November 1994 1 Spencer L. Davis ..Publisher and Acting Editor Ruth C. Butler...... Associate Editor Kim Nagorski...... Assistant Editor Tess Galvin ...... Editorial Assistant Randy Wax...... Art Director Mary Rushley...... Circulation Manager Mary E. Beaver .... Assistant Circulation Manager Connie Belcher...... Advertising Manager

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Ceramics Monthly (ISSN 0009-0328) is published monthly except July and August by Professional Publications, Inc., 1609 Northwest Boulevard, Columbus, Ohio 43212-0788. Second Class post­ age paid at Columbus, Ohio. Subscription Rates: One year $22, two years $40, three years $55. Add $10 per year for subscrip­ tions outside the U.S.A. In Canada, add GST (registration number R123994618). Change of Address: Please give us four weeks advance notice. Send the magazine address label as well as your new address to: Ceramics Monthly, Circulation Offices, Post Office Box 12788, Co­ lumbus, Ohio 43212-0788. Contributors: Manuscripts, announcements, news releases, photographs, color transparencies (including 35mm slides), graphic illustrations and digital TIFF or EPS images are welcome and will be considered for publication. Mail submis­ sions to Ceramics Monthly, Post Office Box 12788, Columbus, Ohio 43212-0788. We also accept unillustrated materials faxed to (614) 488-4561. Writing and Photographic Guidelines: A book­ let describing standards and procedures for sub­ mitting materials is available upon request. Indexing: An index of each year’s articles appears in the December issue. Additionally, Ceramics Monthly articles are indexed in the Art Index. Printed, on-line and CD-ROM (computer) index­ ing is available through Wilsonline, 950 Univer­ sity Avenue, Bronx, New York 10452; and from Information Access Company, 362 Lakeside Drive, Forest City, California 94404. These ser­ vices are also available through your local library. A 20-year subject index (1953-1972), covering Ceramics Monthly feature articles, and the Sug­ gestions and Questions columns, is available for $ 1.50, postpaid, from the Ceramics Month lyftook Department, Post Office Box 12788, Columbus, Ohio 43212-0788. Copies and Reprints: Microfiche, 16mm and 35mm microfilm copies, and xerographic re­ prints are available to subscribers from University Microfilms, 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106. Back Issues: When available, back issues are $4 each, postpaid. Write for a list. Postmaster: Send address changes to Ceramics Monthly, Post Office Box 12788, Columbus, Ohio 43212-0788. Form 3579 requested. Copyright © 1994 Professional Publications, Inc. All rights reserved

2 CERAMICS MONTHLY November 1994 3 4 CERAMICS MONTHLY VOLUME 42, NUMBER 9 • NOVEMBER 1994

Feature Artides

Waylande Gregory by Thomas Folk...... 27 Oregon Showcase ’94...... 33 Ceramic Sculpture in Brazil...... 36 Burlon Craig by Charles Zug...... 38 1994 Fletcher Challenge Award a review by Peter Gibbs ...... 45 Hilary LaForce...... 49 Sylvia Netzer’s Post-Toxic/Neo-Plastic a review by Ann Rothman ...... 50 Burlon Craig An opening of North Car­ olina potter Burlon Craig’s kiln often re­ Mary Lou Deal ...... 52 sembles a wrestling match, with collectors jostling, shoving and fighting to grab one Their Own Voices ...... 53 of his pots, which now are priced at about Metamorphosis of a Small Business by Diane Hutchinson ...... 78 $100 a gallon. Struggling to sell his works for just 10C a gallon at one time (“I’ve Fifth Annual California Conference by Marilyn Moyle ...... 82 hauled it until the glazing wore off of it almost”), Craig is still amazed at his work’s Susan Low-Beer...... 84 popularity: “I know it’s happening, but it’s just hard for me to believe yet,” he says. His story begins on page 38. Up Front 1994 Fletcher Challenge Award New Zealand’s latest Fletcher Challenge exhibi­ Robert Sanderson ...... 10 tion drew more entries than ever before. $ 1 Million Allotted for Ceramics Museum ...... 10 “Driven by feeling,” judge Jindra Vikova Canadian Biennial ...... 10 looked for the secret or the mystery in each piece; see page 45. Dorothy Rissman ...... 12 Pre-Columbian Press Molds by Carol Ventura ...... 12 Virginia Scotchie ...... 16 Mid-Atlantic Craft Show by Tom Supensky ...... 16 A Raku Retreat by Brother Don Smith ...... 18 New Hampshire League Annual ...... 18 Beverly Mayeri ...... 20 Paula Bastiaansen ...... 20 Ohio’s Best of 1994 ...... 20

Metamorphosis ofa Small Business “Com­ Departments mitted to impeccable craftsmanship,” Diane Hutchinson and father Robert Letters ...... 8 Group Ceramics Exhibitions ...... 66 Dittmer have worked to build a business Video ...... 24 Ceramics in Multimedia Exhibitions ...... 68 that produces functional and architectural Call for Entries Fairs, Festivals and Sales ...... 69 ware, plus offers design and mold-making International Exhibitions ...... 57 Workshops ...... 70 services to others; page 78. National Exhibitions ...... 57 International Events ...... 74 Regional Exhibitions ...... 58 Questions ...... 86 The cover Ceramistlcritic Sylvia Netzer Fairs, Festivals and Sales ...... 58 Classified Advertising ...... 88 with her installation “Post-Toxic/Neo- Suggestions ...... 62 Comment: Plastic” at the A.I.R. Gallery in New York Calendar Play, Ritual and Making Special City; a review of her work begins on page Conferences ...... 66 by George Kokis ...... 90 50. Photo: David Lubarsky. Solo Exhibitions ...... 66 Index to Advertisers ...... 96

November 1994 5

Letters Fringe Whining I find CM refreshing in its wide scope. The constant whining for “more of’ or “only” is from the fringes of the clayworking Andrea Fabrega Kudos population. All those who don’t write prob­ I recently caught up on my reading and ably enjoy seeing new things regardless of was absolutely amazed by the story about their own personal styles and tastes. Andrea Fabrega and her miniature porcelain Kellie Callahan, Yakima, Wash. artistry in the May issue. Her work is truly extraordinary; I was deeply moved by the Fragile Traditions beauty and variety of her pieces. I was also I work in a five-person co-op, which extremely impressed with the creativity and produces functional stoneware and porcelain. innovation that her work shows. Ceramics is We have no problem with the attention given an art form with thousands of years of history high-end “funk” objects, but really welcome behind it. Even after thousands of years, articles about Third World potteries. These wonderful new ideas, forms and glazes, in traditions are fragile and can be wiped out new combinations, are still being invented by overnight, as was the beautiful Guatemalan contemporary artists like Ms. Fabrega. tinaja by the introduction of a plastic copy. Thanks for a truly wonderful article! David Matthews, Lynn, Mass. James Grantsen, Littleton, Colo. Absolute Necessity Professionalism Ceramics Monthly is absolutely necessary I’ve now been a professional potter 28 to keep current with technology, techniques, years—20 in the U.S. and 8 in Asia—having trends and criticism. just recently completed a 3-year apprentice­ Ray Gonzales, Lincoln, Calif. ship to Koichi Takita (deshi to Shoji Hama- da). His eminent status in Japan has taught Functional Color me a great deal about the respect given great Please squeeze in as many color photos of artists. Perhaps we American potters could functional ware as possible. come to enjoy such respect if we were more Mr. and Mrs. C. F. Conaway, Tulsa, Okla. professional, and took our own skills and presentation more seriously. Bad Accidents? Tana Stewart, Foster City, Calif. I have read Ceramics Monthly for years, but sometimes I do wish it was a little more Living Off Pots down to earth. I think some pictures look CM is doing a good job, but I would love like bad accidents. Who knows, maybe they to see more articles on good functional pot­ were! tery—what is selling at the “average” craft Mary New, Evanston, Wyo. fair. Also, please publish more on potters in the U.S. who are actually making a living at it A Good Read (not academic types, but potters who live off My family knows that when I receive my their pots). What are they doing right? issue of CM, watch out! I stop whatever I’m Carolynn Palmer, Somerset Center, Mich. doing to read it. After the initial run-through, I keep it with me to read more closely when­ Get Rid of Junk ever I have quiet times during the day. Then We have noticed more and more “junk it’s filed for student and personal use. work” in the pages of CM. Why concentrate Inyo Bayer, Watertown, N.Y. so much space on the pieces that look like a six-year-old slapped them together? (Only Renewal because the “artist” has somehow convinced Sometimes, when I’m in a pottery slump, people his or her work is art?) I stack up my Ceramics Monthlys, make In our studio, form, function and grace myself comfortable and leaf through them. are very important. We would never consider That always gets my imagination going, and trying to pass off a piece of sloppy work as gives personal meaning to the word “re­ art. The abstract and bizarre shapes of some newal.” of the work shown in CM are neither appeal­ Ingrid Farmer, Lehigh, Fla. ing nor show the true talent it takes to make a lump of clay into a thing of beauty. Get rid What Will the Future Think? of the junk! I enjoy making traditional pots, wall Bob and Jodi Brehmer, Rock Island, 111. pieces and jewelry—things that can be used. When I observe some of the items shown in Share your thoughts with other readers. All letters the magazine that to me are no use to anyone must be signed.\ but names will be withheld on in the world (although the glazes are superb), request. Mail to The Editor, Ceramics Monthly, I wonder what historians in the future will Post Office Box 12788, Columbus, Ohio 43212-think of our generation. 0788; or fax to (614) 488-4561. Jeanne Kozell, Overgaard, Ariz.

8 CERAMICS MONTHLY November 1994 9 Up Front

Robert Sanderson Scotland potter Robert Sanderson was recently awarded a £10,000 (approximately US$15,865) bursary from the Scottish Arts Council to enable him to develop new directions for his wood-fired ware. He was introduced to wood firing while a student at Bournemouth & Poole College of Art in England in the early 1970s. “As part of my course,” Sanderson explained, “I spent a period of study and work with wood-fire potter Ray Finch at Winchcombe Pottery, Gloustershire, during the summer of 1974. Then in 1976,1 began to work with American wood-fire potter Warren Storch here in Scotland, my stay lasting 4½ years. It allowed me the opportunity to build up a fundamental understanding of wood firing, while continuing to develop my throwing skills in a workshop situation. After this intensive period of making, I chose to travel, and between the years 1980 and 1984,1 visited and worked with potters in Tanzania, Australia and New Zealand.” Returning to Scotland in 1984, he established a pottery together with Coll Minogue, designing and building a wood-

Robert Sanderson at the door to his wood-burning kiln in Perthshire, Scotland. try to replicate in subsequent firings by placing work in the same or similar position in the kiln; the way the kiln is stacked, the space left between the pots, are as important as the shape of the pots themselves. “My work is predominantly of a ‘domestic’ nature. In recent years, I have specialized in a number of shapes that have allowed me to be creative, at the same time choosing to deliberately restrict myself within the confines of the form and function of each particular pot. Individual pieces, be they domestic or not, have evolved to fulfill a need, as well as to investigate the effects of wood firing. “The SAC bursary will allow me to develop my work in that direction, and at a pace that under ordinary circumstances never could have happened.” $1 Million Allotted for Ceramics Museum Wood-fired stoneware platter with swiped white slip, Alfred University, Alfred, New York, will be building an interna­ approximately 12 inches in diameter. tional museum of ceramic art, thanks to a $ 1 million allocation in the states 1994-95 budget. The museum will be 25,000 burning kiln with a Bourry firebox built with recycled firebrick. square feet and will be built on property owned by the State “Discovering that flame and heat can have desirable effects on a University of New York system. The allocated funds will enable clay body and that these effects can be controlled with an the site to be cleared and the design phase of the museum to be amount of predictability,” Sanderson said, “has allowed me to completed. understand flame as a creative medium; the unpredictable result being a starting point for further development and experimenta­ Canadian Biennial tion. I have over the years come to identify various effects that I Canadas sixth “National Biennial of Ceramics” opened at the Galerie D’Art du Parc in Trois-Riveres, Quebec, and will tour You are invited to send news and photos about people, places or the country through September 1995. Included in the exhibi­ events of interest. We will be pleased to consider them for publica­ tion are 44 works by 35 ceramists. Selections were made from tion in this column. Mail submissions to Up Front, Ceramics over 325 entries by jurors Therese Chabot, faculty artist at Monthly, Post Office Box 12788, Columbus, Ohio 43212-0788. Concordia University; John Chalke, Calgary studio ceramist;

