The Last Post

I'm going to stop writing this blog. It feels out of date, and I often have nothing to say or share. Feels like an end. Thank you for reading.

Traditional vs. studio potters

I've been in India the last few weeks. Generally when I travel, I like to visit potters. Couldn't figure out how to do that there. There are still traditional potters, making standardized ware for practical use. I say a few vendors by the roadside, mostly selling large round unglazed pots, maybe water containers. And I've heard of pottery neighborhoods in city slums, where people  have moved together from pottery-making villages and resumed their pottery businesses.

I thought there were few studio potters, art potters. I'm not sure. I did not find any. On the other hand, several years ago in San Diego, I heard a studio potter from India talk about her work, and her uneasy relationship with the traditional potters. She wanted to encourage them to keep the work and tradition going, as a national treasure. At the same time, she knew it was a low-valued  village craft, and low paid. How could she succeed as an artist and encourage people not to switch to some better paid work to support their families and be respected?

And in a Mumbai newspaper, I saw an article about an award winning studio potter.

There is both, evidently. In many other countries with continuing pottery traditions, the potters expand their markets to hotels and restaurants and tourists, and some traditional makers are appreciated as artists. Perhaps that is beginning in India. I get the impression though that the poor are very poor and cut off from opportunity, and that village knowledge is not much respected in cities. Not modern, not sophisticated, low tech. What baggage we carry!

Sylvie Enjalbert Lives in Her Pots

In the October Ceramics Monthly, there's an article about Sylvie Enjalbert, by Lucie Brisson. That's usual; they often profile a potter/ceramic artist, or several, in an issue. But I found this article very moving.

 She finds her life as a potter quite separate from her previous way of life. I am moved by the continuity. "In the early 2000s she was an avid mountaineer and paraglider living and working in the tourism industry in the Atacama desert of Northern Chile...a long-felt desire to be creative with her hands caught up with her and she found herself enrolled in a local pottery workshop where she learned coiling. Clay turned out to be a powerful encounter in the breathtaking, arid landscape of sand and adobe houses." She let herself follow an internal push to where she wants to go, then and since: "Now I keep getting closer and closer to who I think I am, thanks to clay." This is wonderful and inspiring, her intuitive openness and patience. Perhaps it didn't have to be clay that led her, but it is. For me, too.

I am moved by her quietness, the more so because I read the article after returning from a craft sale, which is social, noisy and oriented to selling. "'I came back to the basics: my hands, a few wooden tools, the quiet, the slow working pace. '" It is an achievement to keep that going in the modern world.

And "the sources for her work include 'all the hands that have made things before mine...This is what moves me. Humanity.'" Oh, yes.

""My working motions were short and tight." Given an opportunity to make big pots, "'Suddenly I opened up...Involving my whole body was such pleasure.'" She is still an athlete.

And I would call hers desert pots.  It all connects, beautifully.

I like many of her pots, the minimalism, the beautiful lines.

And so I am moved by this description of her working and what she says about it. Is this really her, or am I projecting an image I like? I don't know. Her website is as quiet and private as she seems, and I've never met her. True or imagined, I find her story impressive and inspiring.

sylvie-enjalbert.com

Going to Escondido; Want to Come?

Hello.

 On Sunday, October 20, I will be at the Grand Avenue Festival in Escondido, 9 to 5, on Grand Ave. between Broadway and Kalmia. Come stop for a seat and shade if you are there. This is my first time there,so I don't know what it is like. Looking forward to it. New pots, of course, and some old ones.

Eye Training

We all learn to make pottery as a handcraft, needing training for the makers' hands. True, of course. To the extent that it is also art, or that the potter wants to make beautiful pots, it takes eye training too.

These days I am watching nature's design work to train my eyes to see form, proportion, color combination...

I see beauty, but also a kind of inevitability. This plant can grow only this way, and has to produce only this beauty.

Perhaps pottery made in a tradition also must look as it comes out traditionally, and feel inevitable.

From Traditional West African Pottery Kuli Village, by Terry deBardelaben.


 I work as a studio potter in the US, where it is all open-ended, where we can borrow from everyone who allows us to, where creativity and inventiveness are valued.  How do we come up with pots that are so right they are inevitable? We need to develop a quality of seeing that sees rightness.

By Heesoo Lee. How did she see that edge?

I'm working on it.

What a pleasure.

Kate Tremel, oh, wow!

Look at this! I just stumbled over this advertising page, in the latest Ceramics Monthly. And I stopped reading, stopped breathing, and my eyes popped. Ooh!

