Ceramic Art and Culture Blog by Jill Foote-Hutton

Testing Technology--It's New to Me

2011-11-05T13:53:00.001-07:00

This is a test
This January I'm going to Denmark to embark on a project in a media I have practically no experience in whatsoever! In preparation for the journey, I've applied for four grants. Two have already turned me down. Currently the proposed project is operating out of, what I like to call, The Sweet Michael/Red Lodge Ales Grant. The project involves recording interviews and eventually editing them in a 45 minute loop. WHEW! The iPad2 is here. Garageband is downloaded. I can edit, but it sure isn't elegant. I can burn the track to a CD from my iTunes library and now I've figured out how to embed HTML code for an audio file on youtube. The entire process may sound easy to some of you technophiles out there, but as a person who spent the last three hours trying to figure out how to post an audio file to my blog this is a small victory for me. Enjoy my minor strides as you like.

Matt Wilt @ Red Lodge Clay Center Studio

2011-11-01T18:10:00.000-07:00

Halloween weekend was the scene of another free demonstration workshop at Red Lodge Clay Center. Matt Wilt greeted his audience with informative candor, happy to put his knowledge and experience behind the mission of sharing the importance of art in everyday life. The audience came from as far as North Dakota to share in the experience and, like most ceramic demonstrations, more than technique was shared in the conversations surrounding the demonstration.

It is easy to see the connectivity between individual artists in ceramics. How does one get past the insular nature of academic circles? How does one expand an audience base without alienating current clientele? It is a difficult question, but perhaps it is an insignificant question. Wilt is earnest and thorough, proof that working artists are not all irrational ghosts of Pollock. The very tone of his voice resonates with the integrity found in his work. It is reassuring.

"It only took a hundred years to get over the urinal in the gallery," Wilt quips. Workshops are great for delivering jewels like this. It is a sentiment which unintentionally and unknowingly may liberate someone in the observant audience.

The intense silence of certain moments in workshops is soothing. The demonstrator is focused. The audience is rapt. The electricity of the studio hums. Cameras click. It's a wonder anyone breaks the silence to ask a question. "My inclination prior to graduate school was to rough something in and not pay attention to minute details, but now it is almost pavlovian to slow down and refine the objects I'm making."

“Matt can you talk about your accident rate?” finally breaks the spell.

“I can but I'd rather not,” Matt replies with a smile.

The inquiry turned in to another opportunity to let everyone know that we all have to deal with failure. Wilt says he has about 60%success rate, but it always comes back to repetition of tasks and forms. Teapots now have a higher success rate, but when he pushes the material the success number lowers. The pithy query opened the conversation up to the hard truth we must all face: sometimes it's easier to start over.

Turns out the question came from the contrast observed between Voulkos and Wilt. The latter worked embracing the frailty of the material, accepting cracking as part of the aesthetics of the process. Wilt acknowledges he enjoys looking at work that successfully showcases such frailties, but cannot embrace those things in his own aesthetic. Instead he has embraced the sometimes-necessary use of epoxy, becoming familiar enough with the adhesive to hide it. All the while he admires Arthur Gonzales’ ability to hide nothing.

A nugget of wisdom repeatedly bubbling to the top of Wilt’s conversation was to reinforce "the devil is in the details". He encouraged the audience to consider--if, as makers, we will pay enough attention to the technical details the bigger picture will take care of itself.

When asked about who he looked to for inspiration he listed Chris Staley and Arthur Gonzales among the living. However, it was when he talked about visiting Hans Coper's collection that he revealed the romantic conversation so many makers have with objects of hallowed stature. The audience had a chance to peek at reality coming face-to-face with distant perceptions of our imaginings. Wilt talked of seeing objects he perceived as large being intimate and the assumed intimate forms swelling with grand volume. But perhaps most significant, was his assumption that the work would be light and effortlessly thrown. The reality of Coper’s objects was massiveness in energy and form. Wilt still marveled, "They felt just like they looked."

Recognition of the magic in formal work is part of the sublime experience any maker or patron pursues. There was indeed attention to details, a trait Wilt consistently seeks in his own practice, but the details he described were not solely clinical. Visceral rendering where technique and academic considerations are absorbed and forgotten is where form comes to life.

Toward the end of the demonstration Tom Bartel, a current short-term resident at Red Lodge Clay Center, and Wilt began to discuss the take away benefits of working in the constraints workshops provide. It seems the compression of time encourages risks and has opened both makers up to new discoveries. Wilt gave a nod to Tom Waits and his work in the eighties, acknowledging that now in 2011 even Waits experiments have been come formulaic. It is a constant dance, to evade formula and somehow heartening to hear makers near the top of the field struggle with a trial familiar to many. It would be nice to hear more of this conversation, simply because so often the old boys club seems comfortable at best, complacent at worst. What do we have to install in our creative practice to keep us going back to square one, to that place of discovery?

Creatures of the Night @ Mudfire

2011-08-01T09:37:00.000-07:00

I still get a little geeked out when my studio practice is frutiful! To that end, I'm so excited to share the link to preview a new exhibit at Mudfire Clayworks & Gallery! Thanks for including me with such a great group of folks Erik & Luba! Waaay too many exclamation points and maybe too much coffee...

again

While you are enjoying your coffee or tea check out Creatures of the Night.

Conversations at the Log #4: Lauren Mayer

2011-07-19T06:17:00.000-07:00

Lauren Mayer completed a short-term residency at Red Lodge Clay Center this spring. Her residency coincided with the fifth anniversary juried exhibit, which featured her work, “J’ai Plus De Souvenirs Que J’avais Mille Ans” or, for those not schooled in français, “I Have More Memories Than If I Was One Thousand Years Old”. The title comes from Baudelaire, one of the poets Mayer reads in her research.

Experiencing her objects first hand invokes the sublime.

At least this was my reality, and it was so overwhelming and lovely and melancholic I feel compelled to share it.

Transcribing a conversation is tricky--trying to decide what to leave and what to take out without disturbing the subtext too much or monkeying around with the interviewee’s intent. And yet, a transcribed conversation is a peek behind the curtain of a mind to see what’s spinning therein. The conflict, especially with work so specifically focused on the experience of invocation, is the very real possibility of ruining the experience with too much talking.

I’m trying to be careful, trying to be respectful and give the work all the deference it requires.

The history of Mayer’s objects is immediately evident, as is the struggle and perseverance of humanity. She does not cloud our vision with color or gaudy embellishments. Not to detract from the exuberance of a good bling experience, but there is no room for it here. More importantly, no need or desire for it. When Baudelaire’s poem is read in its entirety, an eloquent symbiosis between object and text is tangible and almost makes me want to tell you the following conversation is completely unnecessary to read.

Words have a way of deconstructing just as sure as they construct, but I’m going to go out on a limb and share the conversation anyway. It may be indulgent. It may be too long, but it is enriching on another level. This interview is an opportunity to hear someone at the outset of their career expand on the motivations that propel them to make.

Now you’ve been warned.

Proceed at your own risk.

Shhhhhhhhh. Hush now. The time has come for introspection.

The reward may be your opportunity to revel in the ebb and flow of memory and reality.

To begin: an image and the poem.

A sensual conversation precedes the literal one.

Spleen LXXXVI

I have more memories than if I'd lived a thousand years.

A great chest of drawers encumbered with bills,

verses, love letters, processes, romances,

with heavy locks of hair parcelled in receipts,

hiding fewer secrets than my dingy brain.

It is a pyramid, a vast cavern that bears

more corpses than a plague pit.

– I am a cemetery abhorred by the moon,

where long worms traipse like remorse

constantly molesting my dearest dead.

I am an old boudoir brimming with withered roses,

where lies a confused bundle of outdated dresses,

where plaintive pastels and pale Bouchers,

abandoned, breathe the odour of an open phial.

Nothing could equal the length of those limping days,

when beneath the heavy flakes of snowy years

ennui, the fruit of dreary apathy,

becomes as vast as immortality.

– Henceforth you are no more, O living matter!

than granite engulfed in a vague terror,

listless in the heart of a hazy Sahara;

an ancient Sphinx ignored by a dumb world,

forgotten from the map, whose wild heart

sings only in the rays of a setting sun.

WPS: Let’s jump off into the deep end now. I wanted to hear you talk about beauty. In your artist statement and in your thesis you mention beauty. Beauty can be a loaded word. I didn’t feel like you really unpacked your notions of beauty so I’d like to ask you to delve into that idea now and elaborate on what beauty means to you.

LM: Well I think, especially with the work I am doing now, it’s not the same as experiencing a beautiful tulip or a beautiful day. I think it’s more of a complicated beauty that I’m drawn to, one that isn’t necessarily recognized and identified by everyone. A lot of the things that interest me straddle the gap as polar opposites, and it’s that space in between that is interesting to me. The Ugly-Beautiful gap. I think my work captures a quiet beauty, something understated and unassuming. People might actually pass by this beauty without noticing. I’m not interested in making objects that scream, “I’m gorgeous!”

WPS: Did you ever feel there was a barrier to using the word beauty?

LM: I think, when it came to my thesis work, the baggage associated with the word, was not something I was distracted by. There were so many other concepts I was dealing with it was sort of a peripheral thing and I wasn’t really doing a lot of reading about that, my head was on the other side of things thinking about ideas of trace was and remains a central focus. It’s only now, two years later, that my attentions are turning to ideas of beauty and I’m beginning to seriously consider them. I have definitely been dancing around it or it has been dancing around my mind.

WPS: Does it strike you as odd that people react to your work as “beautiful”?

LM: Sometimes. Yes. A lot of the reasons for why I make what I make are very sad. There is something inherent in them about loss. For me the work is much closer to ideas of torture in some ways. And I think that takes me back to the idea of straddling the distance between beautiful and ugly. Something that is heart wrenching invokes a beauty beyond external concepts. Although, it’s not something that really bothers me. I don’t feel the need to respond by telling viewers, “NO! That’s not beautiful. It’s tragic! Can’t you see it’s in pain?”

I do think that when I get to talking about the darker side of things, it’s the beauty that disarms the audience and reels them in to get them to sit with the work a little bit longer. I think the ideas of aesthetics and beauty are not mutually exclusive; rather, they inform each other. The work would obviously be really different if I made the shelves bright green, chartreuse, and made the envelopes dark red. It would change everything, but sometimes…

I wish I could make something that is lime green!

It’s easy to get caught up in that tragic cycle. There were some very sad things in my life informing the work and in the last six months I’ve had to ask myself how do I make work from a happy place? Now, I’m in a very different place than I have been for the last two years and, I’ve had to ask myself, “How does this work?” Even though I’m interested in this mutated, tortured thing, how does that become about something that is in fact beautiful?

WPS: Do you think you’ll turn your perspective from an internal world to an external world?

LM: I don’t know. I always seem to cycle back on these things. That is a really hard question to answer for myself; what it would be like to make happy work when a lot of what I make is very, very sad and carries sad connotations with it rather than celebratory themes.

WPS: It sounds like you are just questioning whether or not operating from a position of sadness is okay.

LM: Kind of. But I do think there is a certain cycle that happens. A lot of the work dwells on things that I struggle with, so it’s autobiographical for me and it’s a way to work through things that I don’t understand about myself or about my situation or about memory or how the mind works or how the body works. It’s a way for me to figure things out and way for me to express, not necessarily the confusion but where my state of mind lies in trying to figure those things out.

So, I guess what I’m saying is that I suspect the work I make will always be internal. That seems to be my M.O. But as my internal perspective changes the work will change too. For example, a lot of the work I was making going in to graduate school was dealing with suitcases and luggage as metaphors for mobility and travel and transience. The suitcase was the furniture of mobility and not having a place to call home, more specifically, not having a permanent place to call home.

As I progressed through grad school, when I was in one place for the longest time since I left home, I started to use literal representations of pieces of furniture. The work became more about stability and things that were built into a house. I used images of objects that you wouldn’t move or weren’t easily moveable. In that respect it seems pretty clear that what is going on in my life informs the objects I am drawn to and I anticipate more of that happening in the future.

WPS: And yet every object, even the ones, which stand in for permanence and stability have an air of decay.

LM: I think one of the reasons I use clay is for the idea of permanence and impermanence. Clay, once fired, is this “permanent” thing that can still be broken. With the envelopes, they now become porcelain. They are permanent on one level, but they are so fragile they often self-destruct. In regard to the stability of the material, I like to play with that idea. Then envelopes, in particular, interest me because they are more fragile in their “permanent” state than in their “impermanent” state as a piece of paper.

WPS: And what of the chairs and their intentional instability?

LM: It’s not that I’m just translating the form [of a chair] from one material to the next. The fragility of the material is frustrating, but it’s also something that I love and embrace. The frustration that comes with the cracking, with things self-destructing and having to make them multiple times gives them multiple lives, but also often makes me unsure of how I feel about the objects. Instead of just walking away from them or throwing them in a pile I will purposely regenerate them, maybe even purposely break them, reconstruct them and refire them, however many times I need to. In this way, layers of history are built within the made objects. Most of the reason I begin with an object, like a chair, dresser, luggage or envelopes, is because of the embedded history already there. I embrace the failure and build on the pre-existing history of individual objects to realize something that, as a maker, I can be pleased with.

WPS: A quote from your thesis refers to, “An object[s] possess[ing] the capacity to act as a proxy for things beyond itself and its seemingly simple material existence.” I’m curious about when the concept occurred to you as a reality?

LM: Well I think the “object as a proxy” in the current body of work I’m doing is really different than when I was thinking about it in my thesis, even though both time periods and bodies of work are linked. For example, I was on a fishing trip with some friends and I gathered some rocks from the river. And the man I was seeing at that time was part of that group of friends and when I left the trip, I also left him. The rock became the memory of that time. Of course, I was originally angry, but later…

I thought I had thrown the rocks away. I couldn’t remember if I had or not or where they were, and I was frantically searching for these things. It made me ask myself, “Why do I care about this rock so much?” I knew the reason I would have thrown it away was because I didn’t want to have that memory. I did not want to be that memory, or have it sitting on my shelf and have to look at it and be reminded of that thing. Something I also think about a lot: why do people choose to keep things versus the things they choose to throw away? Retention versus disposal is very interesting to me.

