Kelly Savino on mon 31 mar 08
Mel, I am so grateful for your level headed perspective, and for the
many wise voices and posts on clayart that I have printed and tucked
into my notebook for future grounding...
Childhood images of clay -- what an interesting starting point.
My city grandparents had porcelain figurines and collectibles... fancy
people in fancy clothing perched on the shining expanse of a gleaming
grand piano, Asian figurines carefully dusted by a maid... my earliest
impressions were "fragile, expensive, not for children, do not touch!"
They scared me. I was allowed to play with the lacquer ware instead, and
always liked the feel and the light, woodeny sound of it.
My country grand and great-grandparents had pottery you could use...
giant mixing bowls in the kitchen, big salt glazed crocks of horseradish
pickles and sauerkraut under the stairs in Grandma's pantry... my
great-grands once raised dairy cows, and there were old stoneware churns
and crocks and jugs unused in their barn lofts and attic, or around
being used for something other than their original purpose. (My great
grandpa was kicked out of church, before I was born, for going to a
square dance, but great grandma kept him on the straight and narrow...
my brother and I did find a little flask hidden in the hay of the barn,
but I assume that was for medicinal purposes. Warmth, for milking in the
cold Michigan winters.)
Being female, I was included at a young age in certain up-at-dawn,
work-all-day events with grandma/mom/aunts, such as canning tomatoes,
peaches, cherries, plums, apples, carrots, green beans, pickled beets,
mustard pickle, and all the other beauties that would gleam in mason
jars like stained glass on their shelves in the pantry under the stairs.
That pantry was their grocery store in the winter time.
It was a good intro to "production".. after you stand at the sink
slipping skins off the scalded peaches for one entire day, you a) know
how to do it by pure muscle memory, efficiently and quickly, and b) have
a knowledge of the form, texture, smell, taste and workings of a peach
that will never leave you. Shelling peas is a form of meditation, your
hands occupied and your mind floating free. Women's hands have been
carding wool, mending and gathering, sowing and weeding, harvesting and
tanning for enough years that my brain feels like it came already formed
in that direction.
My mom was an Ann Arbor Art Fair regular, so we grew up eating off of
Bunny McBride's hand thrown dishes, using Edith Franklin's "Love" pots
and (in more recent years) surrounded by walls and shelves graced by
Richard Aerni's work. (Before I ever knew he was a guy on clayart.) ;0)
So. The cover of CM, the posturing of critics, the bewildering array of
possibilities presented by grad school turns me upside down and spins me
around and makes me question everything, but sometime early in this
school year I decided I was lost, and needed to find a way
(conceptually, anyway) back home.
I am not urban, or particularly sophisticated.
What I love, what defines me, right now, are the rows of tomato
seedlings under a shop light in my front room, a promise of the return
of my old joys when my show is over in June. Baby chicks in springtime,
peeping in a box with a light bulb for warmth. A wire box with eight
pounds of bees from the post office, a vibrating mass hanging in a clump
around their queen.
And in my kitchen: I make mead, and wine from wild fruit the way my farm
grandpa taught me. I make sauerkraut and pickles the way my farm Grandma
taught me, live cultures bubbling in a crock. I make sourdough bread,
Kombucha tea, yogurt, kefir, piima, mozzarella, all from little
civilizations like yeast or acidophilus.
So that's my way home. My entire MFA show will consist of pots for
cultured foods, some based on ancient forms, but all adapted to my own
taste and way of making. I like the double meaning of "culture" in this
context -- it's the title of my show. I love the word, as a
baker/vintner/cook, and as a folklorist.
My own "ceramic tradition" is like sourdough: you have to hang on to the
best part of the past, tend and carry a bit of the last batch and keep
it alive. Then you provide all your best new stuff, good flour and
water, and the right conditions for that living tradition to grow into a
whole new loaf... and then you'll save a bit of that as "starter" for
the future.
Bunny McBride, pickle crocks and the Ann Arbor Fair in the 70s were my
"starter".
Maybe that's my overdue Clay Times article...
