Linda Arbuckle on sun 23 aug 98
> Hi Kurt,
> Why would anyone take a "holier than thou" attitude about thou decorating
> someone else's pots?
> I wonder what their reasoning might be....
>
This is an interesting persepctive on the times and intent. Many great
ceramic traditions in the past employed a workshop tradition. Painting
was separated from making the works. In Italy, today, for instance, many
of the majolica painters buy blanks to work on.
Producing in the workshop tradition allowed specialization of labor.
I.E. one guy gets REALLY good at painting clouds, and that's what he
does. This allowed faster production than everyone learning and doing
every step. This called for someone to make decisions about what got
made, and co-ordinate the details if it was all to work together.
Right now we're in a popular movement of people doing their own surfaces
on greenware. The difference between the new "paint your own pottery"
places and older greenware/hobby shops seem to be that the new wave
pieces are more simple, strong forms, where the older version of doing
this often had a lot of information already in the form (e.g. a Santa
cookie jar). With a lot of information in the form, it's more like using
a coloring book... many of the decisions are made already, and your
creative input is to choose colors and stay in the lines. With a simpler
form, you still need to respond to the form to make successful surface
on it, but there are fewer givens, and more decisions are required of
the person doing the surface.
I've just had a wonderful trip to Italy this summer, and looked at some
contemporary majolica in Sienna, San Gimmiano (sp?), Faenza and other
places. While technically well done, most of the work lacked the
personality and vitality of majolica works of studio artists I know of
dealing personally with form and surface.
My opinion is that it's much harder to make form and surface work
together for your personal communication when you don't have yourself in
both parts of the making. What you may get is great form on an anonymous
surface. This would be easier if indeed the two people involved were
actually collaborating... working together, discussing the relationship
of the concepts in form and surface, and working toward a unified goal.
There have been successful works done this way. Like being in a band, it
probably works best if you do this for a long enough time to really
understand each other. Most often, the person throwing makes work with
content that their personality drives them to express, and hands it off
to someone else to deal with.
So , for instance, you might have someone who wants to make robust,
vigorous hunky forms handing off to someone who loves quiet, intimate,
delicate surface. The pot says one thing, the surface another, and
usually it doesn't read as an obvious desire to promote the contrast,
but as a mis-match. Or, if you have someone sensitive to content doing
the throwing, they may make very generic forms to accomodate another
person. Simple isn't the same as generic, and very often delight is in
small details.
These are some of the issues with using someone else's pots. It's not
about holier-than-thou as I see it, but about what you're trying to
achieve and problems with succeeding. People might use someone else's
forms because of time issues, physical constraints, etc. ... same
reasons someone else might choose a molded or a ram pressed item
designed by someone else. But there are difficulties that come along
with that decision. Certainly, an insightful person can become aware of
the issues and work toward solving problems, and grow as an artist while
putting surface on a foreign form. But in my opinion the difficulty of
making that breath-taking object that communicates personally with a
foreign form is greater than the problems of dealing with the making of
one's own forms. You learn things about form that inform use of surface
by struggling to make forms. It's a question of goals and personal
decisions, and perhaps limiting factors and trade-offs in one's
complicated life. If I had no studio space for a while, would I buy
blanks to paint on? Probably! I NEED to do surface and keep working.
Linda
--
Linda Arbuckle
Graduate Coordinator, Assoc. Prof.
Univ of FL
School of Art and Art History
P.O. Box 115801, Gainesville, FL 32611-5801
(352) 392-0201 x 219
e-mail: arbuck@ufl.edu
Alison Hamilton on fri 4 sep 98
One of the other issues related to decorating someone else's pot is how
that pot is represented for the purposes of marketing.
Many of the craft shows in this area require that artisans only sell
things they have made themselves. There are many behind-the-scene
comments made about potters who have decorated someone else's work and
then sell it without mentioning to the purveyors of the show or the
crowd that they did not throw it. Consumers buying the pots assume that
the seller threw it themselves.
It's a difficult issue. If it's your own studio and the thrower knows
that s/he won't be mentioned, does it matter? especially if all s/he
want to do is throw and is not interested in having their own studio or
decorating their own pots? Being more interested in decorating than
throwing would eliminate most of the higher end craft shows available to
such a potter, given the craft shows' requirements.