WPS: The illustration brings up the idea you have about, “forgotten memories are more perfect than saved memories.”

LM: Yes. I think the enigmatic and ephemeral nature of memory is what initially grabbed my attention in the formative stages of making my undergraduate body of work. If you want to get to the bottom layer of my work, the idea of memory is the bare foundation. Marcel Proust talks about a madeleine cookie and each time he took a bite—with the first bite, the memory was so much more potent than the last. With each subsequent bite the memory dispersed. I read a book “Proust Was a Neuro-Scientist” and, among the many topics it covered was the idea that memory was a malleable thing. Every time you remember something or a memory is triggered the memory changes. A memory, upon each recollection, is reformed and reformed and colored by the moment at which you are remembering it. Each time we invoke a memory we alter it in some way, so maybe the best way to retain an exact memory is to forget it.

WPS: Do you see your object making as an act of re-remembering multiple times and the end result is what the viewer sees?

LM: In some ways. Maybe. When it comes to the dismantling and putting back together of an object. It is one of the aspects I like about the envelope installation with the shelves. Each time I present the work it’s completely different and the envelopes are probably more directly related to my ideas about memory than any other object. But, overall, the idea that memory is a living thing and that idea grabs me; memory can stop you in your tracks and that is what motivates my work. Memory is an intangible thing, which invokes a physical response, and science still doesn’t understand how it works completely.

WPS: The olfactory system is closely related to memory.

LM: It’s not that I think playing on the relationship between the olfactory system and memory is a gimmick, but I don’t think it’s an avenue I’m interested in pursuing. Maybe as an installation piece, if I wanted to have the smell of old roses and I’m not even sure what that smell would be. Maybe the interesting thing would be to find a room with a particular smell and everyone would have their own association with that smell and that would be the experience of the installation. There would be no pre-existing experience with the room or preconceived notions about how it should smell. It is interesting to think about: a smell that reminds me of my mom, might remind you of a cat. It could be interesting, but I don’t see myself incorporating it into the sculpture I’m making.

WPS: Tell me about the largest shift that has occurred in your work.

LM: I have tried to retrace my steps and ask myself how I arrived at using the chair. I’ve always had some sort of reference to furniture, or to things made of wood, or about storage. Last summer I was actually thinking about memory as a core sample and I was working more abstractly, making thin porcelain pancakes and stringing them on wire and knotting them around one another, exploring how a timeline can get confused. I left the process knowing that was too abstract a method for me. I need something to ground the idea.

One of the things I like about slip casting is the sense of reality that happens from taking molds off of an actual object embedded with history. There was a connection to the body that was missing when I was working in a more abstract manner. An example of a body connection is that we have all had the experience of sitting down in a chair that is too short and experiencing the brief moment of falling or picking up a milk jug you think is full, but it’s half empty and you think you are really strong for a second. There is a habit and a routine in the objects I use that is really about “body”. There are expectations of a chair’s ergonomics. We know when a chair is too short. All of this reinforced why it was important for me to use these object instead of working more abstractly.

WPS: So your objects are all narrative.

LM: Definitely.

WPS: You embrace the baggage the objects and the process bring.

LM: Yes, the baggage is the main reason I use them. The objects come with scrapes and marks and histories of wood grain I couldn’t get if I just fabricated the objects myself. When it comes to slip dipping, when I use a real paper envelope as the template and then paint it with slip and finally burning that envelope out there is a dialogue between duplicate versus original. There is now an object that is a duplicate, but also an original in it’s own right. By contrast slip-casting is a duplicate of a duplicate of a duplicate, over and over again.

WPS: In talking about the envelopes, a question arises and it seems to apply to slip casting, in that, the envelopes are not “living”—the envelopes were never “alive”. If art objects are not “alive”, but also not “dead”, rather you see them as “fabrications” or “duplicates”-- I’m curious about your perspective on the objects we do carry around with us, the objects we do hang onto, like the stone. Do you consider that object (imbued with personal memories) to be “alive” or do we give them life?

LM: Yes. I think there’s a distinction between the found object and the made object within that idea. When I talk about loss and the sadness of the objects, the conversation goes right to the root of the concept: these things are surrogates for themselves and the stone is still a stone. If I were to make a mold of the stone and cast it then that would be a “dead” version of an “alive” thing. So maybe in duplicating something, you have the reality of the object, in that it looks like the thing you might recognize, but it’s really not that object. So it’s playing with that notion of…

WPS: C’eci n’est pas une pipe?

LM: Exactly! I was just going to say surrealism. Yes, it goes right along with that. Maybe that moment, of not just translation into a different material, but something that looks like itself is still not really itself. A longing for the real object one will never have is generated. So, when it comes to slip dipping you are literally destroying the original object. It’s a pretty violent process, but then you have a permanent replica of the object. And yet it’s just a shell of the original. It is just a hollow representation of it.

WPS: Which is even sadder.

LM: Yes.

WPS: I wanted to ask you expand on this statement, “The significance we attach to objects can be a source for the need for privacy.” You were talking about the individual need to hide objects away and your use of bureaus.

LM: Yes, the bureau is a hierarchy of hiding and saving things. Those small intimate objects that people keep as tokens or a reminder of another person. I went through my grandmother’s things after she passed away and found a poem by Emily Dickinson in the back of her drawers in a little cigar box. The essence of the poem is, “I died twice,” and that, “living is all we need to know of heaven,” and “all we need to know of hell…” I don’t remember all of it, but my grandfather had committed suicide when my mom was about six. The poem is very evidently about that moment in time, it was very old and it was something she [my grandmother] had kept as a reminder, but it was hidden away from everyone else. So that object, hidden away in that drawer, drew a line between what was hers and what was public domain. The poem in the box denoted a line for her between the public and the private.

WPS: There are points of revelation. These retraces, recreation of things, are private things you are “outing” in your practice.

LM: It’s funny that you say that, because even just now, when I was talking about my grandmother and that poem, I question whether or not I should be revealing the story. It’s a very personal family history and one of the things that I don’t want, is for the objects to be an act of transgression or an act of trespass. Rather I want them to indicate that a habit exists and maybe it is a gross human experience for remembering something one does not want to remember all that often. Simultaneously, one does not want to forget it. In keeping the object, one allows the object to do the hard work and one has the choice, in always knowing where the object resides, to invoke the memory at will.

WPS: Do you believe in the role of the artist as shaman?

LM: Well, I think artists play a pivotal role in society. We make things, not just fanciful things, but we have a way of pointing at something that needs to be addressed. There is a voice, although I am not at a pulpit, but information is waiting to be read by somebody and every person is going to read it differently. Everyone’s interpretation is an indication of his or her story. I believe this draws attention to the differences and similarities of people as individuals and people as a whole.

I ask myself, “Why am I making chairs? Why am I making these particular objects? What is the importance of this?” I examine why I don’t simply make functional objects, like a cup. A cup is one of the simplest things and one of the most beautiful things and one of the most difficult things to make—something that someone will WANT to use.

WPS: Do you think this is a question for you because you were trained in traditional ceramics?

LM: I think so, yea. And because I began as a potter and I still believe objects have a job and need to work. However, my revelation was what that job could be—it can be about an idea. That’s what I’m getting to in regard to the importance of artists. Yes, they create visual stimulation, but I also think artists give objects meaning without an idea behind the object there is only hollow beauty.

WPS: Another question I had for you was about the white box of the gallery. Do you see your work outside of the white box? I ask because of the “job” you are talking about can only go so far in the white box, but it occurs to me that there could be some interesting spaces you could engage in regard to these ideas of memory and retracing that would enable you to move beyond the white box. Is there a space you have thought about?

LM: I think of the gallery as a destination for the work. The gallery is an architectural space that can conjure a space outside of itself. I think that’s most prevalent with the shelves and envelopes in that the work engages an entire space. When it comes to installation and using these everyday objects—you know everyone has a relationship with a chair or with a bureau and this personal relationship allows the space the viewer knows to be conjured. Where they are is not an actual space, but…

I’m thinking of the work of Charles Simonds.

Hmmm, it’s an interesting question. We have this space set up for art, a cube. And when it comes to the job of art for society what happens if people don’t go to the cube? This is the dilemma of contemporary makers.

Being in Red Lodge and seeing socially interactive work like that of Michael Strand, I can’t help but ask myself, “What is my work doing for people?!” His work is doing something and it’s doing something pivotal, but in a very different way than what a white porcelain chair is going to do.

WPS: There is certainly more immediacy to the interaction with an audience.

LM: Exactly, but I think there…

In some ways I’m jealous of makers who create work that is more community based or more environmentally based—work that is more obviously for the public good. Such work is not so much about the internal space of an individual; it’s more about the external. At the end of the day, I don’t think I could do what Michael does, but I do envy it even though I recognize that each body of work is playing a very different role. Each body of work has separate origins in the external and internal world of investigation. The things I am obsessed with—art sometimes starts with an obsession. Obsession seems a good place to start, but wherever the point of origin there is a cycle. Things begin internally for me and then I externalize the internal, giving way to internalizing again. It’s a cycle. In and out. In and out. In and out. That’s how it is most days. Am I in or out?

WPS: In and out brings us back to the question of location. Is there a space outside of the gallery you desire to see your work activate?

LM: Probably an old farmhouse, an old building, something that has a sense of antiquity about it. Because I am drawn to the history objects carry with them, this seems most natural. The closest I ever came to an installation outside of the gallery was probably when I was at Anderson Ranch. I made a paper clay chair and let it set outside in the snow. With every snowfall and every melt the snow on the seat of the chair would ebb and flow and as the freezing and thawing occurred the chair slowly melted. Such work exists as documentation, but the white space (and everything I make is some shade of white) the white snowy landscape where nothing was around was the best space.

I am really looking for blank spaces to allow room for memories to be invoked. So, the white of the gallery is the perfect blank space for me. In some regards, it is interesting to consider a stark white porcelain chair in an old, dilapidated building that is dark and filled with a musty smell invoking the olfactory part of memory; but that would operate in a very different way than coming across a chair in a gallery.

In Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road”, an apocalyptic tale with a father and son who are trying to make their way to the ocean. We never know exactly what happened, but there is a great conflagration and there is much danger on their journey. In their travels they go into houses that are now abandoned, and the story takes place about a year after the “event” and the idea of value has completely shifted. Money has no value. Food is important. In their search they comb through the rubble of ashen remains and the story left me with an image of what it would be like come across a stark white chair in the middle of all this ash. It is interesting to consider a world where people would take a chair over money. They would take the chair because it could be used for firewood. The value and intent of objects completely shift.

I do a lot of reading and watch a lot of film. “Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind” is a favorite, but it’s a film I can’t watch it very often.

WPS: Are you familiar with the memory studies of Joe LeDoux at NYU?

LM: Yes! Actually in my thesis I talk a little about memory receptors and explore the importance of forgetting. There is a need to forget. We would be overwhelmed if we were able to hang on to every memory. I think there is something incredible about the human purview and to know that every single sensory perception is buried within.

WPS: You really have a very rich minefield of information to plough in your work. Where do you plan to go next?

LM: I think with the chairs, with this body of work and thinking about these objects in relation to the human body I’m trying to explore them as a metaphor for the emotional human body. The very first chair I made was bound and wrapped with twine that was dipped in slip.

It was restricted, and while I’m not entirely clear on the human emotion such an object refers to, there is a definite conversation about being bound (obviously); but now, due to the nature of the material, the thing doing the binding is more fragile than the thing being bound. I think the hardest thing I have to figure out is identifying the metaphors for emotion these objects conjure.

WPS: Do you think you really need to solve that puzzle? Do you really want to label them?

LM: No. I don’t think that I do, but when it comes to titling or talking about the work I don’t want to oversimplify the layers because of a lack of understanding on my part. Within the series of chairs are the corner chairs and I want them to look as though they are being backed into a corner by itself or by some external force. They are shrugging away, hiding, scared; I feel there are all these other ideas circling around the obvious that are beyond human emotion. What is the thing that is causing the backing up; is it self-inflicted or external? What is the larger picture? What is the cause? What is the effect?

WPS: There is a ware cart sitting behind us with some cups you have thrown and altered to look like cut crystal? What’s going on there?

LM: Hmmm. Times when I need to let ideas formulate or when I need to let work dry are good days for throwing. It’s meditative and it keeps my hands busy.

WPS: But you then altered them, you must have been thinking of something.

LM: (smiling) Ummmm, whiskey.

Mayer’s work can be seen at the Walker Fine Art Gallery in Denver, Colorado as part of the “Intuition” exhibit until the end of the month, but keep your eye out for more…

Summertime Slump Jolted by the Bowery

2011-07-13T06:29:00.000-07:00

If bloggers had a nickel for every time they apologized for a lapse in posting...

Betty Woodman

So just to get back in the swing of posting from May's trilogy, let's take a moment to consider the recent exhibition Paul Clay now showing at Salon 94 Bowery. A friend sent me a link to the exhibit at the beginning of the month and there have been several facebook posts about the exhibit. We live in an age too jaded/savvy for folks to come out and overtly bash just about anything, especially an art exhibit. The case may better be put that this exhibit seems to cause a wave of nervous titters across the cocktail party.

Raphael de Villers

My friend asked me, "What do you think about this exhibit?"

After letting the show cook in my head for a couple of weeks and reading and re-reading Roberta Smith's review I came up with the following reply,

"I had to think about your question. And then I saw the exhibition again, but now paired with Roberta Smith's review.