Yours,
Kelly in Ohio.. one midterm down, one scout court of honor, two
presentations, a guild class and a 101 class to go...
mel jacobson on mon 31 mar 08
so much of what we do each day is influenced
by the images that influenced us when we were young.
that time when all the pores of our brain were wide open.
accepting, seeking.
i can so remember the images of artists that were my heros.
rothko, stuart davis, pots in the cases of the art institute.
that floating red slash on a blue glaze/ early ming plate.
those mattise paintings. one stands in awe. a garzio from
kansas/ speckled bowl. (he just died. never got to meet him.)
those early kilns opened by ken ferguson...his back yard sales.
and of course, david shaner. the potterspotter.
we keep those images our entire life. they become our art.
we all have a private aesthetic that runs our life.
does anyone really think for a minute that an article by
a gallery guru in new york can shake out my aesthetic?
not a chance in hell.
can i start making porcelain white, with purple and pink just
so i can sell more pots? not in a million years.
do you think my dear friend kurt wild can start making
japanese brush slashes and thrown glaze patterns. never.
geometric images, carefully crafted will rule him forever.
thank god.
does anyone really think i give a damn about the next issue
of cm? i loved the pots of phil cornelius. those thin well
made pieces...but do i want to do it? not on your life.
my influences come from by brain. i set standards and projects
based on what i want to do. commercial considerations do not
influence what i make. i sell everything, to people that have a
similar taste of my own. i seek them out. not as many in 2008.
but, they buy all my pots. all that i can make. i do not make
pots for people who shop at macey's fine china. not my customers.
i do not compete with walmart or K-mart.
if folks would trust more their own instincts, their own private
influences, then work it hard...more contentment would follow.
if you copy the cover pieces from cm....well you are in trouble.
you know...`man, if i do a piece like this, wow, i would get in
the next nceca show.` maybe you will, and ain't that grand.
now what do you do tomorrow? i know, copy the may cover.
it takes dozens of years to form some sort of style. hundreds
and Hundreds of firings. if you are firing 40 different glazes,
using 80 forms...your job just got even more daunting.
if you like to draw, love to draw, do it on your pots, if you are
a natural painter, paint on your pots. if you like plain white.
make plain white pots. but, you will have to study form.
change is a very slow process. we all try new things, pass on
some, fail on others. we look at others, envy some, despise others.
always private thoughts. natural progression.
some fight and scream like mad to convince us that this style is better,
that style or history is perfect. it matters not..just more
blather. we do and like what we do and like. it is a waste of
effort to be dogmatic.
i made small teapots this week. they look just like my big ones, but
they are small. i enjoyed that. i am working on my old temmoku.
going to do some iron saga pieces for joe. reduction, cone 11.
use an ash white glaze on top of masked out temmoku.
then we will do his glazes with white at the farm this summer.
cone 13 oxy. iron saga two. the glazes are joe's. the pots and
patterns are mine, not sung reproduction. we do not make fake antiques.
exciting projects wake me at 3 a.m. thinking.
a new glaze idea....wakes me at 3 a.m. thinking.
life is good.
work to be done. my work. my aesthetic.
join the few that only work from their own brain.
make influence come from your own last firing.
maybe a cone six, electric firing, a four glaze/ layered effect.
wow. four thin layers. and then reverse it all next time, and the
next time...and keep track.
mel
from minnetonka:
website http://www.visi.com/~melpots/
clayart site:
http://www.visi.com/~melpots/clayart.html
John Post on mon 31 mar 08
One day when I was helping my parents clean their attic I found a
drawing book that I used to look through when I was a kid. "The Draw
Anything Book" by Arthur Zaidenberg.
When I was young I loved this book. It had pictures of planes, cars,
tanks, soldiers, shields, dragons, houses and nude figures all
arranged in A-Z order. The book belonged to my dad when he was in art
school. I looked through this book so much as a kid that the cover
had fallen off and the binding was in pretty bad shape.
Now that I am an artist and teacher it was interesting to notice how
my sketching style is very similar to the way that Zaidenberg draws.
