Joe Coniglio on thu 29 may 03
Hello,
Sorry for the long wholesome preface here. Hang in there please...
The Utopian (Australian) Potter and others:
I have firmly believed for a very long time now, without shifting my belief
structure to much to the contrary, that full time potters moreso "on the
land" than in the city [but surely not negating city based potters who can be
wildly successful]--and regardless of the market place environment or
struggle to bring pots to market (any way you want to look at it) the
lifestyle of a rural potter can have a certain romantic idylic nature to it.
[fused with hard work and bills to pay like everyone else-of course]
I get that general sense of some kind of utopia (so many claim as an
unrealistic idealogical belief on my part) of it from reading from the notes
from the Appalachians, the potters in Canada, potters in Maine, rocky
mountain potters, southwestern US potters and so on.
The visualization of stepping outside to pick-up trucks, handling heaps of
raw materials, buckets, barrels, screening and milling perhaps, collection
pools, drying pools, fuels and fire, kilns and pits, flower and vegetable
gardens, kids, barking dogs...chickens and cats.
Learning recently or actually awoke to the fact that every country in the
world has clay and potters can be found in all of them, no matter how far
flung it may seem. That there is a world of pottery with traditions in many
many countries.
And now my visualization gaze heads to the great down under and to the rather
unusually high number of prolific potters from Australia and New Zealand.
How can I learn your story?
Who are you? Any pottery communities in Australia?
Who are the pioneers of Australian pottery?
How do you live?
Who figures the need for a good pot and a market?
What is the basis for your creativity?
How do you gather and garner your raw materials?
Do Australian potters live happy lives?
Are you guys having any fun??!!
One point: before modern containers proliferated, nearly every village on
earth had to have a potter. It wasn't about art and creativity then as much
as a driven profunctory utilitarian need for functionality. It evolved from
there. After containers became mechanized pottery nearly died out before the
so called arts and crafts movement revitalized the need for pottery but not
its necessity. Is this a fair enough assumption?
So maybe potter have to make lifestyle choices and I see a very neat little
bit of glam and mystique to Australian pottery since this surgence is more
thrust in modern times than what might have more naturally evolved in
localities in Europe, Asia and the early Americas?
Anybody have some links, suggestions for books or other paths or contacts to
follow other than a plane ticket and walking barefoot down the road to seek
the world of Australian Pottery?
Thanks
JoeC
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