Of course, your question makes me want to ask you, 'What do YOU think of this?'

As usual, I think a lot of things about it. I thought, 'Who is doing Betty Woodman impressions!'

'Oh, hey look, it's Betty Woodman doing Betty Woodman with remnants of Laotian fabrics.'

Then I lived with them for a bit in my mind, and they began to delight me. But she always has delighted me.

I think the masses in the field of ceramics run the risk of repeating the crimes (and I use the term relatively loosely) of the past when they turn their noses up at shows like this. Is the current generation of ceramist going to be like the allegorical realists who scoffed at Whistler? at Gauguin?

What I believe is this: these artists are not bound by a deified respect for the material. The makers in Paul Clay are chewing up the material and spitting it out in mostly guttural ways. I do believe such a process is the best way to find the limits of a medium and that when restraint is displayed in this particular exhibition, it seems to be coming from the artists who are most familiar with the material.

The curatorial statement, says much the same, 'These artists play dirty, unafraid to push their material.'

I believe a lot of working ceramists, think they are pushing material, but more often than not it's just a dance within established parameters. Even when the dance is lovely and eloquent, it's often not breaking new ground. Then when the majority seems to believe innovation is invoked, it's only innovative within the field of ceramics and not the field of art.

It's necessary to let those who can macerate and/or eviscerate the material. Then we might learn something new. It won't always be pleasant to watch. Our sensibilities will be tried most certainly!

SO! My friend what do you think?

Oh, and my faves? Definitely Betty Woodman, but also: Raphael de Villers, Takuro Kuwata, William J OBrien and, of course, Andrew Lord

Still not sure I can get my head around the likes of Naoki Koide though."

Naoki Koide

Well? What's your opinion?

Part III: The Wise and Learned Judge Collective, (better called CANON)

2011-05-20T04:13:00.000-07:00

First, a note of thanks. For some reason this topic has plagued my mind. The thoughts were difficult to form, but when they came they poured out. I want to thank my brother-in-law, Mark Willis for helping clarify a metaphor and talk out some of the necessities and difficulties behind judgment. Also thanks to Mark Rothko. I read a lot of his words in writing this entry, but they never seemed to find the text. He does have many interesting thoughts on establishing a "way" that are worth consideration as support or foil.

The Parisian Salon

So, for the past two days, I have mostly built a case for not judging, or at least I’ve tried to build a case against judging too quickly. Throw the doors wide open, because anything is possible now!

In a 1963 interview Andy Warhol said, “How can you say any style is better than another? You ought to be able to be an Abstract Expressionist next week, or a Pop Artist, or a Realist, without feeling that you have given up something.”[1] In my bio I declare that I have “an egalitarian perspective on the evolution of contemporary A-R-T”! And yes, I mean it with an exclamation point. I take the definition of Curator to heart as one who has the care and superintendence of something, but the role is applied to the development of the field of culture. Beyond the role of curator, I design exhibitions and that position leaves me free from the role of juror, but not all the time.

Not even close.

Sometimes judging begins with the premise of an exhibition. Red Lodge Clay Center just hosted the first of our Bi-Annual Juried Nationals, with the title--Craftsmanship:Content:Innovation. We really set our guest juror, Brad Schwieger up for a struggle. I’ve never met a juror who takes the role lightly and I highly recommend performing the thankless task for anyone who has yet to develop a thick skin. One sees there is really nothing personal about the decisions. In a world as small as the American Ceramic scene there are bound to be personal connections, but I’ve only seen proof of everyone doing their best to be above board. Schwieger had over 300 entries to proof in an effort to create a snapshot of contemporary ceramics.

Back to the title…

Without a required artist statement, we realized judging “content” was a highly subjective task. Judging “craftsmanship” can get dicey too. The truth is only as solid as the image the juror sees. Finally, “innovation” as a measure is probably the stickiest wicket of all. What does it even mean?

Really?

I can tell you our hearts were in the right place, but to be truly innovative…

I’m not even sure what that looks like or if we can even expect it to come around on a Bi-Annual basis. There are makers who are working with mixed media and I’ll grant the craft world can be rife with purists, although they don’t dominate like they used to; does that mean mixed media is innovative? The recently deceased Robert Rauschenberg would probably laugh and say that ship has long since sailed.

Is it innovative to use AutoCAD in designing an object? Isn’t one of the great things about art that it leads the way in developing technology? Now it seems the worm has turned and technology is developing art.

But maybe, it is the case in our contemporary age, that the potter, still humbly striving for efficient function and intimate form, who is the innovator.

My point, my point…

My point is our juror had a pretty high mountain to climb.

Brad Schwieger is a recognized and respected voice in ceramics. He is a gatekeeper and a mentor and in the end he did take the best snapshot possible from the work submitted. There is such variety in the field today and that variety is reflected in the exhibit. Even as complex or impossible as the premise of the exhibit may have been, how are we going to find Craftsmanship:Content:Innovation if we don’t continue to ask for it?

The trick is--if we ask for it, we damn well better be ready to accept it when it happens. I wonder if we are ready. Can any of us really embrace pluralism in our craft? In our medium?

If you are having a hard time imagining why someone would feel precious about adhering to a creative path, I want you to think about it in these terms:

I really love berries, but I have decided to focus all of my attention on strawberries for reasons I feel passionate about. Throughout my training and my life I see other berries, but I do not partake because I have committed to uphold a standard of strawberries. Other berries can be out there and I wish them well in their growth, but strawberries are my area.

Then along comes someone who runs rampant through multiple berry fields mixing all kinds of berries together. How dare they introduce blueberries and blackberries to the longstanding heritage of strawberries! Especially when I have given up so much, I would have liked to have blueberries too, but I have STANDARDS!

When I opened this series I said that judging was a nasty public disease. It can definitely play the role of dis-easing us. I also said judging was a necessary evil and helped to separate the wheat from the chaff.

If what Warhol says, essentially that anything goes, and if his words are a reflection of our contemporary world, how do we know what quality means anymore? What is the canon anymore? What if there is a golden hull amongst the chaff? What happens when the Collective Judge becomes too self congratulatory and starts to close off doors?

I cannot help but think of Manet and Whistler when these questions come to mind, or the Ashcan School or…

The learned salon of Paris rejected Edouard Manet’s Le Dejeuner sur l’herbe because he did not adhere to allegorical standards which separated the acceptable female nude from the pornographic female nude. The painting directly refers to Titian’s Concert Champetre, but the woman looks unashamedly at the viewer instead of passively turning away. The men are dressed in contemporary clothing for the day, imagine them in Armani suits now. Worst of all the colors are bold. The contrasts are stark. It was garish and assaultive to the eyes of the salon, not to mention their souls.

James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s Nocturne in Black and Gold was a break through of pure color and mark making and critic John Ruskin judged it, now infamously, “The ill-educated conceit of the artist ... approached the aspect of willful imposture, . . . I have seen, and heard, much of Cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face.”[2] Whistler sued the critic for libel, and while his name was cleared he was penniless at the end of the fight.

Two innovators, never imitators, and they received nothing but ridicule. Without them George Bellows never would have painted Stag at Sharkey’s. Without them Jackson Pollack might have never said action. In the world of craft where would that leave us? Would we have Voulkos, De Staebler or Takaezu?

We are a small world and one of the benefits of being a small institution is that small institutions are able to make change more rapidly. As the world of craft blurs between mediums and reaches for innovation; and as we strive to remain honest in separating the wheat from the chaff, we must not close ourselves off.

In a contemporary world, where ONE WAY of art is a moot issue, we have to develop new standards that perpetually evolve. We must strive to be the most conscientious jurors.

A last word from Danto on what is required.

“…an entirely different breed of curator is required, one who bypasses museum structures altogether in the interests of engaging the art directly with the lives of persons who have seen no reason to use the museum either as tresorium of beauty or sanctum of spiritual form. For a museum to engage this kind of art, it has to surrender much of the structure and theory that define the museum in its [other] modes.”[3]

[1] Swenson, Gene. "ANDY WARHOL Interview with Gene Swenson, Art News (1963)." Http://www.mariabuszek.com/. Web. .

[2] "Nocturne in Black and Gold The Falling Rocket." John Singer Sargent Virtual Gallery. Web. 19 May 2011. .

[3] Danto, Arthur Coleman. After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1997. 17. Print.

PART II: The External Flippant Judge

2011-05-18T14:38:00.000-07:00

I'm going to open with the Boomtown Rats because the song was inspired by a woman who ran amok and had flip answer for why she did what she did. Look it up.

The second type of judge is perhaps one we shouldn’t take too seriously. I have named that judge “flippant”. It would appear that the exuberance of youth and inexperience are what enable the External Flippant Judge to brandish an opinion about like a loaded gun. More often than not the bullets they attempt to fire are of the stealth variety (read invisible) and, upon close inspection, we find there were never any shells under the hammer.

The opinions are invalid.

We can make allowances for this judge if we empathize with his/her learning curve. As we define where we strand and where we want to tread, it is inevitable that we, at one point or another, vehemently declare what is NOT acceptable. However, judgment is defined as a decision made upon subjective and thorough evaluation. Sometimes it is far easier for us to walk around with a directional finger (you know the one) saying, “Not like me!” And because the object/image/individual/group we are judging is too far outside of our wheelhouse, we call it names: bad, not art, sculpture, pottery.

Ever heard the one about the potter who went to grad school and left making sculpture? Ever hear the disdain in someone’s voice as they describe someone who followed such a path?

Ever heard the one about the sculptor who dared to make a pot?

How about the long, long view from atop the porcelain mountain?

Where folks look with pity upon those lured by dirty iron-rich clay?

So many rules these flippant judges have!

"Segregation NEVER! Integration NOW!"

In 1984 Arthur C. Danto wrote an essay, which evolved into the book “After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History”. The publishing date was 1995, with the most recent printing in 1999, and while the debut essay was published a little over 27 years ago, his points remain relevant. Danto references one of Hegel’s guides for criticism/judgment, reminding the critic to, “…speak of [art] as the spirit in which the art was made.”[1] A tricky proposition, because who can know the mind of the maker.

And here is a sticky puddle of potential contradiction. The External Flippant Judge does not sound concerned with the spirit of the art in the delivery of a verdict. The only concern is for the object at hand. From the object at hand all manner of judgment about the spirit of the maker is made, without research, without a glance at an artist statement or background, without any attempt at objectivity. I assert that it is possible to assess the character of an object much like one would assess the character of an individual. The trick is…

Ahhh, I suppose the challenge, should we choose to accept it, is to begin unpacking the reasons behind our flippant judgments.

We can learn to deconstruct the rapid, non-verbal information washing through our brain and pouring out our mouths in the form of verdict. Malcolm Gladwell’s text “Blink” unpacks the validity behind rapid cognition, delineating good thin-slicing from bad thin-slicing. Rapid cognition is different from intuition. Rapid cognition is all about the snap assessments we make daily. Gladwell builds a case for why those decisions are usually spot on. Too much information can, in fact, lead us astray. We get overwhelmed with data.

Sounds like I’m building a case for the External Flippant Judge, doesn’t it?

But rapid cognition is not without hazard. Good thin-slicing allows that we are able to make sense of a situation with the smallest amount of information given. Bad thin-slicing is when our blind spots, like pre-conceived notions or prejudices, get in the way. Gladwell became interested in the idea of rapid cognition after he decided to grow his hair out and was briefly questioned as a rape suspect because of his natural fro. Call it racial profiling or call it bad thin-slicing, when we abandon or ignore information available to us we can judge our way right out of future opportunities, connections or (to bring it back home) developments in our field.[2]

Feeding the opinions of the External Flippant Judge can result in an absolute position. Danto uses the paintings of Ad Reinhardt as a cautionary tale. This is what can happen when a “pure” defintion of art is pursued. Eventually, art is distilled to blackness, stillness…

Where do we go from here?

And while this is certainly one way to go it is not the only way. Danto’s entire thesis is leading us toward an open playing field. He acknowledges that the idea was set in motion in the late 1800s, but being the species we are, we seem to keep forgetting. He again references Hegel, “What is now aroused in us by works of art is not just immediate enjoyment, but our judgment also…”[3] I concur. We do continue to instantly react with visceral enjoyment OR without enjoyment in regard to our judgment of art, but our contemporary mind, being flooded with information, can not--must not--stop there.

I fear the External Flippant Judge is camping out in the Age of Manifestos, but I hope this is just an evolutionary pit stop. So far in my reading, the passage from Danto that takes manifestos to task best, also illustrates my concerns about impetuous critical judgment,

“A manifesto singles out the art it justifies as the true and only art, as if the movement it expresses had made the philosophical discovery of what art really is. But the true philosophical discovery, I think, is that there really is no art more true than any other, and there is no way art has to be: all art is equally and indifferently art.”[4]

As I consider the External Flippant Judge, I think I must hold myself accountable lest certain individuals think I am publicly, albeit anonymously, admonishing them. I have seen all sorts, myself included, take on the role of the External Flippant Judge: fellow educators, fellow makers, students, even the most tolerant souls. While it is shameful to admit such a narrow view, I have often announced my disdain for painting. Painting holds firmly to the hierarchy of art, so there was no danger of my barbs knocking it down. Nor was I arrogant enough to call painting, “NOT ART!” I did summarily dismiss it though, with supporting accusations of, “When was the last time there was a breakthrough?” Painting was like Latin to me—DEAD. But, as an Art Appreciation instructor, over the course of seven years my mind was shifted.

I found Odd Nerdrum and was haunted.

I found Mark Ryden and was delighted.

I visited the Smithsonian and was reminded of George Bellows.

And I cried.