10 CERAMICS MONTHLY November 1994 11 Up Front concept only. The improvements were often subtle and taxed our minds as jurors. “Here and there, there were references to homage, regional folk art and bygone native art—by un-folk people and by un- and Christiane Chassay, gallery director and president of the natives. These didn’t ring true in nearly the same way. Their Contemporary Art Galleries Association. origins showed all too obviously, lacking the necessary compas­ All three jurors noted that the task was particularly challeng­ sion and contemporary translation that any art requires.” ing, given the diverse nature of contemporary daywork. “Poised What Chalke appreciated most “was the coming across of personal demand, therefore identity. The Big Quest. Homage has this commendable and humbling quality, but should be built upon or added to in order to become an interesting ingredient.” Dorothy Rissman The 22 smoked figures by Dorothy Rissman exhibited recently at Udinotti Gallery in Scottsdale, Arizona, reflect her view of life as a collection of fragments. “We pick and choose among the fragments for those pieces of information and experience that allow us to both create and sustain our individual, often fragile,

Jim Thomson’s “Boboli #10,” 19 inches in height, stoneware; traveling in Canada’s sixth “National Biennial of Ceramics.”

delicacy lay next to large-scale certainty, and low-fired brashness rubbed hips with wood-fired celadons,” wrote Chalke in his juror’s statement. “It was difficult to identify a particular charac­ ter throughout all this....The best work showed continued inquiry along personal paths that not merely reiterated similar feelings that their work sought before, but built up on these ideas with obvious maturity. At the worst, these could become technical refinements or mild improvements on an earlier

Dorothy Rissman “Head,” 18 inches in height; at Udinotti Gallery, Scottsdale, Arizona.

realities,” she commented. “My work is meant to reflect that feeling of fragility and vulnerability that is so pervasive in the world today.” Having experimented with the raku process for the past 11 years, Rissman explored the surface possibilities achieved by a smoky reduction atmosphere (without the use of glazes) for this series of sculptures. Pre-Columbian Press Molds by Carol Ventura In pre-Columbian America, plain and elaborately decorated Diane Brouillette’s “Evenement Bref #5,” 5 inches in height, pots for cooking, eating and storage were created by press porcelain and steel. molding. Roof, floor and wall decorations; bells, whistles and

12 CERAMICS MONTHLY November 1994 13 Up Front Following 300 B.C., one- and two-piece concave molds were used to make elaborate effigy vessels. Later, the Chimu used molds to produce all but their largest storage jars. Designs in rattles; incense burners and pipes; toys; figures depicting hu­ relief decorated the sides. mans, birds and animals; spindle whorls; jewelry; and funerary Molds still play a major role in pottery production in the urns were also produced in molds. post-Columbian Americas. In fact, the most common Mexican Many pre-Columbian forms are still produced in the same production process today combines press molding with coiling. manner today. In ancient times, pottery was usually woman’s The bottom of the pot is molded, then the upper part is coil work. While both men and women make pottery now, women built. A single mold can serve as the beginning for a variety of still dominate local production. As in the past, skills are usually shapes, since the coiled upper portion does not have to conform passed down from parent to child. to set specifications. Many people are surprised that the potter’s Clay was mined as needed. While some could be used wheel, which was introduced by Spaniards during the colonial directly from the ground, deposits that had impurities, such as period, has not been adopted by more potters. But where a stones or vegetable matter, had to be dried, crushed, sifted, strong mold tradition exists, the wheel is not as popular because remoistened and wedged. To further increase plasticity, the clay was aged for several months. Sometimes sand, pumice, mica, plant fibers, dung or crushed shards were added to temper the clay. Tempering materials are important in archaeological studies because they are easily noted and often differ from culture to culture. A number of forming techniques, including coiling, slab building and press molding, were and still are used alone or in combi­ nation. Although press molding did not become widespread until the end of the Classic Period (A.D. 200-900), by the Late Postclassic (A.D. 1400- 1600), it had become the hallmark of mass-produced Pre-Columbian press molds from El Salvador and Guatemala; at the Miami University figures and vessels. Art Museum in Oxford, Ohio. Concave and convex molds made of coarse, heavy clay have been excavated through­ skilled molding is actually more efficient than wheel throwing. out the Americas. The pre-Columbian collection at the Miami Surface treatments were applied to pre-Columbian ceramics University Art Museum in Oxford, Ohio, includes several from during various stages of the forming process. Various objects, Guatemala, El Salvador and Ecuador. They were used much like including stamps, could be pressed into the plastic clay. Three modern press molds. different types of recessed lines could be achieved by incising First, clay was pounded into a flat circle with the hands, a wet, leather-hard or dry clay with a sharp stick or bone. More paddle or rock. Pressed into or draped over a mold, the clay was elaborate images could be brought into relief by cutting away then shaped by pressing, pounding or slapping, starting at the the background. center and working toward the edge. Next, the clay was scraped After the vessel had dried, the surface was often scraped, with a tool and/or rolled with a corncob. Excess was removed sanded or burnished. To add color, before or after burnishing, with a knife. the vessel could be stained with oxide washes or slips. Some­ After the clay dried enough to maintain its shape, it was times a piece was stuccoed or painted after firing. removed from the mold. Working with convex molds was All pre-Columbian pottery is classified as low-fire or earthen­ tricky: if the clay became too dry, it would crack as it shrank on ware. Most was once fired to temperatures ranging from 300°C the fired mold; if the clay was too moist when it was removed, it (572°F) to 650°C (1202°F). Except for Plumbate ware (the would collapse. name derived from its leaden surface color), which is partially One- and two-piece molds dating to 1000 B.C. have been vitrified, all pre-Columbian pottery is porous. excavated in Peru. It is possible, however, that the process is Most was fired in the open on flat ground; however, cylin­ much older. While molds of figures are easily recognized, drical kilns made of stone or brick, thought to be an introduc­ simpler molds are often documented as “heavy, utilitarian tion from Europe, have been recognized at several Meso- ware,” as some one-piece molds look like undecorated pots. american sites (Tula and Monte Alban, for example). Continued

14 CERAMICS MONTHLY November 1994 15 Up Front thiclmess of ½ inch; flipping the coil over during the process helps compress the clay evenly. Walls are built with the flattened coil-slabs by scoring and slipping the seams. Depending on the Unfortunately, the current art market has created a huge shape being constructed, up to 8 inches of wall can be added demand for pre-Columbian figures, and looting is a problem at before the clay must be allowed to stiffen. many archaeological sites. To further complicate studies, con­ temporary potters are producing authentic-looking fakes for sale Mid-Atlantic Craft Show to unsuspecting tourists or collectors. While some fakes are by Tom Supensky easily spotted, others are so professionally made that they can be A multimedia exhibition of works by artists living in the mid- invalidated only through laboratory testing. Atlantic states was presented recently at Towson State University in Towson, Maryland. In reviewing submissions, juror Michael Virginia Scotchie Monroe, curator of the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Terra-cotta wall-mounted and free-standing sculptures by Virginia Scotchie were exhibited recently at Meteor Gallery in Columbia, South Carolina. Built from flattened coils, layered with commercial glazes and enamels, and multifired, the forms are abstractions of common objects (e.g., carpentry tools, golf

Ken Standhardt’s “Spike Vessel,” 8 inches in diameter, thrown and carved.

Institution in Washington, D.C., looked for pieces that “made a conscious attempt to add to our visual world rather than to simply recite it.” Monroe s “preference is for works that are not vague nor imprecise, but that have a sense of urgency and assert a dynamic and compelling objective. Perhaps the single, most important

Virginia Scotchie’s “Balance,” 22 inches in height, coil-built terra cotta, with commercial glazes and enamels, multifired; at Meteor Gallery in Columbia, South Carolina. clubs, tobacco pipes, cages, balls, etc.) and often refer to the human body. In the book Early American Toolsby Eric Sloane, “tools are often referred to as extensions of the human hand.’ This work speaks of that metamorphosis, and is abstracted to the point where tool and body part become one visually,” Scotchie explained. “Spheres, cages and hatlike forms placed on top of abstracted tool shapes refer to the ‘human condition; i.e., the balance of ones life, place and sense of order,” she continued. “The fragil­ ity of that order is suggested by the precarious placement of the objects as they are balanced, arranged and stacked on top of the larger forms.” Scotchie’s construction method involves rolling out long, Rick Malmgren stoneware pitcher, 13 inches in height, thick coils, approximately 15 inches in length and 3 inches in fired to Cone 10 in reduction; at Towson State University, diameter. Each coil is then pounded with a rubber mallet to a Towson, Maryland.

16 CERAMICS MONTHLY November 1994 17 Up Front and Tuesday, I explained the glazing process, suggesting that they first coat the inside with the following copper/iron glaze: element I look for [is that] the artist has developed an innova­ Tomat’s Red Raku Glaze Borax...... 50% tive vocabulary of forms that results in a self-consistent style,” he Gerstley Borate...... 50 continued. “Individual style distinguishes the art from work by 100% less-accomplished artists, and merges from the development of a Add: Copper Carbonate...... 40% unique interior vision in combination with a learned and Red Iron Oxide...... 10% controlled responsiveness to the material.” The clay objects Monroe selected were diverse in nature, but Next, I recommended they apply a thin coat of copper stain the bulk was utilitarian. Of particular note were a thrown (90% copper carbonate mixed with 10% Ferro frit 3110) or the stoneware pitcher by Rick Malmgren (Severn, Maryland) and following Blue Silver Glaze to the outside: “Spike Vessel” by Ken Standhardt (Gilbertsville, Pennsylvania); Blue Silver Raku Glaze see page 16. Lithium Carbonate ...... 9.8% Frit 25 (Pemco)...... 42.5 A Raku Retreat Frit 3134 (Ferro) ...... 27.4 Edgar Plastic Kaolin ...... 6.3 by Brother Don Smith Flint ...... 14.0 Last year, when I discovered that the annual retreats for priests 100.0% Add: Soda Ash...... 1.0% and brothers in the Cincinnati Province of the Society of Mary Bentonite ...... 2.0% were to have the theme “Rekindle the Fire,” I suggested that Cobalt Carbonate ...... 1.1% raku firings be added to the schedule. My proposal to the Silver Nitrate...... 2.1% organizing committee centered around the fact that the sym­ For a turquoise glaze, replace the soda ash, cobalt carbonate and bolic elements of raku would fit the theme perfectly—a white- silver nitrate with 2.5%-3.5% copper carbonate. hot fire, a dramatic change, a participatory activity, a moment of Most of the copper carbonate stain or Blue Silver Glaze was wonder. Each participant was to glaze and fire a candle holder, then wiped off with a sponge, leaving it just in the crevices. The which would then be used for other activities during the retreat surface was then covered with the turquoise variation of Blue and eventually be taken home as a reminder of the experience. Silver Glaze or the following clear glaze: The committee approved the idea, and I was soon busy producing the 50 candle holders needed for the first of four Piepenburg’s Clear Raku Glaze retreats. Using the simple method of wrapping a rectangular Frit 3134 (Ferro) ...... 50% slab around a cardboard tube, I made about six a day. Prior to Gerstley Borate...... 50 100% cutting out the rectangle, each slab was impressed with a pattern from the many doilies I have lying around the studio. After the On Wednesday evening, as the retreatants were finishing cylinder had hardened somewhat, I excised holes corresponding their dinner, I started the first firing of approximately 25 candle to the doily patterns to allow candlelight to shine through. holders in my portable raku Win. Several metal containers Because I used about 25 different doilies, no two candle holders around the kiln were filled with shredded paper, sawdust and were alike. pine needles. The first unloading was scheduled for approxi­ On Sunday, when the priests and brothers arrived for the mately 7:30. As the men gathered round, I answered many retreat, each received a packet of information in which I had questions about the ceramic fiber insulation, the kilns tempera­ included some facts about raku, and indicated I would be ture, the combustibles, the resiliency of clay, etc. available for glazing instruction. During free times on Monday When the glazes took on the look of “liquid sunshine,” I signaled to the choir director to begin the hymn “Let Your Light Shine.” An assistant and I then removed the kiln chamber and began lifting candle holders with tongs. As the last holder was placed in the combustibles, there was spontaneous applause. The second firing was even more dramatic, because we timed it to finish just after sunset so that there was a discernible glow emanating from the red-hot holders. After the holders had been reduced and scrubbed clean, we placed candles inside each and distributed them to their respec­ tive owners. The retreat chef had prepared a cake smothered in fresh strawberries and an ice cream punch to conclude the raku experience. Directed into the darkened lounge area with their candles lit, the men placed the holders in the center of the tables and enjoyed their dessert by candlelight. They then used their candles to light the procession to the chapel for night prayer. New Hampshire League Annual A porcelain cups and tray set by Kate Lally, Goffstown, New Hampshire, was chosen as the winner of the Hitchiner Clay Award (sponsored by Hitchiner Manufacturing Corporation) in Brother Don Smith transporting a red-hot candle holder the “League of New Hampshire Craftsmens 19th Annual Juried to a reduction barrel filled with combustibles. Exhibit.” On view last spring at the Manchester Institute of Arts

