Karen Lewis on sat 29 oct 05
The Heart of NC Pottery is Rightly Honored.
http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?section=central&id=3581276
N.C. Museum of Art Pays Tribute to Pottery Tradition
(10/27/05 -- RALEIGH) - When the North Carolina Museum of Art opens
its first major exhibition to highlight the state's centuries-old
pottery tradition, the emphasis will be on pottery as art, even if
the work is a simple cup by an anonymous potter.
"This is the top museum in the state for art, and we are showing
these pieces as art, even though they were functional when they were
made," said Nancy Sweezy, co-curator of the exhibit and the woman
credited with rejuvenating Seagrove as a pottery hub in the late 1960s.
"But in my mind, there's no contradiction between being functional
and being beautiful."
The 90 pieces in the show titled "The Potter's Eye: Art & Tradition
in North Carolina Pottery" include historical pieces as well as work
by six contemporary potters who cure their creations in wood-fired kilns.
The works are arranged not chronologically but instead are grouped so
that viewers can see the influence of, for example, a 17th century
Japanese pot on Ben Owen III of Seagrove.
Those two pieces open the exhibit, along with two pots by Chester
Webster and Tom Boggs to illustrate the 19th century North Carolina tradition.
"You can see the similarity between them. You can see the way that
one echoes the other," said potter Mark Hewitt of Pittsboro, an
exhibit co-curator who also has pots in the show.
The exhibit opens Sunday and continues through March 19.
Much of the work comes from the popular Seagrove region of North
Carolina, which has been described as the largest continuing
community of European-based potters in the United States. In the
mid-1700s, seven families from England settled within a five-mile
radius of each other and began producing pottery from locally dug
clay. The area is now home to more than 100 potters, and about 1,000
potters work statewide.
The exhibit is hardly an all-encompassing look at North Carolina
pottery. That's an impossible goal for one show, Hewitt said. It
focuses on the historical potters who worked in wood-fired kilns and
a few potters who have followed their lead.
What appears to be the simplest piece in the show, a 19th century mug
from Randolph County, elicited the highest praise from Hewitt, who
described it as "pristine, like an unspoiled landscape."
"It's just got some of the greatest attributes of North Carolina and
indeed of humanity," he said. "It's calm and reliable and restrained."
Hewitt compared pots to the jumbled Southern musical traditions of
blues, bluegrass and country. Their surfaces, which may appear to be
variations of brown and gray, are actually very complicated.
"And what may at first appear to be like a cacophony, like an
unharmonious series of markings, over time, they've got their own
structure and own harmony that's very complicated, that's very
nuanced," he said.
But few artists give up control of the work to nature as much as a
potter who fires pots in a wood kiln. The type of wood, the duration
of the firing, the weather and what can only be described as fate all
have a part in how the pot turns out.
"There has to be a daring for it to be good," Hewitt said.
And though the plates, bowls, cups and ladles hardly seem like high
art, the exhibit is validating for collectors who have brought the
items into their homes and in some cases use it every day.
"What's sort of unusual here in North Carolina is that pottery has
been accepted as art for several generations now," potter and
exhibitor David Stuempfle said. "We take that as a given and as a
starting point."
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