And obviously, on the other hand, recognition of work, treating the
public with integrity and respect are also important values.
Alison Hamilton
Dorset, ON
just back from Baltimore/Washington D.C where the pots in the Freer and
Sackler galleries at the Smithsonian were amazing!
CLAYART@LSV.UKY.EDU wrote:
>
> ----------------------------Original message----------------------------
> > Hi Kurt,
> > Why would anyone take a "holier than thou" attitude about thou decorating
> > someone else's pots?
> > I wonder what their reasoning might be....
> >
> This is an interesting persepctive on the times and intent. Many great
> ceramic traditions in the past employed a workshop tradition. Painting
> was separated from making the works. In Italy, today, for instance, many
> of the majolica painters buy blanks to work on.
>
> Producing in the workshop tradition allowed specialization of labor.
> I.E. one guy gets REALLY good at painting clouds, and that's what he
> does. This allowed faster production than everyone learning and doing
> every step. This called for someone to make decisions about what got
> made, and co-ordinate the details if it was all to work together.
>
> Right now we're in a popular movement of people doing their own surfaces
> on greenware. The difference between the new "paint your own pottery"
> places and older greenware/hobby shops seem to be that the new wave
> pieces are more simple, strong forms, where the older version of doing
> this often had a lot of information already in the form (e.g. a Santa
> cookie jar). With a lot of information in the form, it's more like using
> a coloring book... many of the decisions are made already, and your
> creative input is to choose colors and stay in the lines. With a simpler
> form, you still need to respond to the form to make successful surface
> on it, but there are fewer givens, and more decisions are required of
> the person doing the surface.
>
> I've just had a wonderful trip to Italy this summer, and looked at some
> contemporary majolica in Sienna, San Gimmiano (sp?), Faenza and other
> places. While technically well done, most of the work lacked the
> personality and vitality of majolica works of studio artists I know of
> dealing personally with form and surface.
>
> My opinion is that it's much harder to make form and surface work
> together for your personal communication when you don't have yourself in
> both parts of the making. What you may get is great form on an anonymous
> surface. This would be easier if indeed the two people involved were
> actually collaborating... working together, discussing the relationship
> of the concepts in form and surface, and working toward a unified goal.
> There have been successful works done this way. Like being in a band, it
> probably works best if you do this for a long enough time to really
> understand each other. Most often, the person throwing makes work with
> content that their personality drives them to express, and hands it off
> to someone else to deal with.
>
> So , for instance, you might have someone who wants to make robust,
> vigorous hunky forms handing off to someone who loves quiet, intimate,
> delicate surface. The pot says one thing, the surface another, and
> usually it doesn't read as an obvious desire to promote the contrast,
> but as a mis-match. Or, if you have someone sensitive to content doing
> the throwing, they may make very generic forms to accomodate another
> person. Simple isn't the same as generic, and very often delight is in
> small details.
>
> These are some of the issues with using someone else's pots. It's not
> about holier-than-thou as I see it, but about what you're trying to
> achieve and problems with succeeding. People might use someone else's
> forms because of time issues, physical constraints, etc. ... same
> reasons someone else might choose a molded or a ram pressed item
> designed by someone else. But there are difficulties that come along
> with that decision. Certainly, an insightful person can become aware of
> the issues and work toward solving problems, and grow as an artist while
> putting surface on a foreign form. But in my opinion the difficulty of
> making that breath-taking object that communicates personally with a
> foreign form is greater than the problems of dealing with the making of
> one's own forms. You learn things about form that inform use of surface
> by struggling to make forms. It's a question of goals and personal
> decisions, and perhaps limiting factors and trade-offs in one's
> complicated life. If I had no studio space for a while, would I buy
> blanks to paint on? Probably! I NEED to do surface and keep working.
>
> Linda
> --
> Linda Arbuckle
> Graduate Coordinator, Assoc. Prof.
> Univ of FL
> School of Art and Art History
> P.O. Box 115801, Gainesville, FL 32611-5801
> (352) 392-0201 x 219
> e-mail: arbuck@ufl.edu
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