All this admission, is just to say, my admonitions are absolutely admonitions, but they are also reminders to myself to be open. Because, I really had the same feelings about wood fired pottery for quite a while. I suppose you either love it or hate it, but as I develop as an exhibition designer with an intent to spread the “gospel of craft” it would be heresy to cut out any part or fail to acknowledge the leaps that any area of the medium have made. Because Randy Johnston built his noborigama…

But it’s bigger than a kiln! What Johnston did was important because it was the embodiment of the contemporary soul. He was one of those folks who recognized he had the privilege to look back over history and CHOOSE which part of it he wanted to belong to and then he pursued his craft with unwavering dedication. His work is a by-product of his endeavors, just like the rest of us in this contemporary world. In the first firings, the work was not all he hoped for, but that’s the nature of atmospheric firing and most functional potters seem to accept that notion.

For me, crying in front of “Stag at Sharky’s” and feeling the quality present in a space filled with wood fire vessels wrought from 30+ years of experience is enough to shut my External Flippant Judge’s mouth, but I did have to walk in the physical presence of the poetry to learn.

Let's hope I keep learning.

[1] Danto, Arthur Coleman. After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1997. 16. Print.

[2] Gladwell, Malcolm. Blink: the Power of Thinking without Thinking. New York: Little, Brown and, 2005. Print.

[3] Danto, Arthur Coleman. After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1997. 30-31. Print.

[4] Ibid, p. 34

An Essay on Judgment in Three Parts, Part I: The Inner Judge

2011-05-18T05:59:00.000-07:00

Judgment is a nasty public disease.

And yet, the field of creative inquiry is supported by the notion that we must submit to a constant firing squad of judges--judges who have earned their place on the wall of decision through years of study and experience.

This is how we cull the field.

This is how we filter, how we separate the chaff from the wheat.

But when does the standard become exclusionary? Establishing a canon of standards can lead us to the lowest common denominator, because-whatever form taken-it is undeniable that, as a species, we are constantly drawn to or constantly fighting against complacency and continuity. When some thing or some one contrary to the status quo rises up, a tremor of panic shudders through the body politic. “If I allow this one exception through, what else or who else is coming to dinner?”

There are at least three kinds of judgment or judges I want to address.

1. The inner judge.

2. The external flippant judge.

3. The wise and learned judge collective, better called canon.

The first judge is one I am battling as I write. It is attacking me with the zeal of a flashy Luchador. I am mesmerized by his sparkling mask, glistening skin and revealing tights; but before I can process the visual specta—BAM!

I can’t breathe! He has clotheslined me and I’m trying to find the wind to finish the thought. I want to describe the entire scene. I want, as I struggle to my feet, to make connections for the reader about the history of showmanship and brute force but before all the synapses can fir—WHAM!

I am on the mat again!

I know there was a significant point I have wanted to make. For weeks now—no--months, I have been listening to the confidence of youth issue edicts as unsolicited arbiters of taste. With the debut of a Juried National Exhibit at Red Lodge Clay Center, a show with judging in the title—OK, I can see clearly again. My ostentatious and meaty opponent is running back at me for another blow, but at last I muster my defense and extend my arm with a flat palm as if to say, “STOP!”

I catch him in the solar plexus. A lucky break. The result only of our size difference. He dwarfs me. Amazingly he falls, quiet for a moment, maybe now it will come.

Funny I should choose to cloak my own judge in the Luchador mask, a costume better suited for my inner warrior. Although, at the end of the day, I suppose both parties don war paint. As an educator, I would tell my students about the four aspects of the artist’s psyche as related through Mary Stewart’s text “Launching the Imagination”. She identifies the following:

•Explorer – learns about the problem, research crucial

•Artist – experiments with a wide variety of solutions

•Judge – assesses the work in progress

•Warrior – implements the idea

For whatever reason, the last two always stuck in my head. I wanted the young artist to really understand all the courage it was taking for them to produce. I wanted them to know the judge was going to rear his/her ugly head before a thought could burst through the gates of unconsciousness. The judge will snap a thought apart before a syllable is formed and will happily watch you stagger down the middle of the road bloodied from the fight. The judge can be exactly why we have to call the warrior into the front of our minds—DAILY, if not hourly. We must make a conscious effort to assume the power within, calling forth our warrior and letting the warrior say to the judge, “NOT NOW! You need to crawl back inside your little box and keep a lid on it. Do you not see all the work and soul the explorer and artist have put into this query? Your turn will come, but for now you are impeding progress. NOT NOW!”

The judge is asking me right now,

· “What was your point?”

· “How are you going to clarify the difference between judgment and criticism?”

· “Do you think you have anything to add to the conversation?”

· “Can you avoid the folksy yet pedantic tone in your latest diatribe?”

And this is the nature of the first kind of judgment. Even with the peril this judge packs, it is a necessary inner voice, one trained to keep us from indulgent meandering. The mighty Mark Twain had inner judges armed with external tricks to keep his craft refined. He purportedly stated, “Substitute ‘damn’ every time you're inclined to write ‘very’; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.”

There is a fine line between judgment and critical assessment. We have to constantly struggle to maintain a safe relationship with both camps, if only because they have to keep each other in check.

Tomorrow's Edition

Part II: The External Flippant Judge

I've Been Thinking About Community

2011-04-08T05:34:00.000-07:00

We’ve been home almost a week now. The NCECA experience has never really left me feeling the need for recuperation; rather it has always invigorated me to redouble my efforts.

Some would say that just means I’m not doing it right.

My continuing “amateur” status aside, I did always feel a bit on the outside of things at past NCECAs. Like a kid in a crowd of grown ups, I jumped up and down, up and down, to see over the shoulders of those blocking my view. “C’mon! Let me in!” Not all the time, but more often than I liked.

And now--I have a much different view.

While still not fully immersed in the mosh pit, my current perspective allows for contemplation about how hard it might have been to ascertain anything if I had made it to the middle of the fray. A good view provides the privilege of clarity about some choices, although one always has to guard against hubris. If we are lucky, we get to be reminded of our original intent when we set down a particular path.

All of this meandering allusion is meant to bring me to the topic of community, which is something I have thought about a great deal over the past years and even more intently in recent months. In my last post I mentioned how important I believe NCECA is in regard to community, especially for individuals grinding it out in the hinterlands. As someone who tended to feel “lost in space” as it were, and lost deeper and deeper each passing year, NCECA was the time to see my community. It was time to hear and feel the pulse of my community. I know I am not alone in this opinion.

Not by a damn sight. No big revelation.

(Thinking about methods of reaching out, in my not so distant past, Facebook certainly provided an uplifting resource. It’s not really all cyber bullying or “who’s sleeping with whom” or terror alerts, sometimes it lets you see just how real and how big your community is.)

The thing is, wherever we find ourselves, we have to take responsibility for building our own communities and nuture them so they grow. That means recognizing the gifts individuals bear. Acknowledge those gifts rather than harping on weaknesses. Then an amazing thing starts to happen! Our communities take care of us!

So, NCECA, a microcosm of individuals with a common interest is where I start the conversation. Let’s talk about how to go about building a community. It’s tricky right? Especially when diverse parties are involved. How do you achieve buy-in from all levels of stakeholders when our contemporary society falls short in regard to acknowledging the class/caste system, which continues to insinuate itself, however subversively, in all aspects of our day-to-day. We like to say we are all equal. It certainly paints a prettier picture, especially for those in the top caste. For the most part we can believe in the equality myth, but only up to a certain point and then--BAM! We run smack dab into a wall. It’s all about how we deal with the wall that defines us.

In academia, governing boards, administration, faculty, and support staff are all meant to be in service to student and community. If you are an administrator, the ease with which you conduct and develop yourself and your institution can hang in the balance of your boards’ vision/imagination/ability. If you are a faculty member, the ease with which you conduct and develop yourself and your programs can hang in the balance of your administrators’ vision/imagination/ability. If you are a student, the ease with which you conduct and develop yourself and your output can hang in the balance of your faculty’s vision/imagination/ability. If, if, if…

In any situation with power differentials, a delicate balance must be struck.

The irony is evidenced in the universe’s bizarre take on reciprocity. Let’s look at the administrator’s plight again (just because we hardly ever do, after all admin is THE MAN). If you are an administrator, the ease with which you conduct and develop yourself and your institution can hang in the balance of your faculties’ vision/imagination/ability. It works both ways! Shit does not, in fact, only roll downhill. Miraculously it rolls up with gravity-defying ease!

And this applies to hierarchies in organizations like NCECA, galleries like ArtStream, residencies like Red Lodge Clay Center, publications like Ceramics Monthly, blogs like mine. We all want total buy-in from our stakeholders. We all want dialogue with our community on some level. I can’t decide if it gets trickier with a larger group or a smaller group. Like most things, each has an up and a downside, blah-blah-blah

What are we doing to develop our communities? How are we acknowledging our stakeholders? Do our actions prove out our desires? In other words are we doing all we can to develop people and relationships as significant investment opportunities? I suspect the answer is no too often.

Regardless, it’s high time to introduce some imagery to the topic. One of the things that struck me about the exhibitions at NCECA this year…

WAIT--first I have to confess I only was able to see a small grouping of exhibits. I know, as a governing body, NCECA is trying to make sure most of the exhibitions have a thematic connection rather than the basic geographic or historical connection. Still there was work in rooms that remained unconscious of the work on the neighboring pedestal. “Who are you,” these objects questioned each other. All vying to be the star, unconcerned and unaware of the context they were haplessly floating in.

However, I did see two exhibitions, which really stood out to me and both just happen to be very topical in regard to community. There is a third exhibit I want to address but I’m still trying to sort out how I feel about it. I think the third will have to wait for another post once it gels in my head. The second exhibit housed Lea Zoltowski’s installations at Collective Tattoo and Gallery. Look to the left column of the blog for information on “Whale Wars”.

I’m going to focus on the first exhibit, the first in my list of favorites, not the first one I saw, but I want to begin by introducing you to a group in Missouri.

The St. Louis Regional Arts Commission sponsors the longest running Community Arts Training Institute. Each year a group of artists and social activists (and there is indeed crossover) are selected to learn about effectively developing community. I am a happy alum of the CAT Institute and one of the wonderful books they exposed me to was “New Creative Community: The Art of Cultural Development” by Arlene Goldbard. Here is a brief excerpt from the book:

“...artists’ investigations of cultural difference often reveal deep commonalities within diversity: every culture has ways, however distinct, of encountering the universal in human experience from birth to death, and many of these resonate across cultural barriers. But grasping such commonality always begins by encountering difference—whether based in place, ethnicity, age, orientation or other life condition—and framing it as something to treasure.”[1]

Pattie Chalmers, Benjie Heu and Carmela Laganse presented a bijou exhibition in a nearby, yet simultaneously isolated venue in St. Petersburg: Lynn Merhige Gallery, 216 4th St N, 727-895-2797.

The Ever-enders is a term referring to the individuals on the periphery of a community. These are the folks that are welcome enough, as long as they don’t forget the boundary. Figures lean forward expectantly, part formal device and part the necessary result of hanging on the wall, but no matter. The figures lean in with a quiet desire to get off of the wall. Heads watch, growing fatter and fatter with observed experience, disembodied and incapable of taking part.

photo courtesy of B.Heu

They are ready though. Ready to participate at any moment. If the objects or figures are held at the periphery of the room, disallowed from entering active floor space, they do not shy away from building up their pedestals or girth. Somehow these figures on the edge, the ones who are, as Chalmers says, “…the endless turner of the rope,” are forming their own group. It is their common differences that bind them to the edge and then bind them together in wonderful washes of blue. The aforementioned quote narrates my experience of this installation perfectly. No matter how distinct the artists’ aesthetics seemed initially, the community presented in the work quickly moved me. A powerful awareness of the other was invoked in self-reliant and melancholic tones. At a small table a brownie (now a bluie?) sits in company with her trusty rock.

photo courtesy of B.Heu

A light bearer diligently, yet humbly stands, with her proud and boisterous feathered friends.

photo courtesy of B.Heu

A stag is ready to leap off the wall with a secret offering bundled within a possible bag.

photo courtesy of B.Heu

Here’s the thing: If our community can make work like this and so many of us can identify with or remember being an “ever-ender” why oh why are the gates of Valhalla guarded so closely? Why aren’t we doing more to showcase the unusual suspects? Take a risk! If we fall down, we just get to be wiser because of it. We can only gain, because…Guess what folks? It’s clay not war and no one is going to die if we try something new and it fails. “Mordecai Kaplan: ‘The past,’ he said, ‘has a vote, not a veto.’”[2]

I promise I’m not just pointing a finger outward. We each have an ability to take control of defining our community. The “ever-enders” are on the periphery, but they form an incredibly active and diverse membrane. Even if you feel nailed to the wall, as it were, there is a lot you can effect if you choose to. The ladies of ceramic history provide a pretty amazing lodestar. They focused on a simple goal of empowering an underutilized segment of society to grow a community: Adelaide Alsop Robineau, Mary Louise McLaughlin, Maria Longworth Nichols, Mary Chase Perry.

“People are emotional beings first. This is the human part of the being so to speak. When we are active in the work we become human doings. And though the work is important, when your people work from a space of emotion they work from their heart. Good things happen from the heart. Your [stakeholders] will take care of one another better. They will find ways to take care of [patrons/community/students/future] better and they will take care of you too!”[3]

I was recently encouraged to be more direct in my posts, but I don’t think I can be more direct than I am being right now. You may ask, “What specifically is she on about?” Unfortunately, there are plenty of applicable examples to go around. The good news is, fortunately, there are a lot of good examples to emulate too. Just take a little look around and apply your wonderful intent. This creative community has a wonderful gift of creativity and the narratives within are more than adequate devices for sifting out hidden members of our community.

That’s all for now. Thanks! It was great to see you all again.

[1] Goldbard, Arlene. New Creative Community: the Art of Cultural Development. 2nd ed. Oakland, CA: New Village, 2006. Print, p. 49

[2] ibid, p.152

[3] Cavallari, Renie. "Proven Ways Team Building Creates Community in the Workplace | Tips On Leadership." Leadership Training | Sales Training | Team Building. 29 Mar. 2009. Web. 05 Apr. 2011.