18 CERAMICS MONTHLY November 1994 19 Up Front tional images on the figure s surfaces; after firing, these are highlighted with washes of acrylic paint. and Sciences, the multimedia show featured 47 pieces selected Paula Bastiaansen by juror Lawrence A. Bush, chair of the ceramics department at Porcelain vessels by Dutch ceramist Paula Bastiaansen were Rhode Island School of Design. exhibited recently at Galerie Amphora in Oosterbeek, Nether­ lands. The vessels are based on classic, wheel-thrown utilitarian forms—bowls, amphoras, etc. To these she adds wafer-thin

Kate Lally’s “Cappuccino Set,” cups are approximately 3 inches in height, matt-glazed, slip-cast porcelain; clay award winner in the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen “19th Annual Juried Exhibit.” Lally’s prizewinning “Cappuccino Set” was slip cast, then patterned with incising and slip dotting. Glazing was with dark blue and turquoise matts. A black rubber mat at the bottom of the tray cushions the cups.

Paula Bastiaansen vessel, approximately 6 inches in height; Beverly Mayeri at Galerie Amphora, Oosterbeek, Netherlands. Figurative sculpture by California artist Beverly Mayeri was featured in a recent solo exhibition at Dorothy Weiss Gallery in slices so that the composition “gains motion.” Sometimes San Francisco. Known for her abstractions of the human figure, Bastiaansen works with stained porcelain, but the colors are Mayeri uses her work to explore “the emotional texture of inner always subtle. life.” To create this feeling of “layered reality,” she carves addi- Ohio’s Best of 1994 “The Best of 1994,” a juried exhibition of works by members of Ohio Designer Craftsmen (ODC), was presented at the Ohio Craft Museum in Columbus through June 6. Approximately 350 slide entries were reviewed by Ruth Snyderman, director of the Works Gallery in Philadelphia. From these, she selected 101 pieces by 69 artists for the exhibition. “In jurying all the slides submitted,” she commented, “the deciding factor for my choice was consistency. The next factor was spirit.’ Many entries were finely crafted, but lacked a dynamic vitality.” Snyderman also selected the award winners, including this stoneware ewer by Michael Chipperfield, Westerville, Ohio. The winner of the Wooster Functional Ceramics Award, it was also purchased for the ODC permanent collection.

Beverly Mayeri’s “The Outburst,” 25 inches in height, Michael Chipperfield ewer, 10 inches high, wood-fired with acrylics; at Dorothy Weiss Gallery, San Francisco. stoneware, $150; at the Ohio Craft Museum in Columbus.

20 CERAMICS MONTHLY November 1994 21 22 CERAMICS MONTHLY November 1994 23 sections to avoid random cracking. When flame and letting the gods of fire decide what Video completed, the stove is allowed to dry as a your pots are going to look like,” explains whole for a few days before it is taken apartHawaiian in potter Kellie Layne in this video tile sections. These tiles are then laid on gratesdemonstration of raku. “It’s possible to con­ Earth, Fire, Colour: to facilitate even drying. trol very precisely howyour pots look but... I’m The Architectural Ceramics When bone dry, the tiles are glazed whitemore interested in seeing how the fire acts on of Stefan Emmelmann and sprayed with colored pigments: “I like the clay.” In this how-to video, Austrian ceramist my pieces to look like they’re made from a Geared toward a general audience with Stefan Emmelmann demonstrates the con­natural material,” Emmelmann comments.little or no knowledge of raku, the video struction and firing of a kachelofen, a tiled The glazed tiles are then wood fired to follows Layne through the entire process— wood-burning stove used to heat homes in 1280°C (2336°F). “It’s incredibly exciting,” from wedging (when “the clay starts to wake Europe. Worldng with clients, EmmelmannEmmelmann says. “The fire takes you to yourup”), throwing and glazing, to firing the kiln first sketches ideas, then constructs a small-physical limit. The finished pieces are so and postfiring reduction. Viewers even go scale model of their choice. The actual stove-much more lively. They have all these subtlealong with Layne on his hunt for the banana making process begins with the erection of hues,a which you just can’t get with gas or leaves he uses for reduction. “The kind of wooden substructure over which he forms electricity—that’s just clean and dead and material you use to do the reduction in raku the tilework. boring.” definitely affects how the pots come out in Blocks of clay that he has mixed himself Installation is done by a professional stovethe end,” he says. (having found no commercial body that suitsbuilder, who is responsible for the interior of During his demonstrations, Layne keeps his needs) are sliced into slabs, then cut intothe wood-burning stove (flues, firebox, etc.).up a running commentary, letting the viewer 2-inch-wide strips, which are used to build a15 minutes. Available as VHS videocassette.know what’s happening in each step of the system of latticelike supports around the $50, plus $ 10 for postage. Stefan Emmelmann,process. Safety is discussed, but only briefly; wooden structure; these also act as anchorsHaus 69, A-3572 Saint Leonhard am and, while he wears gloves and goggles during for the metal brackets that are added later toHomenuald (bei Gars am Kamp), Austria; the reducing stage, his shorts and sandals hold the stove together. Slabs are attached to(298) 72-347. leave a lot to be desired in terms of sufficient the latticing with a slurry of peanut-butter protective clothing. consistency—“the glue for sticking every­ Open Studio: Raku Pottery in the Insufficient editing and fluctuating sound thing together,” according to Emmelmann.Making are other drawbacks. 50 minutes. Available as Because drying occurs while he is still “I find that if you balance the wildness ofVHS videocassette. $25, plus $3 for shipping. working on the surface, Emmelmann peri­ raku with very simple shapes and simple LightWaves Productions, 245Aina Lani Place, odically measures and cuts the stove into tileglazing, you’re really surrendering to the Kapaa, Hawaii 96746; (808) 822-4900.

24 CERAMICS MONTHLY November 1994 25 26 CERAMICS MONTHLY Waylande Gregory by Thomas Folk

A major figure in the history of Ameri­ can ceramics, Waylande Gregory cre­ ated some of the first large-scale clay sculptures for public spaces. Born in 1905in Baxter Springs, Kansas, Gre­ gory was something of a prodigy. He grew up on his fathers ranch near a Cherokee reservation and first became impressed with ceramics during an In­ dian burial he witnessed at an early age. When he was 11, he was enrolled as a student at the Kansas State Teachers College, where he studied carpentry and crafts, including ceramics. He also stud­ ied at the Horner Institute of Music and Art. Though a gifted musician— one of his early compositions was pub­ lished—he had a huge ego. In fact, Gene De Gruson (Kansas Quarterly, vol. 14, no. 4, 1982)stated that at the age of 13, Gregory told his mother he would no longer play Bach or Beethoven, only original works by Gregory. Gregory began to take sculpture se­ riously when he was invited by Lorado Taft to work as his assistant at the Art Institute of Chicago and to share space with him at Midway Studios, a com­ Terra-cotta model for Waylande plex of 13 rooms that overlooked a Gregory’s fountain “Light Dispelling courtyard. Taft had gained the reputa­ Darkness,” a W.P.A. (Work Projects tion as a mentor to other important Administration) sculpture installed at Roosevelt Park in Edison, New Jersey. American sculptors, such as Janet Scudder, but he worked primarily in bronze and marble, not clay. The experience may also have been responsible for getting Gregory inter­ ested in creating large-scale sculpture, as Taft had been involved with sculp­ tures for the Horticultural Building at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. But by the 1920s, Taft s brand of academic sculpture was no longer considered progressive. In­ stead, Gregory was attracted to the lat­ est trends appearing in the United States and abroad. Waylande Gregory (in the 1920s) with Gregorys first major commission was a sculpture of Abraham and Isaac. for the interior decoration of over 100

November 1994 27 rooms at the Hotel President in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1925. For this, he employed a variety of styles, but the banquet hall displayed an obvious Mayan influence. It was also the most ambitious room, where diners sat in the presence of a statue of the Mayan god Quetzalcoatl. Although the walls were covered with Mayan-style plaster of paris reliefs (Gregory studied Guatemalan and Mexican excavations), the general feel­ ing was art deco. Most likely, a major source of inspiration was the interior decoration of Frank Lloyd Wrights Millard House, also known as “La Miniatura” (Pasadena, 1923), which was one of the first buildings to exploit Wright’s new concrete-block technique. Obviously, molded plaster of paris and concrete create a similar effect when used architecturally. A year later, Gregory accompanied Taft to Italy, where they studied the work of the della Robbia family, who created polychrome glazed terra-cotta sculptures of religious subjects. It must be stressed that Gregorys primary train­ “Nautch Dancer,” 20 inches in ing was in sculpture—not pottery— height, glazed porcelain, designed and to him clay was simply a vehicle for for Cowan Pottery, circa 1928. sculpture. He expressed little interest in the vessel. In 1928, Gregory left Midway Stu­ dios to work at Cowan Pottery in Rocky River, a suburb of Cleveland. [See “Cowan Pottery” in the October 1985 CM]. He became one of the company’s major designers of limited-edition, table- top ceramic sculptures. In fact, he and his colleague, Viktor Schreckengost, be­ came the leading figures in the Cleve­ land school, which also included Edris Eckhardt, Thelma Winter Frazier and Paul Bogatay. All worked and designed for the Cowan Pottery. Much of the ceramics they produced were influenced by the style of the Wiener Werkstatte; this was particularly true of the work of Schreckengost and Frazier. Although, in later years, Gregory would become close friends with Valerie Wieselthier, a leading artist from that Viennese design firm, he was not influenced by the play­ ful frivolousness of contemporary Vien­ nese ceramic sculpture, as was so much of the Cleveland school. Instead, he was often directly influenced by leading sculptors in bronze, such as Paul Manship, who also worked at Cowan on a free-lance basis. “Ichabod Crane,” 22½ inches in height, terra cotta,1932.

