reputation for quality. A highlight of the program is the 5,400-square-foot exterior kiln yard, which houses five wood kilns, including a unique Anagama.

Yarrobil Magazine by Mansfield Ceramics is a quarterly magazine from Sydney, Australia that focuses on contemporary ceramic art and culture. It is written by ceramic artists and art critics featuring ceramists from around the globe. It contains scholarly articles on current issues and provides critical commentary alongside biographic, ethnographic and pictorial essays. Yarrobil encourages the widest possible range of voices from practising ceramists, academics, professional writers and art critics on subjects important to ceramics and thus provides a platform for discourse, dialogue and debate about ideas important to ceramists.

MANSFIELD CERAMICS is making an indelible mark through four distinct operations:

• Mansfield Gallery

Represents and exhibits ceramic artists in Sydney, Australia.

• Yarrobil Magazine

A quarterly publication focusing on contemporary ceramic art and culture.

12 month subscription (4 issues) AUD $64 USD $45 GBP £33 EURO €40 NZD $70

www.yarrobil.com/shop

• Clay Gulgong Austra-

10% OFF FOR STUDIO POTTER MEMBERS

• Morning View

Subscribe before 30 August to receive discount.

Use the code ‘studiopotter’ at check-out.

Postage included.

lia’s great international ceramics festival.

A world-renowned ceramics studio and artist residency in Gulgong, Australia.

mansfieldceramics.com

Yarrobil Tba

4 03

AUS $19 US $15 GBP 10

$20 Yarrobil MagazineNZ Mansfield Ceramics | Issue 3, 2016

9 772204 922006

EURO 13

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

Love one?

Get the other one for less.

BAILEY POTTERY EQUIPMENT

SMITH-SHARPE FIRE BRICK SUPPLY

Bailey builds superior energy efficient gas and electric kilns. We pride ourselves on excellent customer service and great prices on thousands of items for the pottery studio and classroom.

Pictured: Dana Shearin and Jill Birschbach at Midwest Clay Guild.

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.

2129 Broadway St. NE, Minneapolis, MN 55413 | (866) 545-6743 kilnshelf.com | Photo: Advancer © shelves in Warren MacKenzie’s Kiln.

+ MEMBERS OF THE AMERICAN CRAFT COUNCIL receive a $20 discount on a membership to Studio Potter. studiopotter.org/shop

MEMBERS OF STUDIO POTTER receive an $11 discount on an American Craft Council membership. Enter ACCSP16 at craftcouncil.org/membership/standard

FRIENDS OF

Studio Potter 6/2015 - 6/2016

We express our deepest gratitude to the following, and those who chose to remain anonymous, for their generosity.

Elise Hauenstein & Norm Abram Daniel Anderson Peg Astarita Posey Bacopoulos John Clark & Elizabeth Barringer Mary Barringer Delphine Barringer-Mills Bruce Barry Rev. Dr. Constance M. Baugh Hayne Bayless Fumi Beppu David Beumee Francesca Bini Bichisecchi Susan Bogen Joseph Bova William R. Bowser Lucy Breslin Robert Briscoe Sue Browdy E. John Bullard John A Burkholder Kaye Camille Byrd Kris Byrd Rev. Paul F. Campbell Molly Cantor Aurore Chabot

Paul Chaleff Michael Chappell Elizabeth Cohen Mark Coppos Louise A. Cort Mark Cortright Christina Cowan Greg Crowe Benjamin Eberle Cilista Eberle Roy Eddey Carol Eddy Raymon Elozua Gerald & Sandra Eskin Anne Fallis Alice H. Federico Christopher Frechette Barbara Frey Julia Galloway Donald McNeill & Emily Galusha Roberta Gillilan Michele Ginouves Cheryl Goins Silvie Granatelli Marcia Halperin Doug Hanson Terry Hass Fred Herbst Anna Maria Calluori Holcombe Lynne Horning Marilyn Iarusso Ahna Iredale Marlene K. Jack Sarah Jaeger David & Diane Jenkins Brian R. Jones James Keville Levin Kinsey Jim Kolva

Dr. Clayton D. Lanphear III Mary Law Eric Lawrence Sunny Leinhart Charlotte Lindley Martin Nancy Magnusson Dawn Malcolm Jeff Manfredi Paula Marian Kim Kirchman Mark Fehl Virginia Marsh David McBeth Tim McCosker Jon McMillan Michael McMillan Robert McWilliams Mary & Joe Molinaro Ellen & Gerard Mulligan Lorie Nelson Kathleen Nolan Richard Notkin Winnie Owens-Hart Margaret Pepper Fluke John Quimby Tim Reece Susan Reeder Moss Joan Resnikoff Crystal A. Ribich Guy Rich Sue Ricklefs Russ Roeller Steven Rolf Deborah Rosenbloom Mariana Roumell-Gasteyer Tim Rowan Karen Sage Charles Salvaterra Patricia Savignac Jan Schachter

Karen Schwartz Barbara Sevigney Anat Shiftan Peter Sohngen Rebecca Sparks Jim Spevak Suzanne Staubach Pamela Nagley Stevenson Michael Strand Josh Teplitzky Micah Thanhauser Don Thomas Jack Troy Ann Tsubota Ursula Vann Martha Vida Warren Frederick & Catherine White Linda Shusterman & Alan Willoughby Nancy Wirth Marie Woo H. David Woodin George & Betty Woodman Maureen Mills & Steven Zoldak FOUNDATIONS Haymarket People’s Fund The Seth Sprague Educational and Charitable Foundation Tile Heritage Foundation Mazal Foundation CORPORATIONS Bailey Pottery Equipment Corp.

Highwater Clays, Inc. IN KIND DONORS AKAR Gallery and the 120 potters who donated cups the Yunomi Invitational fundraiser Lynn Gervens and Mudflat Pottery School

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