Conversations at the Log #3: Concerning Critical Writing

2011-03-27T12:05:00.000-07:00

One of the most wonderful things about having the opportunity to work at Red Lodge Clay Center is the privilege to engage in conversations with folks who are at the top of the field. On a good day the location is a nexus of energy and I am sincerely grateful for the opportunity to look behind the curtain. We are leaving for NCECA tomorrow and it will be an NCECA like no other for me, because my perceptions have shifted so dramatically in the past twelve months. As is my nature, I am simultaneously excited and terrified by the prospect of what's to come. Before I post the next edition of "Conversations at the Log" I want to address a concern of mine regarding NCECA. I have heard many complaints about NCECA, complaints from voices I never would have heard had I not been given the opportunity to sit where I now sit. As someone who was grinding it out in the hinterlands for almost a decade, removed from and unseen by the broader ceramic community, I want to speak up for NCECA. The conference provides ignition for newcomers and a much needed revival for folks who work in isolation around the country. I'm always excited to see what is new and to have the opportunity to hear new ideas, to have notions validated, to make connections and to see countless works of art. It is my goal at this NCECA to review a couple of exhibitions and see if I can't hit the note a distant colleague and I discuss in the conversation below. This is the third transcription from the "Conversations at the Log" series of posts.

As always, comments are much appreciated and I encourage you to subscribe to the blog and share the posts. I've added a couple of new features as well. Explore and respond as you like.

CONVERSATIONS AT THE LOG #3: Concerning Critical Writing

I don’t know what academic writing is.

Don’t you think it’s about finding a reference point in history and connecting it to the thing you are discussing? The topic you are discussing is either restating an important historical part of the canon or it’s reacting strongly in opposition to the canon. Essentially your topic has to be validated by a minimum of three other sources so it’s not just “stuff” you are cooking up in your own head, although if Newton hadn’t cooked “stuff” up… But he had to prove it with examples--tangible things that were occurring in the world. So I think that is a large part of academic writing. We have to look outside of our own little worlds if we’re going to state something new. Where else is this happening in the cultural subconscious?

You can’t really make a seamless parallel between creative writing and ceramics, but there is an energy about creative writing or a feeling about it I can attach to what I do in the studio. Something about writers, the best writers write for themselves and are seduced by their own writing. I think good ceramic artists can be seduced by their own work and then they can send it out to a larger audience. Don’t you get seduced?

Yes. By my own work?

Yes, when it’s good, strong and right?

Yes.

I do. I don’t get seduced by everything, but… An introductory text to “The Best Short Stories” says, “Stories are like jars full of bees. You unscrew the lid and out come the bees, maybe in the end that’s all guest editors do. We choose the stories that contain the most bees. The tales that sting us good, leaving us surprised and sore at first, then free to worry at our leisure, the tender inflamed spot, our attention focused, ourselves wide awake and alive.” That’s just beautifully written.

Well yes, because he’s making a picture in our head. I think, obviously, that’s what great writing does.

But is that an academic paper?

I don’t know, no. I don’t think what he was writing was an academic paper. That was a statement of intent. But, you know, I have so many College Art Association Journals that I want to read. I mean to read them. And I spend an awful lot of time beating myself up for not reading them. But I just can’t pay attention to them because there is not a strong narrative in them.

Right

And I want there to be a story.

Well, a piece that Peter Stempel wrote, I would say it's academic writing wouldn’t you? It’s in a narrative form.

Yes, I agree. Have you read “The Botany of Desire”?

It’s the same style. I think if you are a good academic writer, and by good I mean accessible, you can make valid academic points and support your theories without alienating your audience. But not everyone is a performer, not everyone is a storyteller.

Right

So maybe that’s the sweet spot of documentary or non-fiction or critical writing, when you capture the sweet spot of both styles.

Yes, I agree. Glen Brown is one of the top critical writers in our field, but after a paragraph I’m done.

Laughter

But do you feel bad about it?

Yes, of course. I feel like I’m not smart.

But then you hear people talk about anti-intellectualism. I’ve heard that criticism a couple of times in the recent past, folks concerned about a move toward anti-intellectualism and I wonder if what they are really saying is that they want to be part of an elite group and this society is moving toward an egalitarian way. Is the public “voting” for a more egalitarian discourse? Just because something is egalitarian (narrative) does that mean it’s anti-intellectual?

Well, the anti-intellectual complaint I hear refers to the arena of politics. I don’t see anti-intellectualism in our field at all. I think it’s definitely prevalent in politics, but I don’t see it in ceramic circles so much.

But what you are talking about… If we are saying we want someone who can write well and support their observations in a narrative way, keeping the reader drawn in without using alienating vocabulary, we will stand accused of being for anti-intellectualism. Essentially we are saying, “I need sugar to drink this tea.”

Hmmm. Well another point he touches on in his opening comments tells about a lecture he attended where the speaker was asked, “What is the point of literature?” The speaker replied, “To entertain and instruct.” And everyone was disappointed in the answer. The audience continued to get him to expand on the answer and he refused. It was only after the audience members had matured themselves that they realized he was right. We need a little candy, a little sugar to swallow the pill. I don’t know, I like that idea. To entertain and instruct, heck yeah! Who wants to read a story without a little entertainment along the way?

I have to agree.

Auctions for Japan

2011-03-25T05:14:00.000-07:00

Once again, Ayumi Horie is leading the way with social consciousness, social networking and craft.

Get to the Handmade for Japan auction and tell your friends!

Check this out

2011-03-19T10:09:00.000-07:00

Cuplomacy

Independent Labels

2011-03-19T09:18:00.000-07:00

I am not a potter.

This was the most I could say for a long time.

I could not say what I was.

The statement housed a lack of confidence and a disconnection from my true self. When uttered aloud, the statement always sounded defensive, although defense was not my conscious intent. Maybe it was the use of a negative particle keeping the true intentions of my words at bey. Popular trends and rigorous methodologies have never come naturally to me, and I don’t really have much interest in them or time to cultivate them. So naturally, it would seem, my disposition is not that of a potter.

The only time I have peeked into the part of my soul which might identify with a potter’s was when I learned to make paper. In my mind I can recall the meditative peace welling within me as I couched sheet after sheet after sheet after sheet of vibrant pulp. The only other time I can consciously recall such peace settling on my mind comes from a distant memory of snorkeling. Silence, water, color. Writing it out like this I can see there is a connection between the two experiences. My point is that the heart of the potter, it seems, may not be totally foreign to me.

The sense of accomplishment from being able to make the plastic stuff grow into a form upon command of my hand was sincere. I have a manic love of and desire for multiples. Honestly, I find overproduction and bounty a pleasing sight. There is magic in the magnitude of multiples enabling a clear perspective, wherein everything else in the world, tangible and ‘un’ shrinks right down to a perfect and manageable size. Like a farmer must feel after harvesting a crop, looking out over a sea of bowls, cups, plates, dishes, etc. is an experience of self-gratification. But...

Day in. Day out. Admirable as the effort may be, it is too static an endeavor for my sensibilities.

Still, I have somehow managed to immerse myself in a world hyper-focused on one material. I have done so because of my own history with it, however low-brow those origins might be considered. My grandmother ran a slip-casting studio in a small town. She had about five kilns and countless molds. We used Duncan glazes and I can recall digging the crystal chunks out of the bottle to enhance the random speckled patterns that would become my bedroom lamp for the next two decades. My sister and I spent hours scraping seams off greenware and sanding the surface before bisque. (ahh, again as I write this brings the memory of the aforementioned meditative peace: scrape, scrape, scrape, scrape) The time spent in my grandmother’s clay studio was such a happy time.

But the whole affair went dormant in my mind. For years I forgot about it. When I decided to focus my studies on clay in college, a shop like hers was, and still is in some circles, the lowest denominator in our field. Thankfully that veil of shame is lifting as we move ever forward and open up permission and accessibility to all schools of the past. More importantly, as I mature in my creative life, I find the episodes from a small town pottery shop awakened in my mind, and as I flip through the memories recalling the peace and joy, I care less and less about feeling deficient as a production potter or the world of chemical romance so prevalent in contemporary ceramics.

Still. Back to the original point. I am not a potter.

In the first years of my immersion in contemporary ceramics, housed safely in academia thanks to the GI Bill my grandmother’s generation fought for, the people I met were always so balanced and delightful, and, yes--come on you can say it with me--EARTHY. This was the honeymoon phase to be sure and it lasted a long while. Actually, the mystique is still there a bit. So much so, that I desperately wanted to be a part of that club. They had so much cameradarie and presented a model of honest work paying dividends in tangible, utilitarian products. The lifestyle was an anchor and a metaphor for life. I wanted to be a potter, but only in an inclusive, come-on-let-me-be-a-part-of-your-group, theoretical way.

(Pause for a geeky non-sequitur: After seeing Star Wars, I wanted to unlock the power of my mind and gain the ability to levitate objects. I did not want to learn about the technology behind light sabers.)

Potters are tangible.

Certainly, there are intangible philosophies supporting their intentions, but so much of the productions potters world is bound in the tangible. They are alchemists first. Only some cross over into mystic status. And still, when I say, “I am not a potter,” I mean, or I meant, I am not worthy of the status. I have not earned the title. I do admire the production potter tradition. I also admire Dick Proenneke who built his own home in Alaska from hand-built tools at the age of 51, but it does not mean I want to busy myself with a similar endeavor. My life thus far has led me to know I have the mettle to make the journey to visit Mr. Proenneke and that, if I had to, I could be self-sufficient. My sister and I joke about how our family is built for disaster, meaning we are the stable ballast in a storm, and even if our assessment is as true as we think it is, it doesn’t mean that we want to hike for five days in snow to chop down and skin a tree, processing it into usable lumber for our home. Nor would we want to repeat the process the number of times required to realize a cabin.

The problem with this sort of thinking, “I am not a potter,” is that it did not name my strengths. It did not allow me to believe in what I did bring to the proverbial table. Always, there is this struggle between classes. Paulo Freire’s “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” addresses this struggle. It is tricky to co-exist with another group, to grossly minimize the thesis. I don’t want to call production potters my oppressors, that goes way beyond the pale. I was oppressing myself.

The model illustrated by Freire is one where the oppressed are stood upon only until they are educated and then they are renewed and reinvigorated in their desire to take part in decisions which define their world. The hazard is that once empowered the prior “oppressed” can sometimes become the oppressor. It is crucial, Freire asserts, to embed the burden of continued education and shared empowerment on everyone. As one moves up, so to do the rest, if the burden is accepted. This is how we avoid the “culture of silence” wherein we would accept having a status quo thrust upon us.

There are countless pathetic anecdotes I could regale you with about being shut out of conversations with potters because I am just not interested in firing schedules, the nuances of chemistry, the hours and hours of labor required to pull a single bowl from a wood kiln. Here is what I know now thanks to inclusive mentors who broke open doors of technical language for me, language that is used sometimes only to make the speaker feel superior. I can and do understand, albeit at a rudimentary level, the science behind ceramics. I would understand it better through repeated practice, but I am more interested in the human condition than the condition of the flame.

I had to take myself out of the position of oppression, because I was the only one putting me there. In turn, I have to recognize that some of the alchemists and potters in the field are feeling just as excluded when talk turns to intangible subject matter. I have a responsibility to not be snide and condescending when a colleague shuts down a thought process because it intimidates them. It is so easy to go on the defensive and say, “Your lack of imagination will not impact my perspiration and progress.” A statement that could be easily delivered with defensive venom. Better such sentiments are spoken between friends who are reassuring themselves that their path is right for them right now.

I began this entry by saying what I wasn’t and admitting such a tactic got in the way of saying what I was. My personal, and surprisingly recent, revelation is that I am an artist. I have an affinity for, but am not limited to craft materials, from clay to macaroni. I have a personal mandate to empower people to find their creative voice and to see just how many people we can fit around the table. There is always room for more.

Artistic Hubris

2011-01-16T17:04:00.000-08:00

January 2011 sees the beginning of my curatorial efforts at Red Lodge Clay Center come to fruition. The first exhibition is titled Intimations of Candor and Culpability and features the work of Pavel Amromin and Pattie Chalmers. There were a lot of hopes and aspirations in moving to Red Lodge, MT and assuming the role of Gallery Coordinator and it really is still too soon to tell if these are going to be met in full, but at this point I suspect the goals are going to shift like they always do. In the shifting of goals I believe I am finding clarity, although…

Clarity is an elusive thing, especially in a tangential mind. Ideas snap into sharp focus only to immediately cloud with other questions, dialogues and concerns.

This week I have seen more foot traffic in the gallery than I would have anticipated in January, been reading an article on the evolution of desserts in the January edition of the New Yorker, answering an elaborate questionnaire for a book Ceramics and the Human Figure Edith Garcia is editing in hopes of getting my own work or writings accepted for publication, and this Saturday morning finds me reading a friends application for a PhD program in Europe, trying to stay abreast of contemporary art by rededicating my web bookmarks to guide me to weekly news blasts.

Let’s parse this out.

The work in the Loft Gallery is not revolutionary in the field of ceramics, nor is it exploring new ground for either artist, however in putting the two together I felt there were more similarities than disparities to be found; similarities that would only be highlighted in looking at the bodies of work side-by-side. Writing a synopsis for the monthly newsletter was a challenge in presenting my intentions without sounding pedantic and so I elucidated:

“It would be most convenient to assume that the only common threads between the two bodies of work in the loft this month were palette and figure. And while the assessment would be correct, it would also be a much shorter story. These are modular memories and reflections of our world and it is far more interesting to consider the connections and similarities than to dismiss the "mash-up" as happenstance. Any rendering has inevitable notes of autobiography, but neither Amromin nor Chalmers allows the viewer to comfortably point a finger outward. If we are honest in our viewing we consider our own role(s) in the vignettes presented. At the end of the day all the roles are interchangeable. The work of Chalmers and Amromin, in the rich tradition of ceramic effigies, use candid observational rendering, hinting at the great overlap between innocence and culpability, between memories and tomorrow.”