28 CERAMICS MONTHLY While at Cowan, Gregory produced two outstanding female figures, “Nautch Dancer” (1928) and “Burlesque” (1929), both of which measure about 20 inches in height. The sinuous, streamlined “Nautch Dancer” much re­ calls the curvaceous figures of sculptor Gaston Lachaise (who had been Manships assistant), while the cubist lines of “Burlesque” recall the planar motion of the sculpture of Alexander Archipenko, a Russian artist who im­ migrated to the United States in 1923. Gregorys terra-cotta sculpture of 1937, “Europa and the Bull,” owes a great deal to Manships 1925 version of the same subject in bronze. They are almost identical in size, although Gregorys clay bull is supported by waves, whereas Manships bronze bull is supported by dolphins and includes a figure of Eros. At the same time Gregory was ab­ sorbing the latest influences, he also was working toward personal expression. As “Two Clowns on Unicycles,” 23 inches in height, a painted terra-cotta sculpture cited by Gene De Gruson, R. Guy of back-to-back figures, circa 1932; one clown is playing a tuba while the other Cowan stated in Design (November is juggling poodles. 1936) that “Waylande Gregory is, per­ haps, the most brilliant sculptor we have who is working in ceramics. Archipenko and Paul Jennewein are famous sculp­ tors, but they are not good ceramists. Gregory has mastered several techniques and uses them to fine effects.” In 1931, Gregory won first prize at the Cleveland Museums “May Show,” but the Cleveland episode in his career came to a close that same year when the Cowan Pottery closed, largely as a result of the Depression. Out of a job, Greg- ory aggressively pursued a position at Cranbrook, a leading school of design in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, accord­ ing to Martin Eidelberg (in Design in America: The Cranbrook Vision, 1983). He arrived in 1932, and the first suc­ cessful firing of his Iciln took place that spring. Perhaps one of Gregorys finest works at Cranbrook is a complex terra­ cotta sculpture of two clowns on uni- cycles, back to back, one juggling two poodles, while the other blows on a tuba. This work is largely composed of cubist planes and is less derivative than previous works. Gregory was also using color to its best advantage, as can be seen in the clown grouping, which was painted with oil. Much of western sculpture, being “The Bathers,” 24 inches in height, circa 1938. made of bronze or marble, was devoid

November 1994 of color. In 1939, in an unidentified newspaper clipping, Gregory stated, “The Chinese loved everything vivid and rich in tone, but we as a nation are just beginning to grow up to it. In my pieces, I try to incorporate the stimulus of color.” Other notable terra cottas Gregory executed at Cranbrook include “Ichabod Crane” and a study of a mare and a colt titled “Kansas Madonna.” Gregory left Cranbrook in March 1933 after a dispute with the adminis­ tration; some of his work had been de­ stroyed because his kiln was deliberately turned off on a national bank holiday. Undaunted, he went on to present a one-man exhibition of his work at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Awards and recognition followed from such institu­ tions as the Chicago Art Institute and what is now the Everson Museum in Syracuse, New York. Gregory and his wife (they had mar­ ried in 1930) moved to Perth Amboy, New Jersey, where he established a work­ shop in the Atlantic Terra-Cotta Com­ pany so he could use the enormous kilns to create monumental sculptures. To support such large works, he used an internal substructure technique, similar to the honeycombs built by bees. One of his first large-scale sculptures, “The Swimmer” (1936), was included in an annual sculpture exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. In 1937, Gregory took advantage of his position as director of the New Jer­ sey Federal Arts Project of the Work Projects Administration and, with the assistance of ten other sculptors, created a large outdoor fountain group, titled “Light Dispelling Darkness,” at Roose­ velt Park in Edison, New Jersey, near Menlo Park and New Brunswick. From the center of the pool emerges a con­ crete shaft decorated with terra-cotta relief on which rests a large globe. (The central globe looks forward to a huge bronze sphere, also surrounded by a pool, designed by Paul Manship in 1939 for the Wilson Memorial in Geneva.) In Gregorys relief sculpture, men are depicted at humanitarian pursuits, such as working at scientific research. From the central shaft extend octopuslike ten­ drils, which support six large-scale study for “Water” from the “Fountain of the Atoms,” 22 inches in height, polychromed sculptures depicting vices, painted terra cotta, 1939.

30 CERAMICS MONTHLY including death, war, famine, pestilence, Valley to Far Hills, toward Princeton. male figures, such as Water, a diver, and greed and materialism. It seems likely Back of us, a sort of Persian palace, some of the electrons, which are repre­ that this work is directly related to the home of Waylande Gregory.” sented upside-down. Therefore, the tension felt about world affairs in pre- Gregory’s most ambitious and best- viewer’s attention is drawn to the diver’s World War II America. Today, this sculp­known outdoor work was his “Foun­ buttocks and the genitals of the elec­ tural grouping has held up remarkably tain of the Atoms,” which was produced trons. What’s more, the electrons, al­ well, although chipped corners suggest for the 1939 New York World’s Fair. though childlike, have clearly defined that bronze is ultimately a more du­ This grouping was situated near the pubic hair. The sexuality of Gregory’s rable medium. Sadly, the pool is kept entrance of Bowling Green Plaza, near sculpture was not totally unnoticed in dry, probably as a measure to save funds, the “Electric City.” Twelve large-scale his day. In his book Pottery and Porce­ and teenagers have added graffiti. Still, ceramic figures surrounded a 30-foot- lain (1944), Warren Cox wrote that this may be the first major extant ex­ glass shaft representing the nucleus of Gregory told him that “sex is the mo­ ample of outdoor ceramic sculpture in the atom. It was composed of glass tubes tive power,” and this is nowhere more the United States. Most outdoor sculp­ full of water and bubbles, topped by a evident than in the “Fountain of the ture had been previously cast in bronze. fiery blast. Positioned around a 60-foot Atoms.” In 1938, the Gregorys moved into circular blue-green pool and set on tiers, By the late 1930s, Gregory’s fleshy their new home in what is now Warren, the four huge major figures depicted nudes were uniquely his own, as they New Jersey. Designed by Gregory, it two females, Earth and Fire, and two do not resemble the work of other sculp­ was a large, two-story structure of ce­ males, Air and Water. These were sur­ tors. Barely do they reflect the art deco ment blocks. Like his designs for the rounded by eight electrons. Although aesthetic. One of his major works, Hotel President, it owes a strong debt playful in nature, this work has an omi­ titled “The Bathers” (circa 1938), mea­ to Wright’s Millard House (1923), nous undercurrent, as it prefigures the suring 24 inches in height, depicts a which also employed a concrete-block consequences of atomic power in soon- group of three nude young women wad­ technique. In the summertime, the to-come World War II. An unidentified ing to their knees in water. The unusu­ French doors were left open, creating contemporary newspaper clipping ally silky semimatt glaze heightens the an open-air feeling. The living room noted: “A feeling of tremendous vitality group’s sensuality. boasted an indoor garden largely com­ and savage abandon will be conveyed Gregory was capable of diversity of prised of evergreens. by eight brilliantly colored figures tum­ style, as his art does not usually display The house also contained a large stu­ bling and cavorting around the outer a constant or obvious stylistic develop­ dio, which was crowded by kilns. In level. According to the octet theory of ment. This can be seen in his other 1957, Gregory admitted, “It’s not the the atom, there are eight electrons re­ major project for the New York World’s sort of house anyone else would want volving around the nucleolus, and Mr. Fair, a group of large-scale, figural, terra­ to live in”; but the view was spectacular. Gregory has sculpted exuberant small cotta sculptures for General Motors, After a visit, Clementine Paddleford boys and girls to represent the electrons.”titled “American Imports and Exports.” wrote (Herald Tribune, January 31, Put into human terms, atomic en­ These do not relate to his fleshy nudes, 1957): “We stood on the broad terrace ergy is represented as sexual energy—as but closely relate thematically to devel­ looking down, down over Bound Brook, can be seen in the aroused, pointed opments in American painting—par­ across the Raritan River and the Raritan nipples of Earth, and in some of the ticularly to regionalism. Regionalism was a grass-roots style that dealt with such subjects as the American farmer and the Dust Bowl. Its counterpart was social realism, which dealt with immigrants and urban fac­ tory workers. Both fall under the head­ ing of American scene painting. In this group of works, Gregory employed both regionalist (cotton, grain, lumber, to­ bacco, farm worker) and social realist themes (factory worker, machinery, au­ tomobiles). In fact, he has the farmer and the factory worker back to back in the same sculpture. Gregorys last major commission was “Democracy in Action,” an 81-foot- long, terra-cotta relief mural for the Municipal Center in Washington, D.C., completed in 1941. One of the scenes “Fighter Pilot,” 12 inches square, terra-cotta relief depicts a policeman arresting a black tile with glass shards in the glaze, circa 1942. criminal. Charges of police brutality put

November 1994 31 New York City, a critic for the New Herald Tribune (October 15, 1947) ob­ served: “Probably the most spectacular of the plates are the red ones carved with white flamingos. The birds have gold beaks and appear as figurines, too. Gold seahorses whirl over white porce­ lain plates and there is a spectacular fish platter, with dashes of gold and a red lobster drawn in the center.” The most interesting pieces in this group of works are a pair of art deco polo players on horseback. These were executed in both terra cotta and porce­ lain, and were among Gregorys favorite subjects. They were inspired by the games at Schley Field in nearby aristo­ cratic Far Hills, New Jersey. Actress Joan Bennett owned a pair of such figures. In later years, honors and awards came fewer as he worked in molded glass and metal. (He even turned to Styrofoam as a sculptural medium.) However, “The Dreamer,” a hand-ham­ mered lead relief sculpture, earned him a silver medal from the National Sculp­ ture Society in 1970. In the 1960s, a major scandal in­ volving a wealthy patron, Barbara Farmer, had almost destroyed his ca­ reer. She was murdered by her husband “Yolande,” 17½ inches in height, terra-cotta portrait of his wife, in 1962. Newspaper headlines during by Waylande Gregory, 1932. the trial indicated an angry husband put the blame on Gregory for having an this work into storage for years. Of ture of a horse and colt entitled ‘Kansas affair with his wife. However, Gregorys course, artists thrive on publicity caused Madonna.’ The actor is a native of Ne­ wife gave the newspaper reporters a dif­ by controversy. It seems likely that Gre­ braska while the artist was born in Kan­ ferent story, saying that her husband gory would have known of the contro­ sas and there is but one months was homosexual and was an innocent versy surrounding one of social realist difference in the ages of the two scapegoat for a crime he had nothing to painter Philip Evergood’s most famous men....Gregory considers Fonda a typi­ do with. paintings, “American Tragedy” (1937), cal American and because of his ability Gregory died in 1971. By that time, which depicts a struggle between pick- to project this quality, he becomes sig­ his work, as well as that of the entire eters and policemen at a steel mill in nificant as a symbol of todays Ameri­ Cleveland school, had been largely for­ Gary, Indiana. As can be judged from can manhood....It is an emotional gotten, even though interest in ceramic his public works, Gregory wanted to be portrayal in terra cotta, a figure of a sculpture, particularly the work of Peter on the cutting edge of both stylistic and regular fellow wearing a blue denim Voulkos and his followers at the Otis thematic developments. shirt, open at the neck.” Art Institute, was revived in the late Gregory also executed a large num­ By the 1940s, Gregory was no longer 1950s. In later years, the Gregorys cen­ ber of terra-cotta portrait busts, includ­ receiving large public commissions. He tered their activities in their home, mak­ ing those of the opera diva Bidu Sauao, also broke with his New York City dealer,ing their outlook increasingly insular. dancer Ruth St. Denis, Albert Einstein the Boyer Galleries, in 1948 and no In fact, Gregory taught art classes at his and Charles Lindbergh. But his two longer had an outlet for his serious ce­ home in the late 1960s. most prominent busts were of actor ramic sculptures. For income, he turned A major innovator, Gregory took clay Henry Fonda. A clipping from the Daily his attention to tabletop sculptures and to heights that had never been thought News (New Brunswick, New Jersey) dinnerware. Today, these brightly glazed possible. He remains the greatest ce­ states: “Fonda was first attracted to the pieces seem amazingly postmodern and ramics practitioner of the art deco style, work of the local artist when he saw a substantially ahead of their time. Writ­ as well as one of the most ambitious color reproduction in Fortune magazine ing about an exhibition of Gregorys and heroic figures in the history of (December 1937) of Gregorys sculp­ work at Hammacher Schlemmer in American ceramics. ▲

32 CERAMICS MONTHLY Oregon Showcase ’94

The Oregon Potters Association (OPA) 12th annual “Showcase” grossed more than a quarter of a million dollars; that’s a 33% increase over the preceding year’s receipts. Presented for the second time at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, the three-day sale featured a wide variety of daywork, including func­ tional ware, jewelry, decorative vessels, “Scrubber,” 35 inches in height, salt- indoor and outdoor sculpture, and tiles. glazed and sandblasted stoneware, Earthenware tea set with majolica There were 108 booths, plus a gallery by Jim Koudelka, Portland; first place decoration, $145 for set with four cups, $500 purchase award winner. section in which all OPA members (even wheel thrown, fired to Cone 04 in those not participating in the sale) had oxidation, by Margie Adams, Portland. an opportunity to display a piece. Prizewinners were selected by a mem­ ber vote. First place, a $500 Permanent

Wheel-thrown porcelain jar, 6 inches in height, with resisted decoration, wood fired in a gilgama, $50, by Mike “Dancing,” 10 inches in height, carved Workman-Morelli, Newberg, Oregon. porcelain vessel, with sprayed matt “Wildlife,” 35 inches in height, handbuilt glazes, fired to Cone 10 in reduction, stoneware with Cone 10 oxidation $150, by Michele Rigert, Portland. glazes, $3300, by Bennett Welsh, Gresham, Oregon; third place winner.

