primalmommy@IVILLAGE.COM on sat 8 sep 01
Along with new technology, one of the biggest changes in ceramics in my neck of the woods is that there's a "paint your own pottery" place on every corner. They do good business, and folks have a nice time. But you can say "I make pottery" and have half a dozen people say, "Really? Me too!" and whip out the mold made, pre-bisqued stuff they underglazed one afternoon, and handed it back to the shop owner to be glazed and fired. (Not to mention the ladies in my neighborhood who paint the pre-cast greenware yard gnomes and mushroom plaques. They're ceramic artists, too. Ask them.)
Their next step is to look at the $14 coffee mug at the street fair and say, "That much? Why, it's only ONE COLOR! The one I painted had all KINDS of colors on it, only took me 15 minutes to make."
Even the sometimes clueless folks who have asked stupid questions at street fairs are among that narrow slice that would even GO to a street fair, and maybe not representative of the true cluelessness of the general public. So what we call our work IS important. Not because one is better or worse, but because anything we say about our work -- the less familiar the term, the better -- encourages people to ask and be enlightened about the difference between what potters do and what happens at "paint-a-plate, inc."
Handmade, assisted, mold made... I don't see an easy answer here. You could coil an amphora in a puki like the original makers did, or throw it upside down on the wheel like I do, but if you avoid a plaster mold for the form, should you avoid a giffen grip in favor of tap-centering? Mel would. But that's mel.
In my town I know of one artist whose gift is surface decoration -- majolica ware. She uses press molds, and does whatever works to come up with paintable surfaces. Another makes plaster casts of intricate, spherical forms, incorporating tools and fascinating textures. One at the University has a whole studio dedicated to the many uses of plaster, where a fourth is using plaster to form paper-thin porcelain bowls and slabs which she decorates with plaster-cast-from-life gingko leaves and such. Lovely, unique stuff.
None of them seems insecure or defensive about the techniques they are using, but neither are they trying to "shortcut" a process or pass off casseroles and tea bowls as individually wheel thrown. They are doing something else, and I think they would read this discussion unruffled, because they know they aren't "cheating".
Me, I'm hoping to make a bisque mold of a gourd or squash and make some of those funky peruvian stirrup vessels to pit fire. Is a bisque mold "better" than a plaster one?
Mel may be the hard liner on this issue, but there have to be two ends to a spectrum; he defines one of them. Sure, the "oops, I dropped it" approach sounds a bit harsh, but... if you dropped something yourself, would you rather it be the only one of something, or a pot you could replicate exactly using the same mold/press/whatever? I have to admit I find a different value in the one of a kind.
It's a weird world, where Pepperidge Farm has invented a machine for the cookie factory that spits out cookies in slightly irregular shapes and sizes, randomness computer controlled, to mimic grandma's baking sheet and spatula. My favorite, sacred, morning ritual coffee mug has a satiny, speckled green stony glaze, and four dents in the bottom from the fingers/thumbs of the potter who yanked it off the hump. If I were to discover that mug was slip cast and reproduced by the hundreds, it would spoil something for me. But that's me. And that's a mug, not a tile.
I figure, folks who are confident that what they are doing is valid, is art, and is not "cheating", shouldn't worry about whether mel would approve or whether they are "frauds". They SHOULD spend some time educating their customers about the process of making their work, just as folks do with wheel thrown, anagama - fired, coil-built, whatever.
We have to do some marketing and outreach, folks. Everybody on this list knows how to write. Maybe anyone who feels qualified to do so should submit a freelance article to the local newpaper, regional mag, tourist bureau... studio tours for the public? Demos at historical sites? Let's throw some ideas around for how to teach people how to appreciate what we do.
Yours, Kelly in Ohio (worried over Cat's catastrophe... but pretty sure she could whip her weight in wildcats with enough clayarters watching her back...)
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