But who reads this? The virtual community. And what great disconnect there is between the online perception of an exhibition and the actual experience in the physical space. The placement of objects in space is completely lost in viewing the online version of the exhibition. Inversely, the general public, who walk into the gallery and make it upstairs to the exhibition have no text available to guide them. Watching the reactions to the bodies of work is so interesting, but really at the end of the day only serves to reveal my hubris as a curator and artist. Visitors walk in greeted by one of Amromin’s Allegorical Figures which they promptly overlook because larger and, more in their forward moving line of sight, is Chalmers’ “That Song” a friendly female at eye level smiling at them. They smile back and stop briefly to note all the letters piling up at her feet and the attention to detail on the old 45 record player, before they are visually grabbed by the Mudman.

Without facial expression, Chalmers’ Mudman does not invoke fear, he is partnered with a Brownie and together they roast marshmallows over a glowing fire in front of the Brownie’s tent. If anything, visitors are sympathetic that the Mudman does not know how to properly roast his marshmallow, he has burnt it and it remains on fire. Delighted they look up and are greeted by a row of Amromin’s returning Boy Soldiers, all amputees and drained of color. People seem to initially read the amputated limbs as being tucked under. Few seem to snap to the actuality presented because they don’t linger here. They turn, perhaps spotting the polychromatic Boy Soldiers of “Adventure Bound” and a quizzical look comes over their face.

“These ‘pig-dogs’ are carrying guns. Why?” I feel I can hear their inner dialogue and they turn away quickly to see Chalmers’ laughing bridesmaid and just as quickly they leap over her head to Amromin’s “Puppy Love” with the central figure clutching a blanket, looking down timidly and the viewer hurries over close and the realization sets in that this puppy love is the precursor to a sinister act. The blanket-clutching pup is backed to the precipice of her world and is in real danger. I can see the word RAPE flash across the viewers mind, the eyes go up, a hand to the mouth and they quickly turn away.

And that’s it.

Their minds are made up and further inspection of the exhibit only confirms their thoughts. One body of work is fun, spirited, familiar and the other is duplicitous, drawing them in with purported cuteness only to prove very, very dark. They do not seem to see the frailty of human nature I hoped they would see. They do not seem to ask themselves why these two bodies of work were presented as a whole. It was my own hubris that allowed me to think seeing the work would be enough to generate the questions. An important statement in the mission of Red Lodge Clay Center is, “…to share with our resident artists and the general public the importance of art in our everyday lives.” The residents are already true believers for the most part; it’s the general public that I am most concerned with communicating my intent. Here hubris raises its head again, masked as hope and wrapped in good intentions.

The gallery has to put into action the plans we’ve discussed to bridge the online gap, but we also have to provide a bridge for the public that comes into our space. On the Red Lodge Clay Center website we are going to create a pop-up with images of the exhibition in the actual space and include a curatorial statement with the images. It still won’t be the same as being there, but it is a beginning. Ideally, I would like to be able to have wall text in the gallery with artists’ statements and a curatorial statement, but the cost is not warranted by the limited amount of foot traffic. Still this information has to be presented, but these are just surface issues. The bigger concern is the hope to impact an individual mind and begin a landslide that starts a paradigm shift for one person, leading to a bigger impact on society. The anecdotal butterfly flaps its wings.

This issue of hubris is nothing new and consistently rampant in the human condition, even when the best of intention are laids out. We are the center of our universe after all. Take my friend who is applying to an exclusive PhD program in Norway. His proposal states his intentions to use ceramics as an "experimental research platform, appropriating from numerous disciplines and a wide range of nontraditional materials, processes and ideas." His objects and installations explore relationships between objects in unrecognized contexts in the hopes of creating confusion that encourages maker and viewer to become familiar with assessing and managing information which may seem to accost them initially.

The application in its entirety is eloquent and targets his academic audience very well, but I find it so interesting that the central intention of his proposition is to, “…set up a deliberate, beneficial misunderstanding in the work in order to lead both myself and the viewer towards new ways of seeing the world…” Here again we have the ego of the arts, supposing we have some insight to share.

I believe in the sincerity of the quest, if only because I know myself to be sincere when I put forward such hopes. The aforementioned work moves me in its visual poetry and reading about it brings a deeper respect for the creative efforts and results. Yet, this application process and the language necessary for my friend to make the next leap in his career, to find some solid footing in the precarious ground that is art, set my mind on the outside looking in and I wonder, “How can we expect the viewer, the general public, to see what we see when we have traveled so far down a path where we split hairs to an infinite degree?” I begin to doubt we see as clearly as the general public does anymore, if only because we fail to account for responses outside of our own experience. Not because we don’t want to, but because we are unable to any longer. The great separation between one voice and one ear is nearly insurmountable.

And yet, WE, try.

Bill Lasarow, Editor of Visual Art Source, wrote in his Weekly Newsletter of current events: the shooting in Arizona, Sarah Palin’s response, President Obama’s response. He laments the disconnect and misinterpretation in our contemporary world. He then praises the President for his speech, wherein all the fallen in Arizona are called with seemingly disparate biographies. What is the conclusion, how does Lasarow create a parallel in the arts?

“What the President did with the random biographies of the shooting victims, who themselves have entered into the national mythos at random, was illuminate that inevitable connective tissue. I think we all gathered that his was a metaphor of national reconciliation, a call for civility. That this is the über-theme of the Obama presidency is not a point that need be elaborated on or critiqued here. What struck me is that without realizing it my private knowledge has been that the nature of art draws even the most diverse creative people into shared orbits all the time. Not in spite of but by virtue of the very pursuit of distinction there arises common purpose. The patchwork is rough, but so is that of America itself.

The tragedy of Tucson provided the unexpected occasion for collective self-examination. The President's narrative has clarified the process. If it is important that Americans challenge each others' ideas without, as he suggested, doubting adversaries' love of country, it is essential that we honestly criticize the creative production and strategies of artists while never forgetting to honor the largesse of the aesthetic enterprise.”

Lasarow seems to assert the art world paradigm is an exemplar for the rest of society; at least he allows for criticism of it, but his assertions left me acutely aware of artistic conceit masked in self-congratulatory good will. And again, I was reminded of how insular the “aesthetic enterprise” can be.

If I sound accusatory, it is intentional.

Still--I allow, as a maker, an educator and a curator, I am not free from the charge. I just can’t help but remember every, average Art Appreciation student I had over the course of seven years. The thing that turns them away. The thing that makes them feel belittled or afraid or offended or challenged is the image. We, makers/educators/curators, set down imagery and objects and stand behind a tall wall where we can shield ourselves from the responsibility of building a bridge. How often do we ask the communities we purport to desire reaching out to, exactly what they want and where they are? We expect them to take the full mantle of research and inquisition and discovery on themselves as we, full of good intention, create visual metaphors, parallels, poems where there is nothing recognizable to them. It is tantamount to saying, “If I just speak long enough and loud enough to people versed in a foreign tongue they will eventually understand my language.”

In writing my application for the publishing opportunity, I realized an answer to a question I have been turning over in the studio as I continue to make vessel-based objects. I never could reconcile why I persisted in making vessels, and platters for that matter, when traditional function is of little concern for me. I realized I am intentionally making forms that find themselves at the center of domestic gatherings where they have the opportunity to deliver a narrative subversively on a daily basis. My motivation is as optimistic, yet egocentric as ever, “If I just sit here and whisper, over and over and over again, someone will hear. I will impact a change.”

It is in the pages of the New Yorker where I found a kernel of inspiration and a guiding light. In an article by Adam Gopnik titled “Sweet Revolution: The power of the pastry chef”. He shares a journey through the evolution of dessert as he travels through Europe. It is when he arrives at elBulli and meets Ferran and Albert Adria that he really grabbed my attention, with my mind swirling as it has been on this issue of blind optimism rampant in art. At elBulli they have combined science and “…culinary curiosity [creating] a real revolution in cooking…”

Gopnik lapses into creating parallels with the art world. His words resonated for me. He describes Albert as Braque, “…a stolid man with a poetic imagination,” and Ferran, “…is very much a Picasso, a grand maitre who knows it. Like every first-rate artist, he has the kind of immense egomania that is oddly impersonal: his greatness is so uncontroversial to him that it is an act of generosity to try to limit it in words and dates. There is a certain kind of artistic egotism that is enveloping rather than narrowing: less ‘All I care about is my work’ than ‘If you only cared about my work as much as I do, you would be as routinely elated as I am.’”

Recognize.

The two, Albert and Ferran, are deconstructing flavors. They present abstractions to stretch the field and to stretch their audience’s palette. Sound familiar? Below is the potential epiphany I read and found applicable to my query,

“…the true point of the deconstructed dessert was to create a kind of analytic Cubism of the pastry plate. It wasn’t that Black Forest cake was broken down into bits but that, if you’re possessed by the urge to break things down into bits, it’s more obvious that you’re doing it when you do it to a Black Forest cake. The Cubists used guitars and tables, ordinary still-life objects, for the same reason: you knew what a guitar or a table looked like, and so could see when it didn’t look that way. Once the fracture was achieved and accepted, you could move on to your mythology. ‘If we make a curry ice cream, and you put mushrooms there, and eel—STRANGE!’ he [Ferran] said. ‘But if you put chicken stock, and coconut, then it’s curry.’”

Remember this message is not so different from what I reported Theaster Gates replied to the Wisconsin Museum when they asked him to be a bridge to the black community. He told the museum he was happy to be a bridge, but they had to offer the black community some objects, imagery and lore they could see themselves in. We have to provide our audiences with mirrors to anchor them, to engage them and to remind ourselves:

If our intentions are to uplift and reach out, we can’t forget who we are reaching to and work to be really good listeners. Otherwise I’m afraid, we; I’m afraid I will only be shouting into an abyss with words that have ceased to be relevant to audience who has left the building and doesn’t care about my intentions anymore than I demonstrated care about them.

The hopeful kernel is the belief and the courage it takes to toss out new ideas and complicated systems. The courage to throw together Pattie Chalmers and Pavel Amromin with the hope to learn from the pairing. The inherent optimism required to set up objects in relationships you know are going to frustrate your audience is something of a personal miracle. In discussing my concerns with my friend who is applying for the PhD he made the following point: there is a crucial difference between someone who is sharing a concept with a larger audience as they are discovering it and someone who presents an idea as absolute fact and depreciates those who don't accept or hold it as common knowledge.

Conversations at the Log #2

2010-12-20T07:29:00.000-08:00

“You say it’s [your work] is about the material and the mess. Why is that significant? Why is that enough? For the ‘art’ to be about the material and the mess?”

Long pause

“ummmmmmm” laughter

“Now you’re nervous, but aren’t there larger implications?”

“ummmm, does is ‘have’ to be about other stuff?”

“Are there larger implications for you and/in your work?”

“For me and my work?”

“Besides melting stuff……no?”

“I mean there’s nothing political about it.”

“But isn’t it about pushing limits?”

“Yeah,”

“and isn’t there some sort of metaphorical parallel?”

“ummm, just pushing material limits, I’m not…I don’t know…I guess it’s just about experimenting. It’s pretty base.”

“Do you feel like…REALLY? You feel like it’s pretty base?”

“Yeah, I feel like I’m not-

“So you’re a hedonist?”

“-well, I feel like what I do is pretty base. It’s not like I’m trying to change the world, I’m just trying to experiment and push this material.”

“To what end?”

“I don’t really see an end to it, that’s what I like about it so much, is that by pushing one material it draws an interest to another material, and it’s a continual cycle of just wanting to learn about what happens when I put a little bit more of this in until I put way too much in and then I find out something different.”

“And it’s just, that’s enough? That’s it? And the goal, the thing you want to leave is that you pushed feldspar as FAR as it can go?”

laughter

“I mean you’re sort of an art geek aren’t you?”

“yeah, sort of. I’m more of a materials geek I think. I’m more interested in just watching oil drip out of a can.”

“But do you know why?”

“NO [laughter] that’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

“So you want to know why?”

“Yeah, I want to know why. I mean, I think about ‘why’ when I’m making, but I don’t know why. I just know-“

“Now wait. You said you lived with engineers and geologists and the like. There is definitely an end to their questions. There is a means to their ends, but what you are saying is you don’t know what your end is?”

“Yeah, I don’t see an end to the series or the way that the work is progressing. Before I saw an end to the machine objects I was making. I reached this point where I figured out the level of craft, mixed media and all this stuff, and I felt like I had finished it. And I don’t feel like I’ve finished the experimenting?”

“OK, so I could see how something like this work (we were looking at a sculpture by Jessica Jackson Hutchins) relates to what you are interested in, but I don’t really see how you see it as one material.”

Jessica Jackson Hutchins "Couple"

“I guess I just sort of see it as this big blob of residue.”

“OK, so then it’s history? Is it a visual poem?”

“hmmmm.”

“How would you help somebody understand this work?”

laughter

“I’m having a hard time understanding it myself!”

much laughter

“I mean it’s tough. It’s a pretty tough blob.”

“Well okay, let’s say you go to grad school, and you get a teaching job and there is an Art Appreciation class on your roster-

laughs, “yeah”

-and you’re like, ‘Dammit’ and then you’ve got, y’know…”

“I probably wouldn’t show this, because I can’t describe it.”

much laughter

“I would talk about shit I know about.”

“Well what would you talk about?”

“I don’t know, I’ve never had to deal with that. I don’t even want to think about that.”