November 1994 33 Carved slab plate from the “Fantasy Fish Series,” 13 inches in diameter, whiteware with low-fire glazes, $64, by Lyn Sedlak-Ford, Portland.

Collection Purchase Award, went to Jim Koudelka for a large stoneware sculp­ ture titled “Scrubber.” Two pieces tied for second place: a small teapot with underglaze decoration by Susan Thayer, and a wood-fired stoneware vase by Ken Pate. Bennett Welsh won third place for a large free-standing sculpture titled “Wildlife”; he also was recognized with an “All Time Showcase Award for Most Wildlife on One Pot.” The OPA was begun 14 years ago by Cast and assembled porcelain teapot with underglaze decoration, 14 inches in a small group of ceramists who wanted length, fired to Cone 4, $950, by Susan Thayer, Portland; tied for second place.

Wheel-thrown porcelain teapot, 9 inches in height, with copper red glaze, $100, by Wally Schwab, Aloha, Oregon.

Lidded jar, 18 inches in height, thrown and altered stoneware, sprayed with Cone 6 barium/copper glaze, $350, by Patrick Horsley, Portland.

34 CERAMICS MONTHLY to save money by buying supplies in bulk. The membership has since grown to over 360, and the scope of the orga­ nizations services has expanded to meet their needs. In addition to the annual sale, OPA maintains a medical-assistance fund; provides business and legal refer­ Thrown stoneware pot, 22 inches high, sprayed with Shino rals; and publishes a directory of mem­ and ash glazes, fired to Cone 10 in a gas kiln, $275, by Ken bers works that includes photos, studio Pate, Philomath, Oregon; tied for second place. locations and hours—all part of a uni­ fied effort “to promote individual cre­ ativity, excellence and growth through education and cooperative spirit.” ▲

Wheel-thrown porcelaneous stoneware cup and teapot, 14 inches in height, wood fired in an anagama, $15 and $75, by Janet Buskirk, Portland.

“Katsusaka Vessel,” 15 inches in height, handbuilt earthenware, derived from middle-Jomon-period Japanese pottery, $160, by Matthew Lyon, Portland. Coffeepot with filter holder, to 11 inches in height, terra cotta with low-fire glazes, $150, by Jan Edwards, Portland.

November 1994 35 Ceramic Sculpture in Brazil

“A Ceramica na Arte Contemporanea Brazileira (Ceramics in Contemporary Brazilian Art),” an exhibition presented by ACE-RIO (an association of ceram­ ists based in Rio de Janeiro) with sup­ port from the National Economic and Social Development Bank, featured sculpture by 15 ceramists currently worldng in Brazil. In a catalog essay identifying influ­ ences and recent developments, curator Suraya Burlamaqui noted that “the dif­ ferent expressions revealed in todays ce­ ramic art are even more remarkable in a country with such continental dimen­ sions as ours, where different cultures, through the many different colonizing or migratory stages, have been assimi­ lated and have succeeded in producing original works. “These expressions are also gradually “Da Terra Para Terra,” approximately 16 inches in height, and naturally being transplanted to ref­ handbuilt terra cotta, by Katsuko Nakano, Sao Paulo. erential languages and modern codes,” Burlamaqui continued. “No longer is there an attempt to ‘fully identify’ with traditional or handicraft ceramics; in­ stead, there is a great freedom of expres­ sion similar to the North American movements of the fifties—a genuine re­ lease from centuries of European and Oriental influences....This art expresses aesthetic values (surface, volume, line, color and texture) in a free, spontane- PHOTOS: PEDRO OSWALDO CRUZ, ROMULO FIALDINI AND COURTESY OF INDEX

“Gesto Arcaico,” approximately 10 feet in height, by Celeida Tostes, Rio de Janeiro.

Detail showing the hundreds of elements comprising the walls of “Gesto Arcaico.”

36 CERAMICS MONTHLY ous manner, which carries expression­ ist, abstract or even constructivist con­ notations, as well as allusions to more recent trends, such as minimalism and folk art. “Although ceramics is a field of spe­ cial aesthetic knowledge, with its own characteristics and learned techniques, it seems that it has not yet exhausted all its possibilities in adapting to a wide range of situations and, thus, captivates and surprises. So much so that, of all the creative processes, ceramics still re­ tains an alluring particle of mystery. It is exactly this characteristic that, as each day passes, leads artists to use the ce­ ramic medium and process as means of expression. “Area,” approximately 28 inches in length, handbuilt terra cotta with polychrome glazes, by Antonio Poteiro, Sao Paulo. “This exhibition is a good example of the changes that have been occurring all over the world in the ceramic arts. It does not intend to be all embracing, but rather explanatory and historical. “For some time,” Burlamaqui con­ cluded, “the issue has ceased to be the radical innovations of the vanguard and its split in expression. Currently, there is perhaps the desire for a ‘legitimate’ rather than ‘authentic’ art, more interested in integrating, stabilizing and condensing than seeking renovation, or dreaming of revolutionizing yet again the vast free modern artistic vocabulary.” ▲

“Portico,” approximately 10 feet in height, by Paul Vergueiro, Sao Paulo.

November 1994 37 Burlon Craig by Charles Zug PHOTOS: R. JACKSON SMITH, CHARLES ZUG

Burlon Craig with an array of ware spread out across the yard behind his kiln in 1978; today, avid collectors would snatch them up in minutes.

Editor’s note: Some 200 Burlon Craig pots going rate for pots during the 1930s Today, Burl’s situation is light-years were featured recently in a tribute exhibi­ and ’40s was 10£ a gallon, meaning away from those waning decades of the tion at the North Carolina State University that a typical kiln holding 500 gallons old Catawba Valley tradition. At his Visual Arts Center in Raleigh. The follow­ would net $50. kiln opening in November 1992, cus­ ing is an excerpt from the “Burlon Craig: Sometimes, however, Burl couldn’t tomers willingly paid $500 for each 5- An Open Window into the Past” catalog. sell all of his wares: “I’ve hauled it until gallon face jug. That works out to a the glazing wore off almost and then staggering rate of $100 per gallon. Put /V potter for 65 of his 80 years, Burlon hauled some back home.” At other times another way, he now makes ten times as Craig has experienced his share of hard he had to offer a volume buyer a dis­ much for just one piece as he once did times as well as periods of relative pros­ count. A hardware store owner “would for an entire kilnful. Not only have his perity. But nothing has quite prepared say, Til take 100 or 200 gallons if you’ll prices shot up astronomically, but he him for the extraordinary success he has let me have it for 8^.’ Most of the time now sells everything he makes right from achieved over the last decade. Burl be­ he got it. It was a lot of it being made, his yard in record time. At an opening gan his career about 1928 at age 14, and you didn’t know whether you was in June of 1989, well over 100 custom­ when he apprenticed with his next-door a-going to sell any at 10^ or not.” ers bolted in at 8:00 A.M. and managed neighbor, veteran potter Jim Lynn. Hav­ Even at such modest prices, the pot­ to claim every single pot in less than ing mastered the art of “turning and tery made a substantial addition to a one minute. Even the few culls— burning” utilitarian, alkaline-glazed rural family’s income. As a sort of “cash cracked jars with broken handles or face forms, he worked at various shops in crop,” like cotton or corn or tobacco, it jugs with underfired glazes or missing Lincoln and Catawba Counties, and provided the means to purchase what noses—are eagerly sought after. Abso­ later went into business for himself. The could not be made or grown at home. lutely everything goes.

38 CERAMICS MONTHLY The only way to truly appreciate the Beyond the obvious violence and de­ fervor for Burls pottery is to take part struction, Burl hates to see so much in a kiln opening. Nowadays, he only hard work disappear so fast. A decade holds about one a year, usually in the or more ago, people would “come and fall, so the competition for his pots is pick up every piece, look at it, set it pretty fierce. There is never any need to down, then buy a piece or two. That’s advertise the event—word gets around the way it was before it got to selling quickly, not just throughout North like it did.” Carolina, but into most neighboring Now there is little time to savor his states as well. creations and discuss their qualities with Long before the sun rises, the Craigs his friends. In fact, people don’t seem to can hear cars pulling up and the excited care what they buy now. “It all goes,” voices of eager aficionados. By 7:00 A.M. Burl affirms. “It’s hard to tell just what Cat Square Road is lined with cars, and Clay from the pug mill is slapped into they like and what they don’t like when more than 100 people stand in the yard, blocks on an old mill stone, then taken they grab it all like they do here.” pressing against the ropes that protect inside and stored near the wheel. And there still appears to be no limit the hundreds of pots spread out across to the market. “There’s a lot of people the grass behind the shop. Tensions rise here that I don’t loiow and I’ve never as the magic hour approaches. Buyers Road is clear once again, and the Craigs seen before, every time I burn. You shove and jostle for position. Angry go home to relax and recover. know, a lot of the old ones quit buying. voices berate the latecomers who have For Burl, all this fame is not without Well, they, a lot of them, run out of crept into a frontline position at the costs. At an opening in 1990, the crowd room too. Tell you what,” he adds with back of the yard. All eyes are fixed on knocked down his son Don, who “was a grin, “it’s the best investment they the shimmering swirl vases and the lus­ trying to get the rope down....I don’t ever made!” trous green face jugs. know whether any of them stepped on Explaining Burl’s phenomenal popu­ At 8:00 A.M. the front row drops him,” he recalls. “I wasn’t out there. I larity is no easy task. To a man who into something resembling a three-point tell you, I don’t know. I just leave when spent much of his career trying to earn stance. Don Craig releases the rope, and they go to take it down. I just walk in a mere 10C a gallon, the present situa­ the crowd surges in madly, snatching at here and get out of sight.” tion seems nothing short of miracu­ everything in its path. Neat rows of jars lous. “I can’t hardly believe it yet,” he clink together and fall down like domi­ declares. “I know it’s happening, but it’s noes as the leaders sprint across the yard. just hard for me to believe yet.” Two men pull on opposite handles of a The old wares, of course, were abso­ 5-gallon jug and break them off; some­ lutely necessary to rural families; they one well behind them is happy to buy it had to have jars, milk crocks, jugs and anyway. A woman straddling a line of churns to put up enough food to get pots is knocked to the ground. Another them through the winter. Now, ironi­ throws her coat over an entire table of cally, buyers pay hundreds of dollars for miniatures and claims it as her own. a jug they’ll never use, that they don’t Others jerk pots out of their less watch­ even know how to use. Even the broken ful neighbors’ accumulations. (unusable) pieces are desirable. The feeding frenzy lasts only min­ Clearly, then, utility has little to do utes, then subsides. Flush from the hunt, with most of the forms Burl makes to­ the collectors docilely fall into line to day. This is in sharp contrast to the pay for their treasures. Irene Craig and principles he absorbed while a young her daughter, Sue, make their calcula­ journeyman. He often recalls the advice tions from the back of a pickup truck at received while working with Floyd the side of the yard. Some do a little Hilton: “‘Don’t make any difference. trading while waiting—an extra cham­ Just so they hold what they’re supposed berpot for an extra pitcher. All is now to and got a good glaze on it.’ Said, civilized, and former antagonists chuckle Craig turning (throwing) the upper ‘People’s going to set ’em in the over the day’s adventures. By 10:30 A.M. section of a 4-gallon storage jar on his smokehouse or cellar, and nobody’ll ever the yard is absolutely pristine; Cat Squaretreadle wheel in 1977. see ’em anyway.’”