I never consciously tried to draw like him, but his style of loose
animated sketching lines must have seeped into me subconsciously.
Garth Clark's theory about being a designer makes sense if your goal
is to be rich. If your goal is to live a rich life, it may not
apply. Many of the wealthy in today's culture design something and
then have someone else make it. Think of software, music and books.
These are things that can be mass produced and generate royalties for
the designer.
When I spend a day paying bills or working on the computer even though
I am getting things done, it never feels as good as a productive day
in the studio. There is something satisfying about manual labor.
Raking leaves, fixing a roof, completing a plumbing project are all
more satisfying than getting some paper work done.
I think it all relates to back to the time I spent as a kid with a
hammer in my hands. My two best friends, Nickie and Gordie had a
garage full of scrap wood and lots of time on their hands. We used
that wood and anything we could scrounge in the alleys of Detroit to
construct all kinds of tree-forts and clubhouses. We loved making
things so much, that we would all pool our change together and go to
Damman hardware and buy bags of nails. I have a vivid memory of us in
the nail aisle filling a brown paper bag with common nails. All that
scrap wood it turns out was not free. Nickie's mom was renting the
garage out as storage to a carpenter. His mom had to give him a few
month's free rent when he noticed how much of his wood went into one
of our constructions.
I too have a list of artists whose works have inspired me, but they
came later in life. My earliest art experiences just kind of
happened, I just gravitated my way towards becoming a maker of things.
John Post
Sterling Heights, Michigan
http://www.johnpost.us :: cone 6 glaze website ::
http://www.wemakeart.org :: elementary art website ::
On Mar 31, 2008, at 8:09 AM, mel jacobson wrote:
> so much of what we do each day is influenced
> by the images that influenced us when we were young.
>
> that time when all the pores of our brain were wide open.
> accepting, seeking.
Lee on mon 31 mar 08
My earliest memories are scents. The smell of indigo reminds me of
my mother's mother. The smell of sumi-e ink, my mother's father.
Lilly's of the Valley, my father's mother. Prince Albert in the can,
my father's father.
Touch and light are other early memories: I remember
before my younger sister was born, under 2 years old: Sitting on my
Grandfather's lap in his Detroit backyard. The dappled light
filtering through the leaves of the huge Elm tree. I remember him
touching an elm leaf to my cheek and then touching his cheek to mine.
His whiskers were like the Elm leaf aswere his gray wool pants I sat
on with bare legs. He told me, sitting in that summer light, with a
breeze fluttering the leaves: "Promise me. Never forget what it is
to be young. Never forget."
I never forgot.
--=20
Lee, a Mashiko potter in Minneapolis
http://mashikopots.blogspot.com/
"Ta tIr na n-=F3g ar chul an tI=97tIr dlainn trina ch=E9ile"=97that is, "T=
he
land of eternal youth is behind the house, a beautiful land fluent
within itself." -- John O'Donohue
John Post on mon 31 mar 08
Those are great memories Lee, and beautifully written too.
John Post
Sterling Heights, Michigan
http://www.johnpost.us :: cone 6 glaze website ::
http://www.wemakeart.org :: elementary art website ::
On Mar 31, 2008, at 10:07 AM, Lee wrote:
> My earliest memories are scents. The smell of indigo reminds me of
> my mother's mother. The smell of sumi-e ink, my mother's father.
> Lilly's of the Valley, my father's mother. Prince Albert in the can,
> my father's father.
>
> Touch and light are other early memories: I remember
> before my younger sister was born, under 2 years old: Sitting on my
> Grandfather's lap in his Detroit backyard. The dappled light
> filtering through the leaves of the huge Elm tree. I remember him
> touching an elm leaf to my cheek and then touching his cheek to mine.
> His whiskers were like the Elm leaf aswere his gray wool pants I sat
> on with bare legs. He told me, sitting in that summer light, with a
> breeze fluttering the leaves: "Promise me. Never forget what it is
> to be young. Never forget."
>
> I never forgot.
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