This is a response to art, to the pure beauty of the thing.  It's marvelous, the form, the thoughtful asymmetry, the contained looseness, the organic references, the quiet of it. Oh, and the technical quality.

Who would check if it is a functional pot? But that is what she makes, and the function matters to her. Even better.

It is in all ways to my taste, checks all my aesthetic boxes.

And then I like her attitude towards making pottery (quotes from her website):

"My interest in the vessel is rooted in its relationship to the body...getting dirty is important."

"I have always liked the connection to the history of makers that ceramics affords."

"My fascination with forms in nature and the everyday...nature of pottery provides me with the inspiration for a quiet meditation on the beauty of simple things."

Yes!! Check it out. katetremel.com

Of Course Salt and Pepper Shakers are Cute!

I bought this one several months ago, from Ely, in Heraklion, in Crete.

 

Definitely cute, and oh, wow, the cork doesn't have to be on the bottom. That has put me off making shakers: how do I know how far the cork will stick out, to make a bottom that sits flat? Clearly, I made myself unnecessary difficulty with that idea.

Since then, I've made several others. They are just out of the firing and available to try.

Aah, they work. That's fun with something new. My cutest are definitely the accidental ghosts.

I didn't realize they were people until I made the pouring holes and saw faces. Ghosts in sheets, of course, and I glazed them white.

But Ely's is best. The cork as flirty tail wins the cuteness contest.

Art in the Village

as well as everywhere else.

Hello.

I'll be at Art in the Village on Sunday, in Carlsbad. Stop by if you like. There's lots to see!

That's Grand Avenue, downtown Carlsbad, cool and coastal. I'll offer you a chair in the shade.

Copying Ancient Greece

In the archeology museum in Heraklion, Crete, I saw this pitcher. I don't remember how old it is, but certainly from some time in ancient Greece. Could I make it, or a reasonable approximation?

It's a technical challenge, to try to reconstruct what someone did, just from a side view on a museum shelf. I can't call and ask the potter. It's also an effort to walk in someone's shoes, to understand what he (probably) did and considered normal. And it's a try to make something I like.

This pitcher has a nice shape, a spout like nothing I've ever seen before, and requires a tricky cutting and assembly job. Ancient Greek pottery is famous for its painting, but also is very complex in form, and so in making. This is a relatively simple piece for them.

My first try was really about making the parts and assembling them. Nah, looks more like those Italian espresso pots.

So I measured the picture to get the proportions right and tried again.

Not quite right. I found it hard to get enough width near the base, after that neat lift, and then collar in enough for the "waist".  The top is a bowl, but, again, the proportions are hard to produce. A lot is cut out for the shape of the top section, and for the spout.

I've always thought of and learned to make spouts that are a protruding  angle. This is a cut out arc.

 I had to make the pot to find out if it pours and keeps control. It does, very neatly, so long as you don't pour too fast; that lets the liquid flow around the spout as well. And will those points just break off easily?

The handle works better unglazed, like the Greek pot. These days we make wider, flatter handles usually, with a rectangular, rather than round cross-section:

 The round handle, with a glossy glaze, is really slippery, and the full pot is hard to hold.

A fun project. In some way, it's difficult  -- they were skilled potters. In some ways it works fine, and offers an alternative to what we usually do. In other aspects, I prefer our way. Well, of course.

Wild Stuff

Look at this!

It's work by Masaomi Yasunaga, a Japanese ceramic artist. He trained in and joined an approach to ceramics which is all about sculpture, in opposition to functional pottery.

 There's an exhibit, only this week, at Nonaka-Hill  in Los Angeles. Pictures are as close as I'll get to  it, but it's fascinating. The individual pieces don't grab me quite so much, as it is not at all my usual taste.

 But the combination, in this exhibit! Pieces on gravel, and the whole makes me think of objects retrieved from ancient shipwrecks.

That's odd, given the intent to make anti-traditional pots. His contemporary work is made of glaze; that's the material, not the surface covering. The only clay involved is that in the glaze. Because it melts in the kiln, the glaze is shaped in sand or earth forms, which go into the kiln, and the pots uncovered, like an archeological dig, after firing. So very new, and referring to very old things.

He also makes dishes, sold at art prices. I like them, with far less of a jolt to my ideas and feelings.

This is wonderful -- the pots, the ideas, the exhibit design, the shake-up for me.

Hands Across the Distance

In my college alumnae magazine, there's a short article about a student's work experience, recording items in "the Penn Museum's Near Eastern collections. Kennan photographed objects, some dating back to 5000 BCE.