November 1994 39 In the highly pragmatic world in about every form he makes: jugs, jars, which Burl was raised, pots were valued pitchers, wall pockets, vases, wig stands, if they held their full capacity and didn’t spittoons, even on birdhouses or inside leak. They were made to be used and chamberpots. not seen. Today, the reverse applies: the “Anything with a face on it will sell,” pots are judged by their appearance. Burl affirms. “That’s the big seller. People They are purchased for prominent dis­ come here: ‘You got a face jug? I’d like play on a mantel or in a china cabinet, to have a face jug.’ That’s the first thing not to be filled with pickles or kraut they ask about.” and forgotten in the springhouse. Like the swirl ware, face vessels date As his work has moved from craft to back to the previous generation. Men art, Burl has focused more on appear­ like Harvey Reinhardt and Ernest Au­ ance and decoration. “When you get burn Hilton, both of whom helped to into that art line,” he explains, “you’re Maintaining tradition, Craig fires his train Burl, made a modest number of more particular with it.” work in a large wood-burning them in the 1920s and ’30s, mostly for Only rarely now does he produce a groundhog kiln built in the late 1930s. the growing tourist market. Burl him­ plain jar or jug, but it is noteworthy self much prefers turning the jug on his that all his embellishment techniques wheel to the lengthy decorating process come from the traditional rep­ that follows, but he knows ertory of the Catawba Valley. he must answer to modern Almost certainly, the oldest is tastes. Making face jugs “is the use of glass shards bal­ getting old,” he responds, anced across the rims and “but what I like is the money handles of pots that have been I get out of it.” set in the kiln. Under intense Miniature versions of heat, the glass melts and flows traditional forms—pitchers, downward in thick, milky jugs, storage jars or chamber­ stripes, often creating random pots, ranging from 1 to 3 flows that contrast dramati­ inches in height—are also an cally with the dark, alkaline important part of Burl’s cur­ glaze. Pioneer potters Daniel rent repertory. For genera­ Seagle and David Hartzog did tions, boys have learned to this during the first half of use their father’s wheels by the 19th century, most likely The low, 20x10-foot chamber holds up to 500 gallons turning such “toys,” and of unstacked ware. because they felt the glass since the early part of this would “glue” the strap or lug century, they have been good handles onto the body. and dark-burning clays to produce a sellers. Their appeal to the collector A second technique is swirl ware, a colorful, variegated body. According to should be obvious—they require little local variant of agate or scroddle ware, local tradition, swirl (also referred to as space on a shelf and so can be accumu­ in which the potter skillfully mixes light- “striped”) ware was accidentally created lated in large numbers. by Sam Propst during the 1920s. Nei­ ther of these techniques is closely con­ trollable; chance and nature combine to produce an endless variety of aes­ thetic effects. Nothing excites a contemporary col­ lector more than a face vessel—or “face jug,” “ugly jug” or “voodoo jug,” as they are variously called. Here the ap­ peal is more formal or sculptural, rather The kiln-wide chimney creates a than based on patterns of color or rich “Blasting” the kiln: stuffing all three powerful draft; note the bricked-up textures. Burl has responded to this fireboxes with pine slabs to create loading port through the chimney. modern mania by applying faces to just a reducing atmosphere.

40 CERAMICS MONTHLY Burl has also moved in the egorize or define their work, opposite direction by creat­ but in Signs and Wonders: ing what might be called Outsider Art Inside North megapots; for example, a 5- Carolina, Roger Manley sug­ gallon pitcher that is 18 gests that “the term outsider inches tall and weighs 15 art has come to mean art cre­ pounds when empty. If this ated outside the mainstream monstrosity were filled with traditions of the art world or fresh buttermilk, only a local traditions of folk art.” Samson could pick it up, but Though Burls work is it does make a striking con­ firmly rooted in folk tradi­ versation piece. Whether un- tion, as it becomes more in­ der- or oversized, such wares tensely decorative and, in the have no utility and thus may case of the ubiquitous face operate as “fine” (useless?) art. vessels, more individualistic, In developing a repertory it is bound to appeal to the with greater visual appeal, same people who purchase Burl has stayed largely within outsider art. Burls face ves­ traditional boundaries. For sels show relatively little varia­ example, he explains, “On my tion in expression; but a 5-gallon stuff I put four younger generation of pot­ handles (most of it), instead ters, including his son Don, of two anymore.” and Billy Ray Hussey of There is no practical need Moore County, regularly cre­ for the extra handles— ate elaborately detailed face Face pitcher, 19 inches in height, wheel-thrown stoneware though the old potters like with applied features and inset shard teeth. jugs that more readily qualify Daniel Seagle routinely put as a type of modern art. four handles on their massive Occasionally a writer will 10- to 20-gallon storage jars. refer to Burl as an “artist” or Burl adds them “just for call his weathered frame shop looks. Lots of people want a “studio.” Such references them....Then I can put the always amuse him, because glass on each handle, and that he recognizes the humorous gives me more streaks down incongruities between such [the sides].” easy journalistic labels and Burl also makes swirl min­ the realities of his work. And iatures or grinning face jugs. herein lies another key to the Ultimately, then, he remains enormous popularity of his within the Catawba Valley pots: his continued reliance tradition in his choice of on the traditional technol­ decorative techniques, but ogy of his predecessors. now uses a greater number He still digs his clay by on each pot, thereby multi­ hand from bottomlands, on plying their aesthetic appeal the South Fork of the Wheel-thrown and handbuilt wig stands, to 13½ inches for contemporary buyers in height, with alkaline glaze, wood fired. Catawba River, and trucks it seeking art. back to his shop to weather. Many of the people who Next, he grinds it to the buy Burls wares also regularly purchase ists within North Carolina include vi­ proper consistency in his clay mill and what has come to be known as outsider sionary painter Minnie Evans from lugs it into his shop in 75-pound balls. art; that is, the idiosyncratic, highly per­ Wilmington, stone carver Raymond He did switch wheels recently—on sonal paintings or sculptures of indi­ Coins from Pilot Mountain, and doctors orders. In 1992, he contracted viduals such as a Grandma Moses or chainsaw sculptor Clyde Jones from severe blood poisoning in one leg, and Howard Finster. Prominent outsider art­ Bynum. It is by no means easy to cat­ so he must now use an electric wheel

Nov ember 1994 41 instead of pumping his old function, turned from local treadle wheel with his left clays, covered with the stan­ foot. (His grandson Dwayne dard alkaline glaze fluxed has since taken over the with wood ashes, and fired treadle wheel). for nine or ten hours in the He dips his greenwares groundhog kiln. into a homemade alkaline More subtle but no less glaze (though he now uses important is Burls willing­ commercially prepared, pul­ ness to demonstrate how he verized glass) and then burns produces wares. At kiln open­ them in his wood-fired Four-handle, two-snake storage jars, 19 inches in height, ings or group visits, for ex­ groundhog kiln, which was swirlware with alkaline glaze. ample, he will show how to built in the mid 1930s by turn a ring jug; or he will Harvey Reinhardt. give the many visitors who Burl, in short, possesses an authen­ art. Burls authenticity resides in three come to watch his kiln burn the oppor­ ticity that is highly appealing to con­ areas: the pots, the processes and the tunity to toss in a few pine slabs. temporary customers. Because he has man himself. Ultimately, it is the commanding made few concessions to modernity, Most obviously, a Burlon Craig jug presence of Burl himself that best vali­ buyers today sense they are purchasing represents two centuries of Catawba dates his work. His ceramic lineage goes a piece of history as well as a work of Valley pottery. It is familiar in form and directly back to Daniel Seagle, one of

Covered jar, 10 inches in height, large and small jugs, and pitcher, alkaline-glazed stoneware with Albany slip and glass runs.

42 CERAMICS MONTHLY the patriarchs of this regional Lisk and Kim Ellington turn craft, and his anecdotes about out large quantities of wood- Jim Lynn or Uncle Seth fired, alkaline-glazed stone­ Ritchie or Harvey Reinhardt ware, ranging in size from provide a compelling history miniatures to megapots, to all willing to listen. decorated with glass runs, In his groundbreaking swirled clays and faces. Both study The Tourist: A New began their careers elsewhere, Theory of the Leisure Class, Four-handle storage jars, approximately 18 inches in height, making the standard coffee Dean MacCannell asserts that inscribed “B. B. Craig” on the shoulders. mugs, bowls, oil lamps and “the progress of modernity casseroles, and both readily (‘modernization’) depends on affirm that they experienced its very sense of instability and inauthen­ be the last potter in his region. But now a sort of rebirth under Burl’s tutelage. ticity. For moderns, reality and authen­ there are six other shops nearby, all “I basically had to forget everything ticity are thought to be elsewhere: in staffed by younger men who owe their I’d been taught,” explains Kim. “I was other historical periods and other cul­ knowledge, skills and very existence to turning [throwing] sitting down! You tures, in purer, simpler lifestyles.” his tenacity and generosity. know, everything is different. The kiln While his book overstates the alien­ Up on Route 10, near the site of the was different, the clay was different, the ation and fragmentation of modern so­ old Jugtown Post Office (North type of turning was different, the size ciety, it provides a number of brilliant Carolina’s original Jugtown), Charlie was different. The main thing, I...had insights into why people to forget everything I knew compete so energetically for and just pay attention to such objects as a Burl Craig whatever he said.” face jug. Put simply, In like manner, Charlie MacCannell’s thesis is that a adds that “what I’ve learned, visit with the Craigs and the in my opinion, since I’ve been purchase of some wares pro­ up here, is like tenfold what vide buyers contact with what I knew....It just felt like, this they regard as real people and is what I want to do. That a more genuine way of life. kind of a thing. Sort of like Thus, the value of Burl’s pots hitting a streak of gold in the “is not determined by the night.” amount of labor required for Other potters indebted to their production. Their value Burl include Walter Fleming, is a function of the quality who lives north of Statesville; and quantity of experience three generations of the Kale they promise.” family—Harry, Richard and This helps to explain why Jamie; Joe Reinhardt, whose Burl’s pots are now more ex­ ancestors were very active in pensive. Buyers are no longer the craft; and of course son paying for a container but Don and grandson Dwayne, for a meaningful experience, who are both full-time pot­ a contact with a genuine ters. All have benefited gready craftsman. By any contem­ from his teaching, not for­ porary standards, this is surely mal lessons but “just watch­ worth more than 10

November 1994 43 Alkaline-glazed jug with glass runs, 19½ inches high, wheel-thrown stoneware, with incising and applied features, by Burlon Craig, Vale, North Carolina.