“Okay”

“But for this woman [Jessica Jackson Hutchins] and that piece, definitely more than these pieces. The work with the couch definitely transcends these other works. [Here we are comparing the work “Couple” to the work with the vessel setting on velvet pants in an old chair]

Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Velvet Hand, 2009, chair, vase, velvet pants, 33 x 21 x 20".

Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Denim Vase, 2009, ceramic, denim, 9 x 7 x 5".

“Yes, I definitely agree this work is a stronger object than the other.”

“Umm, I wouldn’t really know how to. These [the chairs] are way less interesting to me.”

“So it’s the brown chair with velvet pants sewn together holding a ceramic vessel and the other vessel is lined with denim. Earlier it was said that these brought to mind Meret Oppenheim. So, Why are these less interesting? Are they just worse compositionally?”

“Yeah, I think when you are stripping the material down, this basic, she’s sort of losing control of the form on the one with the denim. It’s sort of formless and just a blob with white and blue.”

“Yeah, it looks like bad Ceramics I”

“and, I don’t know, it’s bad in a way that there’s no way of knowing where the control was or where that level of craft was. That’s sort of like the big issue.”

“It’s like when we were talking about your functional work and being able to see the intent.”

“yeah”

“But what’s interesting to me is being able to see in the reviews about her work. The reviewers talk about seeing the intent in it. But do you think that goes back to the New York art world not really knowing…”

“I think that’s the difference between the ceramic world and the art world, and the craft with a capital ‘C’ that hangs over us.”

“Because we can’t look at it without knowing?”

“yeah, We can’t look at it without saying, ‘UGH! I can’t fucking see that! I can’t believe that! Are you kidding me?’ Y’know? We all-technique is EVERYTHING in the ceramic half of the art world.”

“it is”

“and I guess for us who are involved in the ceramic part, we can’t look past the craft or the lack of craft, whatever you want to call it.”

“Do you feel like you have that problem too?”

“Looking past a lack of craft? Oh yeah! Oh yeah! [keep in mind this is a person who classifies his work as a mess] Remember I have a hard time looking at certain pots because of little things that bother me.”

“Well I guess that is true.”

“Little things that are common on a lot of pots. I just can’t handle it.”

“Well, it’s different levels for everybody in regard to that, but why do you think that…Why isn’t Jessica’s work or Arlene Shechet’s work [more largely] recognized by ceramics?”

“I can see Arlene’s work being more recognized in Scandinavia or elsewhere in Europe. Her work reminds me a lot of works that are coming out of Denmark and Sweden.”

“y’know the other day I was talking to a friend and he was saying the conversations that are happening in Denmark are way more theoretical and way more interesting and way beyond any questions of craft that we’re having here. Why is that?”

“because they are better than us?”

laughter

“They’re just better.”

“But there are people here in the states who are interested in those questions too. Is it just about momentum? Is it just about geography?”

“I think they have a lot of history that got them past some of these things or got them to a point where they don’t even give a shit about craft because of all the production potteries they’ve had.”

“So they just did it to death? Do you think we haven’t done it enough yet? Not concentrated enough? Not a collective concentration to get past-

“I don’t think…the way that ceramics was introduced in Europe was such a different way too. They wanted fine china, the porcelain….well I guess there was stoneware, but I think of the European porcelain craze and after that….maybe that wore them out.”

“They wanted a different question?”

“Yeah. They were pushing ideas about sculptural vessels and function and questioning all of these things with Meissen porcelain, so…and we’re still doing that here. You don’t see potters over there just making sculptural vessels. They are way over that.”

“right”

“and I think that’s because of a lot of the history before.”

“But I think a lot of the questions you are asking in your work are way over it too.”

“yeah”

Couple of Hot Tips

2010-12-20T06:23:00.001-08:00

OK, maybe "hot" is not the right word. The article referenced below was published on October 31, so I'm almost two months behind. Lawd knows, I'm scrambling to catch up though!

Still, if you don't know about this yet check out:

Adobe Airstream Magazine

and a great article written by Ellen Berkovitch, "The 'Piss In': NCECAs Critical Santa Fe"

It is a scathing review, but I think she hits on a lot of points we all need to hear. The article also led me to a great interview with Arlene Shechet at BOMB Magazine. I have to wonder why the likes of Arlene Shechet and Jessica Jackson Hutchins are not on sites like Access Ceramics. If it is only because the site shows work of folks who submit their work, then I have to say it is succumbing to the same old belly-button gazing narcissism ceramics always falls into. How can the mission truly be to enhance ceramic education world wide when it only looks inward? When will the collective gaze shift to the horizon?

Conversations at the Log #1.5

2010-12-15T17:12:00.000-08:00

This morning, early in the studio I was caught without my tape recorder. My second edition of “Conversations at the Log” is already recorded and transcribed, but this was such an interesting conversation. I knew I would need to try to reconstruct it and at least recall the high points. Please understand the conversation below is paraphrased. And by its very nature, paraphrasing can only attempt to capture the ephemeral nature of early morning candor.

The point at which I would have pressed play on the recorder was when we were admiring recent rewards from a kiln. There were some fairly lovely pitchers sitting on the top of a table…

“Don’t you just love a good pitcher?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact I do.”

“Yeah, these are not like some pitchers. You can get your hand down into them and clean them.”

“Is that what makes a good pitcher?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Why don’t you just get a bottle brush? Why can’t the form dictate the function?”

“Well it can, but I’m not going to that much trouble for a pitcher! I already do it for Tara Wilson’s tumblers. Those are sweet.”

“Hmmm, this is interesting. I’ve only heard men make this complaint and it seems I’ve heard it many times. I wonder if there is some larger thing going on here. Are men more pre-disposed to voicing their discomfort and women socialized to accept and adapt? [of course] Women have been washing dishes a lot longer than men and maybe a bottle brush doesn’t seem like such a big compromise?”

“Maybe, but that’s not the only thing that makes a good pitcher. At least these pitchers are trying to BE pitchers. They hold more than one cup of water. I hate those pitchers that only hold one or two cups of water. ‘Here, I’m drinking with myself.’ ”

“You sound the same as the last conversation I had about pitchers. You are making a distinction between functional work and sculptures of functional work?”

“Yeah, there are so many people making pitchers that really could care less about whether or not they offer practical functionality. “

At this point, it’s hard to ignore the conversant is standing next to a cart full of functional work that was purposefully cranked out in a slap-dash manner. There are cups with anti-feet, roughly hewed bowls and Flinstonesque buckets a plenty.

“Well yeah, but this isn’t trying to be good function. This is poking at function. Look at Chuck Hindes.”

We’ll leave that connection hanging there in the ether and turn to the work on the cart, which is actually pretty awesome. I find the work delightful and can see the intentional purpose in the marks made, in the handles. There is too often a subtle purpose in the objects stored there, especially when I take them in as a collective. I ask if I can use one to see if I actually like drinking out of a sculpture or if the novelty wears off after a few days.

“Sure, pick one out and see how it works. You could even have it if you wanted it.”

“How would you show these?”

“What do you mean?”

“In an exhibition, how would you display them? Do you see them as an installation or would you just go with standard pedestal presentation?”

“I dunno. Standard pedestals I guess. I really just want to show my sculptures, but pots make money,” smiles.

“You’ve spent an awful lot of time cranking these out for them to just be about money.”

Somewhere in here we addressed the fact that the pieces would need to be seen in a collective state for a viewer to really buy-in to the intent. Individually the point might get lost especially when nestled among straight-forward, pots with refined functionality.

“Yeah, but people like pots. I dunno, I think I’m just going to let them sit here for a while-

“and let it stew?”

-yeah. I need to not think about it for bit, just hide them in a corner.”

There is a pause as we go to fill our cups. Mine fills fine and I delight in the ridiculousness of the form and the purposefulness of the handle. It strikes me that I have to be very careful about lifting it to my mouth because the rim has high and low spots and a spill is inevitable if I don’t pay attention. Oh, how many potter’s statements talk about wanting to cause the user to slow, to be mindful of the moment shared, to commune in a never-ending collaboration with the user?

“Well, mine doesn’t work,” is yelled across the studio.

“What do you mean?”

“I poured the coffee in and it hit the bottom of the cup and went right up the wall and out the other side.”

“You made a roller coaster for coffee?”

“Yup!”

“Cool. Well maybe your cup just dictates a slower pour than others.”

That summed up the first part of the conversation. The second half got into territory about ceramic and craft and the inherent “how-to” conversation locked inside the field, even when work gets taken to a new level. I don’t think I’m going to be able to reconstruct it without a revisit, but I will have my recorder ready then.

Theaster Gates' Collisions

2010-12-14T06:19:00.001-08:00

Do you know who Theaster Gates is? Do you know what he is doing? Here is a link to a 2007 interview on "Bad at Sports". By the way it is a podcast worth following while you are working in your studio or driving down the road or just enjoying a relaxing beverage after a long day.

On to Theaster. Last Spring, March 25-27, 2010 there was a "convening" at the St. Louis Regional Arts Commission. It was called "At The Crossroads: Community Arts & Development Convening". And it was there that I first heard of and heard what Theaster Gates had to say and to see what he was doing. The work he shared was a work realized at the Milwaukee Art Museum and a collaboration with Dave the Potter. Here is a video of his lecture about "Speculate Darkly".

Dave the Potter was a slave potter and he is known by a few names, but mainly he is known because he was literate and he left poems and thoughts etched into the vessels he made in the 1800s. In the above lecture, Theaster speaks to his own education in ceramics (by the way, he also earned degrees in Urban Planning and Religious Studies) he indicates the history of American Ceramics was filled with White Californians and Asian History. He did not see himself in this history, but he knew these figures wanted to make him a better potter. He was motivated to seek out a history in clay, a purpose with the material he could relate to. This is how he met Dave. The fact that Theaster had to FIND Dave is one of those omissions from history which is disappointing if not surprising. It's not surprising we need to thoroughly reexamine academia and not from a corporate viewpoint, ah but another day.

Still, I have to indulge right now and say, Ron Dale at the University of Mississippi did present an inclusive history of ceramics and Dave the Potter was among the artists presented. I don't know whether or not that was because of the time I found myself in school, or because Ron Dale is an inclusive thoughtful human or because I went to school in Mississippi and there was such a focus on that campus to not repeat the errors of the past. And yes, that history is certainly a worm hole we could go down, but let's just be grateful there was a combination of things at work which did not exclude a variety of makers from the presentation of art history in my education.

But, back to Theaster and the work in Milwaukee. The way he told the tale in St. Louis was that the museum was looking at their statistics and noticed a lack of contrast in their patronage. To say the least it was sorely lacking in the area of black patronage. They knew of Theaster's work. They knew he was part of the 2010 Whitney Biennial, knew he was eloquent and charismatic, they knew he could engage the audience they were missing.

Theaster agreed to be the Milwaukee Art Museum's Bridge. He proposed a radical idea: the reason few of color came to the museum was that there was little of color to view at the museum. So he put together and exhibition of work created in conversation with Dave the Slave Potter. Theaster also put together a choir of over 300 people from Chicago and Milwaukee to traverse the museum floor singing old spirituals, and singing "Bowls, Jar, Teapots. Buy my wares."

It is a powerful work. A powerful body of work.

He has also gone into abandoned Chicago neighborhoods and created site specific works which generate community dialogue. He has said, I'm sick of the self-aggrandizing conversations in ceramics (okay, I'm paraphrasing here and infusing with my own luggage) and want to find other connections between the two cultures prominent in his ceramic experience. Potters are forever on about function and so he combined soul food with asian cuisine and opened up a neighborhood restaurant with German Festhalle seating, presented the food in vessels he made and invited the whole neighborhood in to eat and TALK. Communities of race who rarely sit down and chat, who rarely humanize each other.

This June he was at the Museum of Contemporary Craft whitewashing previous performances as part of the "Gestures of Resistance" a focus on contemporary craftactions: work that deploys craft to agitate for change through direct political statements, public interventions, or dialogical, community-specific projects.

I have wanted to write about Theaster's work since I heard him speak last March. I was so excited, almost to a manic state, about what he was doing. I wanted everyone in ceramics to see what it was that he was doing. The ceramics world spends so much time pondering its bellybutton it fails to see the bigger picture of potential. Theaster saw the brick wall, the same brick wall we all see and then, rather than beat his head against it, he looked around for other connections, which he calls COLLISIONS. I think they are collisions because, like any great art, his works might not give us answers, but THANK THE LORD he is opening up new questions and bringing folks together in the process! Admittedly, I have a tendency to want art to change the world and I don't know if I'll ever be able to let go of that altogether and don't think I should have to, but don't let my personal slant turn you away from really examining what Theaster is doing. He is expanding the dialogue of ceramics because he abandoned the dialogue of ceramics. Yes! I vote yes! I want more of that!

Conversations at the Log #1

2010-12-02T07:01:00.001-08:00

Occasionally, I'm going to post conversations had at the Red Lodge Clay Center Studios and Gallery. We'll see if they evolve into anything interesting. For the past seven years, feeling quite removed from the ceramic community I wondered what sort of conversations folks in the thick of the community would be talking about. So far, it has been really interesting, and I feel privileged to have the opportunity of insight. Sometimes destiny/fate/luck/whatever puts people on a faster trajectory and it doesn't necessarily mean their is a difference in quality between someone on the fast-track and someone on the slow-road. I carry a tape recorder around with me, because I find myself in the middle of conversations with the residents on occasion where little nuggets of humor, irony or unique perspectives are floating by the fireflies in the night. When these organic conversations happen, I keep thinking, "I should be writing this down!" As best I can, I'm going to leave things anonymous to help focus on the content and reduce any potential embarrassment. They do know I have the tape recorder with me and I don't try to hide it when I start recorder, although it tends to quickly fall into the background.