A high point? "'A piece of pottery that still had a little fingerprint on it from the person who made it...That was amazing.'"Bryn Mawr, spring 2019)
. .
I get shivers at the thought of a touch with someone 5000 years ago, maybe, and around the world.

The student's experience reminds me how much pottery is about touch. First it's the maker's hands touching clay and the way the clay shapes itself to what our hands do.

Then the touch of the pot's user. These are the common connections of maker and user through the pot.

I tend to make marks on pots with tools, like these carved designs

or the spirals I put on the bottom of almost everything.

But what if it is fingerprints? Hands make a much more intimate touch.

The lines across this jar are throwing marks, fingers held on the pot as the wheel turns and the pot is shaped.

And what if the mark of people crosses history, or even prehistory? Besides the fingerprints on ancient pots, there are footprints in some of the painted caves in France and Italy, at least. And much older ones, where people and pre-humans walked in sand or mud that became stone with the prints still there. Ooh!

Medieval Skills in Demand!

I love it.

A disastrous fire in the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris destroyed the roof and a tower and maybe weakened other parts of the structure.

A week ago, an article in the Los Angeles Times: "A medieval role model for Notre Dame rebuild", suggests people could rebuild the 12th century roof using materials, tools and techniques from the time the original was built. How do we have access to those tools and techniques?

Of course, because there are people engaged in, passionate about, everything. In this case, there is a fantasy castle build going on a couple of hours away from Paris. With an imaginary owner and story, a 13th century castle is being built, as accurately as possible, with researchers, carpenters, masons...learning, reinventing, and practicing medieval building skills. They are offering their knowledge, labor and training for repairing Notre Dame.

There is something encouraging and delightful about this project, the live past. To a certain extent it is historical play, like reenactments. What delights me is the sudden practicality of this esoteric hobby. Now it is needed, in the contemporary world. (Evidently, in France with all its medieval monuments, these skills are always needed for repair and maintenance, so it is not really sudden.)

And I go directly to pottery making by hand. It was a practical skill set in the past, and still is in some less industrialized places. But could potters be needed, here and now?

Quiet Pots

In the Flow Gallery a few weeks ago, in London, I had an inspiring conversation with one of the gallery staff. I think it was Celia Dawson. She described the gallery's bent towards "quiet pots", the owner's taste. Of course the gallery reflects the owner's taste, as well as what sells successfully. My taste too; what a pleasure to find a curated collection just for me/us.

It's not all ceramics, though that's their emphasis. Wonderful art basketry,  a bit of jewelry. Mostly neutral colors, simple elegant forms, yum.

And why I am not getting any screen shots? Have a look:flowgallery.co.uk

I Was in London Last Week

and isn't that fun to say! Actually I get to London every 2-3 years, and have built up a set of favorite galleries I go to, for inspiring pottery. For your next trip, they are

Contemporary Ceramics Centre
Flow Gallery
Contemporary Applied Arts

This time, just from looking for ceramic events while I was there, I discovered a new marvel. This is Bridget Macklin's work. Check out bridgetmacklin.wordpress.com.

 It's wonderful and improbable. She 's engaged with clay as earth, and earth as whatever mixes with soil. She thinks of it as a focus on geology, but it seems to me more about the mix of things in the earth's surface. To fine porcelain clay, she adds elements she picks up, in places meaningful to her. It's not supposed to be possible to mix ingredients with very different amounts and rates of expansion and contraction under the heat of firing, even under the stress of drying a pot. The always-predicted results are cracked, sometimes exploded pots. She agrees, and some of hers do crack, BUT! Here they are.

 She's got crumbled colored earths mixed in, but also big chunks of rocks, bricks maybe,  whatever she finds. Not possible, but successful. That's a marvel in itself.

And beautiful and sensitive. Sometimes she adds decal images, from photos she takes in the places where she finds her additives.

 Pots very much in and from a place. I love it.

I met her and her work in this exhibit, and the talk with the artists.

 All three (Bridget Macklin, Desa Philippi, Camilla Webb Carter) are real artists, with well-made, thoughtful work that expresses something they want to say and comes intuitively from their experience and choice. But only one really grabs me, that strange thing about taste. The others make pieces that are attractive, and serious; Bridget Macklin's pieces are compelling for me. 


What is in the earth around us anyway? I can't resist adding this picture, the ground on Delos, a Greek island that went, in the unpleasant reality of long history, from sacred site to big port city to declining village to pirate' hideout to national park and sort of sacred archeological treasure. Look! The tan colored bits are broken pottery, everywhere!