Burls “apprentices” have also absorbed What has kept Burl going for almost individually. You made that yourself— the history of the Catawba Valley two-thirds of a century? “After World you can take a little pride in that. But I through his anecdotes about earlier pot­ War II,” he explains, “things had never thought [that] of making a chair— ters, from the legendary laziness of Jim changed so it took more money to live, that I had very little to do with, actually. Lynn to the relentless perfectionism of and I did have to get a job and work. It was just more or less a job, something Sam Propst. Such tales serve to human­ But I still stayed with the pottery.” to make a little money.” ize the tradition, teach the qualities of To make ends meet, Burl had to Although Burl now makes some real the ideal potter and provide a cohesive work in a furniture factory, but went on money as a potter, that is not why he sense of style and region, something making pottery in the evenings and on continues. He remains at his wheel be­ that is rare today. weekends. His experience in the factory cause of his pride in individual creativ­ To Kim Ellington, this “made a big clarified for him just what it was he ity and in controlling the total process connection. It was like, wow, this is the liked about being a potter. that he first felt as a boy when he set out real thing. Its not just some odd little “When you made a chair,” he re­ his jars and his jugs with those of his thing that a bunch of hippies up in the members, “hundreds of people worked mentor, Jim Lynn. That dedication to mountains are doing. This is the real on it....You couldn’t say, £Oh, I made his craft has served three generations thing, and you can be proud of it....I that chair,’ like you could with a piece and will undoubtedly continue to in­ doubt if Id still be making pottery if I of pottery. When you turned that [pot] spire North Carolinians for generations hadn’t run into Burlon.” out, why that’s something that you made to come. A

44 CERAMICS MONTHLY 1994 Fletcher Challenge Award a review by Peter Gibbs

“Many Wishes,” approximately 13 feet square, NZ$9280 (US$5506), by Mitsuo Shoji, Australia: Premier Award.

Australian resident Mitsuo Shoji took the top award (NZ$10,000) in New Zealand’s “Fletcher Challenge Ceram­ ics Award 1994” for his installation “Many Wishes.” Some 200 boat forms/ containers were arranged in an outward spiraling pattern, which suggested all manner of escape metaphors. Now in its 18th year, the show at Auckland’s War Memorial Museum at­ tracted more entries (869) from more countries than ever before. The judge, Jindra Vikova from the Czech Repub­ lic, spent most of January sifting through “Squared Arch Study,” approximately 14 inches in height, NZ$280 ($166), the slides to select an exhibition of 161 by Ross Hilgers, Olathe, Kansas; pieces, which included 30 from the Judge’s Commendation. U.S.A. and 26 from the host country. The Netherlands, England and Japan were also well represented. In May, Vikova came to New Zea­ land and began the task of selecting the winner and the five merit awards of NZ$2000. She found it an arduous task. The Fletcher Challenge exhibition has always operated with a single judge who brings a subjective perspective. In this Untitled sculpture, approximately “Vessel with Bird,” approximately 21 inches in height, NZ$2580 20 inches long, NZ$520 (US$309), way, the show becomes the creation of (US$1531), by Steve Heinemann, by Anne-Beth Borselius, Sweden; the judge, with a different focus from Canada; Award of Merit. Judge’s Commendation. year to year.

November 1994 45 “90s Artifact Teapot,” approximately 15 inches in length, NZ$390 (US$231), by Lana Wilson, Del Mar, California; Judge’s Commendation.

“In Times Past,” approximately 16 inches in height, NZ$2890 (US$1715), by Hui-Yin Shih, Taiwan; Award of Merit.

In 1994, without a doubt, the focus was sculptural. Vikova was looking for the message, the secret or the mystery in each piece. “I was driven by my feeling, and the majority of things are less decorative.” In choosing the winning entry, she was also tempted by the New Zealand entry of Matt McLean. McLeans 5- foot-high “Dancing Wall” was com­ posed of seven loosely formed blocks of flame-marked clay locked together with glazed zigzagged sections. Vikova described it as “very risky, very uncompromising, which I wanted because through the uncompromising you can push a little bit.” She decided to combine two merit awards to give a $4000 special prize to McLean. A young Welsh potter and ex-Alfred University exchange student, Catrin Howell won a merit award with a stack of canines sculpture. “Brechfa Beast and Two Dogs” was reminiscent of last year’s winning piece by Susannah Israel [see the January 1994 CM]; however, the judge was very sensitive to this. “Brechfa Beast and Two Dogs,” approximately 20 inches “I found it to be a very fresh piece,” in height, NZ$410 (US$243), by Catrin Howell, Wales; Vikova commented, “then I realized Award of Merit. that she’s very young, only 24. I knew

46 CERAMICS MONTHLY “Self, Contained,” approximately 30 inches in diameter, NZ$1290 (US$765), by Zanne Nelson, Seattle, Washington; Judge’s Commendation.

that a dog won last year, but I didn’t want to be driven by that.” A second award of merit went to Canadian Steve Heinemann for his gold- flecked discoid form, which was dis­ played wonderfully on a raised plinth, with spectacular lighting making it glow across the exhibition like a rising moon. Hui-Yin Shih received the third award of merit for “In Times Past,” a huge cup on a tripod with a fungal handle returning to scratch itself under its own armpit. It was evocative and amusing, but not pleasant or appealing. Vikova also selected 13 pieces for commendation. The partisan opening- night crowd was delighted that two of these stayed in New Zealand. From Al­ fred University and now at Otago Poly­ technic in the south of New Zealand, Bruce Dehnert submitted an untitled “Dancing Wall,” approximately 57 inches in height, NZ$7000 (US$4153), by Matt McLean, New Zealand; double Award of Merit. sculptural form. The two disjointed tor­ sos emerging from an adobe wall struc­ ture were open to many interpretations. Were they the ghosts of two potters fighting their way out of an old kiln? Vikova was strongly attracted to the piece, describing it as “very risky.” Artists from the U.S.A. to receive commendations included Ross Hilgers,

November 1994 47 “Man,” approximately 18 inches high, NZ$620 (US$368), by Boris Rubinstein, Israel; Judge’s Commendation.

“Reflections,” approximately 13 inches in height, Zanne Nelson and Lana Wilson. Hilgers NZ$1030 (US$611), by Grete Wexels Riser, Norway; “Squared Arch Study” was a simple Judge’s Commendation. monolith evoking the ancient temples of South America. “Self, Contained” by Nelson was a mysterious pillowlike form with sharp intersecting depressions on its upper surface. Vikova described it as “keeping something inside.” Lana Wilson continued her parallel explorations of the teapot form and the dry, lichenlike glazes she has been work­ ing with for so many years. Her “90s Artifact Teapot” gave the simultaneous messages of solidity, in the body of the piece, and movement, as the spout threw itself upward and outward. As the competition moves toward its 20th anniversary, it seems to have come full circle in concept. The first show had a sculptural theme, but there has been no imposed direction on entries since then. Any bias in subsequent ex­ hibitions has been that imposed by the various judges and, over the years, they have had a variety of preoccupations. For the past several, this has been pri­ marily sculptural. In the absence of a stated theme, the organizers have the opportunity to choose a judge who may Untitled sculpture, approximately 43 inches in height, give a different bias. Perhaps they will NZ$1000 (US$593), by Bruce Dehnert, New Zealand; Judge’s Commendation. do so in the future. ▲

48 CERAMICS MONTHLY Hilary LaForce

Terra-cotta vessels with reduced metallic lusters, coil and slab built, £200-£450 (approximately US$302-US$679), by Hilary LaForce, Warwickshire, England.

“The Plume in the Tale,” an exhibition copper alkaline glazes similar to those plied in multiple layers and fired in of terra-cotta vessels accented with re­ used by Persian and Egyptian potters oxidation. To produce textural effects, duced lusters by British potter Hilary centuries ago. The introduction of res- reduction lusters were mixed with slip LaForce, was presented recently at the inate (oxidation) lusters in a final low and brushed over the fired glaze. The Orangery in Kensington, England. She firing led to experiments with reduc- pots were then refired with propane. At combines the lusters with burnishing tion-fired lusters a year ago. about 650°C (1200°F), wood was in­ “to create layered surfaces of iridescent The works on view were primarily troduced for reduction—five or six light light and color.” coil built, though some slab building stokings alternated with periods of oxi­ For the past eight years, LaForce has and press molding were also employed. dation to maintain temperature. Draw concentrated on developing dry, tex­ Surfaces were burnished when the clay rings were extracted to monitor luster tural surfaces, often “patinated” with was leather hard. Glazes were then ap­ development. A

November 1994 49 “Post-Toxic/Neo-Plastic,” Sylvia Netzer’sjuxtaposition of the columns, but be­ installation at the A.I.R. Gallery in New cause of the twisting and shifting of York City, consisted of 14 columns, 8 form and color. One couldn’t just look feet tall or less, boldly colored yellow/ at this installation. This was an environ­ Sylvia Netzer’sorange and black in striped and harle­ ment that beckoned visitors to mean­ quin patterns. Scattered on the floor at der a distance that was perceived as Post-Toxic the bases of the columns were pale, or­ greater than its reality. The trespasser ganic, mutant shapes, opportunistic life could linger in various column clusters Neo-Plastic forms, threatened products of nuclear and feel as if sheltered in a safe haven a review by Ann Rothman or environmental disaster. A pathway while on a fanciful trip. of alternating black and yellow tiles, It was no surprise when talking to evoking genetic DNA formations, linked ceramist-critic Sylvia Netzer (who also the columns. Despite the ominous heads the ceramics department at City mood, life was very much present. College) to find her take on her work The configurations changed with both serious and playful. “Georgio de each angle, not so much because of the Chirico Meets Heironymous Bosch for

First, a painted-cardboard scale model was built to assess and refine ideas for the installation.

The work continued to evolve during production: columns, organics and tiles were slab built from stoneware, fired to Cone 6, then brushed with underglazes and clear glaze, and fired to Cone 06.

50 CERAMICS MONTHLY Miniature Golf” is how Sylvia Netzer underglazes are overfired for the rich­ describes her “Post-Toxic/Neo-Plastic” ness of the color and for the flatness.” installation. Asked about the mutants, Netzer re­ “It is both architectural and surreal. plied, “They were a response to doing It incorporates two aspects that have very cerebral, conceptual work. I’m play­ been predominant in my work—hard- ing with pinched forms, slabs and coils, edged, geometric, modular elements and trying to separate myself from Sylvia soft, sensitive, organic forms,” she ex­ Netzer, art critic. It became a challenge plained. “One of my interests is cover­ to integrate disparate aspects of my work ing the surface with commercial and personality.” underglazes to obliterate the cracks and Netzer would like this installation to incidents that are clays signature. Yet be a prototype for a permanent envi­ clay is the right material for this project ronment, perhaps a playground or park. because of its implied fragility and be­ She sees it as a work in progress, one in cause so much of our built environ­ which the mutants are indeed mutating ment is brick, terra cotta and earth. The and threatening to take over. ▲ PHOTOS: DOROTHY HANDELMAN, DAVID LUBARSKY

By the time it was installed at A.I.R. Gallery in New York City, “Post-Toxic/Neo-Plastic” had expanded to the walls and ceilings. Everything (with the exception of tape drawings on the floor) was made of clay “to emphasize the underlying vulnerability of these forms and of civilization as a whole,” Netzer explained.

November 1994 51 Mary Lou Deal

Two handbuilt vases by Virginia potter ginia and West Virginia) since 1975. Mary Lou Deal were purchased recently The second vase will be featured in the for public collections. The first went to new Ambulatory Care Building at the the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Medical College of Virginia. which has been acquiring works by art­ Both vases were coil and slab built, ists residing in the Fifth Federal Reserve then patterned with slab appliques, District (Washington, D.C., Maryland, brushed with brightly colored glazes and North Carolina, South Carolina, Vir­ raku fired. ▲

Mary Lou Deal in her Ashland, Virginia, studio.

“I Remember a Walk with You,” 16 inches in height, coil and “The Goddess of Nectar and the Feline Queen,” 19½ inches slab built, decorated with slab appliques and brushed glazes in height, handbuilt, raku fired.

52 CERAMICS MONTHLY Their Own Voices

Influences of Eastern and Western styles and techniques were evident in the exhibition “Their Own Voices” at the Society of Arts and Crafts in Boston last spring. Featured were vessels by Hiroshi Nakayama, Kyoko Tonegawa and Makoto Yabe, three Japanese pot­ ters who have chosen to live and work in New England. Born in Kyoto, Hiroshi Nakayama studied pottery in a number of studios in South America. He remains strongly influenced by traditional Japanese gar­ dens, and uses the memory of certain design forms (water basins and family “Ceremonial Vessel,” 11½ inches wide, handbuilt stoneware symbols) when throwing and coil build­ with wood ash glazes, $450, by Hiroshi Nakayama, Worthington, Massachusetts. ing his sculptural vessels. While his aim is “to achieve a similar power of sim­ plicity, clarity and age,” he recognizes

Wheel-thrown stoneware vase, 7 inches in height, with oxides and wood ash glaze, high fired, $190, by Hiroshi Nakayama.