We'll start off with a light-hearted conversations had over an impromptu evening potluck at the studios this fall. We were contemplating the validity of a "Conversations at the Log" project as well as the validity of art industry publications. Oh, I should mention the phrase "...at the Log" is a nod to one of the earlier Artist-Invite-Artists groups. Brad Schweiger, Von VenHuizen, Nicholas Bivins, Tom Bartel, maybe Ben Ahlvers (?) were here making, laughing, drinking, hiking (or so the stories go) and they had such a great time they made a t-shirt and dropped the "d" and "e" to a smaller point size and imposed an image of a log, so the shirt reads RED LOdGe. You'll have to get a more accurate story from one of the menfolk, but I would hate to not give credit where it is due.

At any rate, here is the beginning of the recordings:

Maybe there’s just not enough to talk about, y’know what I mean? …to warrant that sort of discussion

Would it be all work, across the board?

Yeah, and I mean it may not just be ceramic work; maybe there’s…I don’t know…

Well there has to be a focus doesn’t there?

Yeah, but I mean you could have the focus be just artwork or something. Because I think maybe it could just be ceramics but it would be good to have designers and industry right in there, Have a forum where everyone from all different parts of

Engineers too?

Yeah-everyone-like the people who make toilets up at the Kohler Factory y’know. Whoever wants to write in about the ceramic industry, they could write in, because I never hear what anyone has to say besides a potter. Coming here, I’ve heard more, but usually it’s just from the people you hang out with. And I don’t have any engineer friends, I never hear anything from people who work in ceramic industry.

What would you want to know?

I don’t want to know “how to” stuff, I want to know their perspectives of the ceramic industry, whether it’s their particular niche their in or how they see generally the whole industry or y’know whatever they have to say. But I don’t want them to say, “Well we mix our clay this way and fire it that way.” To me, it’s just—you can look all that stuff up; it’s just not that interesting.

I wonder if ARTNews is really doing that and we are unaware because . we don’t know that community. ARTNews focuses on a certain crowd, a segment of the population…

ARTNews is just self-Promo

Which is what the complaint is about Ceramics Monthly, so…

Everyone in Ceramics Monthly are already friends

My complaint is that I’m not friends with them

Much laughter

Well, eventually all the others will die and then you’ll be at the top

Chuckles

You’ll be old and talking about the days back in Red Lodge when you were just a resident

Yeah, I’ll talk about the sculptures placed outside my window and how I never recovered.

Then everyone proceeded to name what they thought other folks would be in 20 years, focusing on idiosyncrasies and stereotypes observed in the few months they’ve been together.

Design, Cognizant Intentions and Artist Statements

2010-12-01T05:54:00.000-08:00

I can already tell you I'm going to cast too broad a net here. After six months in the role of Gallery Coordinator at Red Lodge Clay Center, I have had the opportunity to read many, many artists' statements. Not that I hadn't read any statements before, but certainly the reading was not of such a condensed nature. So artist statements are a point to ramble on about here, but the reason my attention was brought back to artists' statements was really because of a thought I had about aesthetic trends in contemporary ceramics. While unpacking some work (and I have been enticed by the imagery, the color, the design, the line, the form of many works unpacked over the course of the past decade) recently, my mind wandered to a conversation I had during the 2008 Presidential election.

Over some good and tasty beverages, I wondered about the dark side of design aloud as my two colleagues chatted excitedly about the "change" and the "hope". This manic excitement made me more than a little nervous. Now I was not particularly proud of our country's leaders at the time, but I'm also not particularly political. Nor do I have the sort of instant recall of facts that would aid me in a political/bar debate, so I waded into the question cautiously. I really did not want my voting opinion or my colleagues to be called into question. I just wanted to know SPECIFICALLY what "change" did they think was going to happen.

This had become an ongoing straw poll of mine. Educated folks, folks I looked up to as sound, reasoned and or creative thinkers were all pretty fired up about the election, but none of them could really tell me what exactly was going to change. None could tell me exactly what they hoped for, except something different. My students wore the t-shirts, there were stickers all over our little department, bumper stickers abounded in the parking lot. So the question I put out was, "I'm concerned people are getting seduced by the design campaign and really don't know anything about the candidate. I'm concerned the deepest level of understanding is the equivalent of 'Coke: THE REAL THING'." My colleague's calm, rational reply was, "Maybe that's enough for now. Maybe if the design gets the younger generation to the polls and engaged in the political process, maybe our country will turn a corner."

OK. Maybe.

The November 2010 elections and my now limited encounter with the younger generation, bring my original fears back to mind and make me question initiatives like the "Rock the Vote" campaign. If nothing else, we should learn design or propaganda has to be a continuous bombardment to keep working. Here's a cliff-note look at the history of such campaigns from a September 2010 entry at the blog Cruzine on Design and Propaganda and a snarky look at political design by the New York Times. Slick design gets our attention and motivates us into action. This can be a very positive effect, unless we are living in Nazi Germany. When the posters come down or when students graduate from college and the local college hottie campaigner quits showing up at the door to get us to Rock the Vote, does our motivation cease? It seems the answer is yes.

The focus of my concern is a slick design without deliverance of any substance or the creation of slick design without any cognizant intention behind it. November wasn't a total rout, so maybe some folks got mobilized and remained so after the posters came down, but I still have my concerns.

Now for the big leap back to ceramics and design and artists' statements.

There is some groovy work coming out from the hands of young makers. It's clean and sleek or it's candy colored and kitschy, but the quality of process (better known as craftsmanship) is not always present (and there is no sense of irony in the lack of it). What gives me greater pause though, is when I read an artist statement and I read the same thing from artist, after artist, after artist, after artist regardless of the aesthetic. To paraphrase one of the Red Lodge Clay Center residents, "...we know it's a cup! We know what a cup is for, tell me something I don't know." I couldn't agree more. Why are you working illustratively and why are you using the palette you are using? Why is everything so structured? Why is it unstructured? Why is it a functional thing when clearly the narrative is the focus?

Do they not know? Do they not care? It would be one thing if the work was always impeccable and cutting edge, but the highest quality is not always present. More though, I suspect it is a symptom of the justification academia requires of the arts which forces students through a process too quickly. A process of self-evaluation which takes years and years to understand. Cripes! It takes a lifetime to understand why we are doing what we are doing and then maybe we still won't have the perspective we need. Ask an artist about why they make what they make and you will get a different slant each time the question is put forth. It's a question worth pursuing, because it leads us to more discoveries, but why can't academia make it okay to say, "I don't know yet!" ?

Why is a verbal description of the art process important? I suppose I think it is because I want more people to value the handmade object. I want more people to understand the creative process. Even the untrained public knows when to call bullshit, they know it in their gut. But do you know what happens, even when they know something is a sham? They tell themselves they are not smart enough. They tell themselves they just don't get it and build their protective wall against art a little bit higher. I do believe it is important for makers to have some cognizant intentions, but I also fully believe in the magic of the creative process and being open to the unknown.

I just want us, makers, to do our best to be clear and honest about what we are doing and I suppose the only clear connection between the politics of propaganda and artist statements is: A slick product pulls an audience in and then, as if sucking on an opiate lollipop, the audience fails to grow or gain any depth of character.

I vote for pursuit of cognizant intentions. I vote for connection of dots. I vote for a enticing object or image with a kernel of truth in the ensuing artist statement, even if the truth is akin to, "I keep surrounding myself and my work in red and I'm not yet sure why, but I believe if I continue along this track I will find an answer eventually or learn something else along the way."

Such a long time

2010-02-17T11:55:00.001-08:00

Well, summer was a recuperative period after a rather daunting setback in the spring and let's just say I was heart sick for a good long whilel. This fall dealt another professional blow, but more importantly, the universe provided an opportunity to participate in the St. Louis Regional Art Commission's Community Art Institute. I met and worked with wonderful individuals who are all out there trying to make the world a better place and using the arts to work their good medicine. Community really is all about relationships and my heart was inspired and reminded that, while one relationship in one community may be failing, there are so many other positive relationships in a broad spectrum of communities. If I am being non-specific, or elusive, about the details, it is only because I hope to begin again emboldened and re-focused, ever grateful for the reminders that art DOES make an impact, a positive impact on individuals.

To that end, this fall we had our annual faculty exhibit at East Central College and the monsters I began this summer found a home in front of a collaborative chalk board. The images shown are a beginning and an arrival at a simple and fruitful conversation with my audience.

Summer Time

2009-06-24T06:59:00.001-07:00

I think mid-MO is turning into a tropical rain forest. Queen Annes Lace is bustin' out all over!

New Haven Historic Arts District Fire Festival

2009-06-24T05:53:00.000-07:00

Well it seems like you can't throw a stick anymore without hitting an Art Fair on a nice weekend and New Haven is getting in on the action for the second year in a row. The bad news was, since the rain finally ceased, the sun has come out with unparalleled fierceness and the heat is buoyed by the recent rains creating a need for everyone to have personal dehumidifiers working to process life-supporting oxygen. The good news was, Fire Festival is more than appropriate as a title on such a day. There was a Raku Firing in the street by Alan Bell of Front Street Artisans. Gary Rice and company of Astral Glass wowed the public with their mobile glory hole and cane pulling. The Blacksmith Association of Missouri conducted a workshop over the weekend. Festival goers could see much banging and clanging of hot metal throughout the day. Pat McCarty or Dr. Iron is seen here. Katie Kantley shared her internationally known silk fibers and had a hands-on dying process for kids in front of the shop. Along the levy, encampments were set up with reenactors demonstrating techniques of yesteryear, sharing folklore, and selling handcrafted wares. For those who didn't get enough fiery goodness from the Front Street demos and the blacksmiths, a canon was shot off at regular intervals throughout the day presenting the use of FIRE as a verb for attendees. Around the corner, behind the Riverfront Cultural Society was a chuck wagon, cooking up deliciousness from a cadre of dutch ovens. I can testify to the difficulty involved in avoiding wheat products when there are homemade yeast rolls on the table. They looked so good! As did the cobblers and crumbles, but the beans were a tasty treat after a long day. It was impressive to see how many people can be fed off the back of a wagon. As for JFH Studios part, lo-fire electric kilns are not the sexiest demonstration of fire, so I demonstrated the creation of my wee monsters from the fiery hell which resides inside my twisted imagination. The monsters are fun to make and kids like to have input on how the faces are going to turn out, especially if they got to eat some homemade ice cream from New Haven's new restaurant "Somebody's", which will be open in July. Followed up with a new facial or arm tattoo by "Trading Faces" out of KC, MO. Let's just say there were many happy kids at out end of the street. Michael kept the studio open and toured people through the work of Jonathan Barnes (see earlier post), as well as my other wares.

It is important that this small town has a population of individuals who believe in the arts and who want to bring active craft to life in Franklin County. Building a critical mass is an uphill battle and somedays it seems very frustrating and lonely here. There are individuals in the area who are really focused on quality and a global audience: Katie Kantley (New Haven, MO), Michael Bauermeister & Gloria Attoun (Augusta , MO), Cole Scego (Owensville, MO), Sam Stang (Augusta, MO). But why, with all of this potential energy does it still feel disjointed? Why does it not feel like a community of vision? If anyone out there has insight, I am happy to listen because right now the road is feeling a might too vertical. I'm not sure how to reach out into this community anymore, or how to pull my head out of the job at East Central College. The studio and this blog have been an attempt to create a culture, but it's not quite working like I had hoped. I think I might be asking how to make friends. Is it possible I have forgotten how? BUT, this is too maudlin an ending for a post about FIRE FESTIVALS. On Saturday, June 20, it was a fun day. Fun to share and fun to see, maybe the rest will continue to work itself out.

Todd Cero Atl at Krueger Pottery

2009-06-17T04:40:00.001-07:00

So the week of June 13-14 was the first Weekend Workshop offered at Krueger Pottery in Webster Groves, MO and Todd Cero (rhymes with zero) Atl (rhymes with rattle and cattle and prattle) came to demonstrate floral containers, flower bricks, frogs, baskets and to give a terrific lecture on the history of floral containers. His formal body of work consists of installation, slipcast sculpture and performance art, which I think allowed him a wonderful sense of fun and play while he was demonstrating his functional pieces. He uses slip like icing by mixing up a thick paste , adding vinegar and putting it into a ziploc baggy. Then he snips a corner of the baggy and uses the mixture to attach. It really was quite efficient. The quote of the weekend , the handiest little bit of advice was, "There are really only so many parts to a vessel. You should treat them all well. Consider every one of them." His parting advice was to not admonish yourself if you aren't a huge producer of work, saying it is better to put work into the world which will make people weep than to dump copious mediocrity out. Todd was a student of the late Richard DeVore and currently teaches at Emporia State University in Emporia, KS and at Johnson County Community College in Lawerence, KS. His work has also been featured in Ceramics: Art & Perception.The Flower Brick we couldn't visualize until we saw it on the second day.
Everyone listening and ready to take notes. Aimee and Ryan of Krueger Pottery, really do have a most loyal client base.
Pushing out the sexy vase and thinking about the folds of the body.
Finishing touches of a Flower Bucket where the handle will provide visual impact at the center of the arrangement.

Hot Out the Kiln, Gettin' Ready for FIRE FEST

2009-06-17T04:26:00.001-07:00

Last year Michael and I went to a garage sale here in New Haven and came across a stack of shotgun shell bags. They are made of canvas a reminiscent of mini-flour sacks. We only had a dollar, so we bought one stack. I think it was about 20 bags. Today, I have the heads, which will be attached to the little sacks. Welcome my wee monsters to the world. During FIRE FEST I'm going to be making these creepy little heads as an artist demo, although it may be hard to compete with actual fire. I'm just not too sure how well watching the glow of electric elements in my kiln would go over. You might also notice, because the wee monsters are sitting on the ledge of the kiln, that I have a chronic issue with patience. I have never been able to wait for things to cool. Not never, not ever. Much to many a poor soul's dismay.

May I introduce Tweet, Clyde, Muffles and Tyson. In that order from top to bottom.