November 1994 53 that “the material and the techniques used in making my pieces, their use and meaning in todays society, are quite different from their predecessors.” Kyoko Tonegawa was born in Nagasaki, and studied art in San Diego and Basel, Switzerland. By throwing from the inside only, she encourages natural textures emulating the Earths ever-changing surface. “On a human Raku-fired stoneware vessel, 10 inches wide, wheel thrown scale, the surface seems unchanging,” (with pressure from the inside only), $380, by Kyoko she notes; but “on a cosmic scale, it is Tonegawa, Newton Center, Massachusetts. malleable, shaped by the forces from

Platter, 16 inches in length, stoneware with oxides, raku fired, $420, by Kyoko Tonegawa.

54 CERAMICS MONTHLY within. Like the pot in my hands, its shape is altered by gravitational forces as it spins.” The dominant theme in Makoto Yabes work is a sense of volume and depth. Born in Fakushima, Japan, he studied traditional production tech­ niques and continues to emphasize func­ tion. While throwing (clockwise), he concentrates on the inside space, the outside becoming secondary. “What­ ever shape I make, I put in the flavor of soy sauce,” he says. A

Glazed stoneware plate, 15 inches in diameter, high fired in reduction, $350, by Makoto Yabe, Sommerville, Massachusetts.

Table, 18 inches in height, slab built, decorated with colored slips, cut into tiles, fired to Cone 7 in oxidation, adhered to wooden base and grouted, $3600, by Makoto Yabe.

November 1994 55

(January 18-February 11, 1995), open to emerg­ Call for Entries ing or unrecognized ceramists. Juror: Michael Lucero. Juried from up to 8 slides and resume. Application Deadline for Exhibitions, Entry fee: $15. Send SASE to Greenwich House Fairs, Festivals and Sales Pottery, 16 Jones Street, New York 10014, Atten­ tion: AOTO; or telephone (212) 242-4106. November 25 entry deadline Tempe, Arizona “Tempe Tea Party” (January International Exhibitions 27-March 26, 1995). Juried from slides. Entry fee: $20 for up to 5 works; maximum of 15 slides. November 26 entry deadline Awards: $1000. For prospectus, send self-addressed Faenza, Italy “49th International Ceramic Art mailing label and stamp to Tempe Arts Center, Competition” (September—October 1995). Ju­ Post Office Box 549, Tempe 85280-0549; or ried from 3 slides. Awards: Premio Faenza, pur­ telephone (602) 968-0888. chase award of 25,000,000 lire (approximately December 1 entry deadline US$ 16,000); plus purchase prizes worth 6,000,000 Minot, North Dakota “18th Annual National lire (approximately US$3900); and a purchase Juried Exhibition” (March 5-April 23, 1995). award of2,500,000 lire (approximately US $ 1600) Juried from minimum of 2 slides, maximum of 6. to an artist age 35 or under. Contact the Compe­ Fee: $7 per slide. Merit, purchase awards. Contact tition Organization Office, Via Risorgimento, 3, Judith Allen, Minot Art Association, P. O. Box 48018 Faenza; or telephone (54) 662-1111, or fax 325, Minot 58702; or telephone (701) 838-4445. (54) 662-1554. December 9 entry deadline December 1 entry deadline Tampa, Florida*Black, White, Yellow, Red... Auckland, New Zealand “Fletcher Challenge Colors of a Nation” (January 6-February 24, Ceramics Award” (Summer 1995). Juried from 1995). Juried from up to 4 slides. Fee: $28; Artists up to 3 slides per work. Awards: Premier, Unlimited members, $ 18. Contact Artists Unlim­ NZ$10,000 (approximately US$6000); plus 5 ited, Channel District, 223 North 12th Street, awards of merit, NZ$2000 (approximately Tampa 33602; or telephone (813) 229-5958. US$1200) each. Contact Fletcher Challenge Ce­ West Chester, Pennsylvania “Frozen Sculpture” ramics Award, Post Office Box 33-1425, (January 6-30,1995). Juried from slides. Fee: $12 Takapuna, Auckland; or telephone/fax (649) 445- for up to 3 entries. For prospectus, send #10 SASE 8831 or (649) 480-6369. to Frozen Sculpture, Janet L. Smith, The Potters December 9 entry deadline Gallery, 415 Roberts Lane, West Chester 19382- New York, New York “ART ’95” (July 20- 5621; or telephone (610) 429-4796. August 6, 1995). Juried from slides. Awards. December 15 entry deadline Contact ART ’95, Craft Department, Room PC, Memphis, Tennessee* CX^y Does It All” (March 275 Route 304, Bardonia, New York 10954; 18-April 29, 1995). Juried from slides. Juror: telephone (914) 623-0599 or (800) 278-7000 Richard Shaw, artist. Fee: $20 for up to 2 entries. (U.S. only), or fax (914) 623-0611. For application form, send SASE to Nancy White, January 20, 1995, entry deadline Art Department, Jones Hall 201, University of Corvallis, Oregon “Influence and Introspec­ Memphis, Memphis 38152. tion: Pacific NWCeramics” (June 1995), open to December 16 entry deadline current/former ceramics graduate students and Mesa, Arizona “Con-Text” (March 21-April faculty of University of Oregon and University of 15, 1995), open to works employing the written Washington. Juried from slides. Send SASE to word. Juried from up to 4 slides. Entry fee: $20. Willamette Ceramics Guild, 1105 N.W. 30th, For prospectus, contact Con-Text, Galeria Mesa, Corvallis 97330; or telephone (503) 753-7249. Post Office Box 1466, Mesa 85211-1466; or telephone (602) 644-2242. National Exhibitions January 3, 1995, entry deadline ^4mes, Iowa “Octagon’s Clay, Fiber, Paper, November 12 entry deadline Glass, Metal and Wood Exhibition” (March 5- Milwaukee, Wisconsin “Teapots” (February 19— April 23, 1995). Juried from up to 2 slides per April 30, 1995). Juried from slides. For prospec­ work; up to 3 entries. Juror: Jim L. Zimmer, tus, send business-sized SASE to Joan Houlehen, A. director, Sioux City Art Center, Iowa. Entry fee: Houberbocken, Post Office Box 196, Cudahy, $35. For entry form, send a #10 SASE to Clay, Wisconsin 53110; or telephone (414) 276-6002. Fiber...Exhibit, Octagon Center for the Arts, 427 November 14 entry deadline Douglas Avenue, Ames 50010-6281; or telephone Mesa, Arizona'1 Reality Check” (February 14— Didi Reyes Watson (515) 232-5331. March 11,1995). Juried from up to 4 slides. Entry January 10, 1995, entry deadline fee: $20. For prospectus, contact Reality Check, Nashville, Tennessee Solo and group exhibi­ GaleriaMesa, Post Office Box 1466, Mesa 85211- tions (1995-96). Juried from 10-20 slides, artist’s 1466; or telephone (602) 644-2242. statement, resume. Send SASE to JoEl Levy Logi- November 15 entry deadline udice, Sarratt Gallery Director, Sarratt Student New Haven, Connecticut “Women in the Vi­ Center, Vanderbilt University, Nashville 37240. sual Arts—1995 Exhibition” (March 3-25,1995), January 13, 1995, entry deadline open to women artists 18 and over. Juried from Saint Charles, Illinois “Interior Inspirations slides. Fee: $ 15 for 3 slides. For prospectus, send ’95: An Eclectic Collection for the Home” (May SASE to Women in the Visual Arts 1995, Erector 1995). Juried from slides. For prospectus, send Square Gallery, 315 Peck Street, New Haven LSASE to Maxine Prange, The Fine Line Creative 06513; or telephone (203) 865-5055. Arts Center, 6N 158 Crane Road, Saint Charles November 21 entry deadline 60175; or telephone (708) 584-9442. New York, New York “Artists on Their Own” Wichita, Kansas “Art Show at the Dog Show” (March 1-April 9, 1995), open to all media; Send announcements of juried exhibitions, fairs, fes­ works must include dogs as subject matter. Juried tivals and sales at least four months before the event’s from slides. Fee: $20 for up to 3 entries. Over entry deadline (add one month for listings in July and $7500 in cash awards. For prospectus, contact two months for those in August) to Call for Entries, Bettie Duerksen, RR 3 Box 95, Rose Hill, Kansas Ceramics Monthly, P. O. Box 12788, Columbus, 67133; or telephone (316) 776-2763. Ohio 43212-0788; or telephone (614) 488-8236. West Chester, Pennsylvania “Texture” (Febru­ Fax (614) 488-4561. Regional exhibitions must be ary 3-27, 1995). Juried from slides. Fee: $12 for open to more than one state. up to 3 entries. For prospectus, send #10 SASE to

November 1994 57 Call for Entries

Texture, Janet L. Smith, The Potters Gallery, 415 Roberts Lane, West Chester 19382-5621; or tele­ phone (610) 429-4796. January 31, 1995, entry deadline Los Angeles, California‘HotTea” (April 1995). Juried from photos or slides (with price list and description of materials/dimensions), resume, bi­ ography and artist’s statement. Contact Chris Drosse, Assistant Director, del Mano Gallery, 11981 San Vicente Boulevard, Los Angeles 90049. February 1, 1995, entry deadline Lancaster, Pennsylvania “Third Annual Strictly Functional Pottery National” (April 29-May 25, 1995). Juried from slides. Juror: Chris Staley. Cash, purchase and business awards. Fee: 1 entry, $10; 2, $15; 3, $20. For prospectus, send #10 business-sized SASE to Third Annual Strictly Func­ tional Pottery National, c/o 1005 Oak Lane, New Cumberland, Pennsylvania 17070-1329. February 10, 1995, entry deadline Mesa, Arizona “Reassembly Required” (May 30-July 1,1995) .Juried from up to 4 slides. Entry fee: $20. For prospectus, contact Reassembly Re­ quired, Galeria Mesa, Post Office Box 1466, Mesa 85211-1466; or telephone (602) 644-2242. WestChester, Pennsylvania “Weather, Lamb or Lion” (March3-April3,1995). Juried from slides. Fee: $12 for up to 3 entries. For prospectus, send #10 SASE to Frozen Sculpture, Janet Smith, The Potters Gallery, 415 Roberts Lane, West Chester 19382-5621; or telephone (610) 429-4796. March 17, 1995, entry deadline University Park, Pennsylvania “Crafts National 29” (June 4-July 23, 1995). Juried from slides. Fee: $20 for up to 3 entries. Awards: $3000. For prospectus, send SASE to Crafts National 29, Zoller Gallery, Penn State University, 102 Visual Arts Building, University Park 16802; or telephone (814) 863-3352. March 22, 1995, entry deadline Lincoln, California “Feats of Clay VIII” (May 24-June 17, 1995), open to clayworks under 24 inches in any dimension. Juried from slides. Juror: Kirk Mangus, art professor, Kent State Univer­ sity, Ohio. Fee: $10 per entry; up to 3 entries. Awards: over $9000 in place, merit and purchase awards. For prospectus, send SASE to Lincoln Arts, Post Office Box 1166, Lincoln 95648.

Regional Exhibitions November 25 entry deadline Sioux City, Lowa “53rd Annual Juried Exhibi­ tion” (April 23-June 11, 1995), open to artists residing in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michi­ gan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Da­ kota, South Dakota or Wyoming. Juried from slides. Fee: $20 for up to 3 entries. For prospectus, contact Sioux City Art Center, 513 Nebraska Street, Sioux City 51101-1305; or telephone (712) 279-6272. December 12 entry deadline Saint Paul, Minnesota “Minnesota Hot Dish” (March 10-April 28, 1995), exhibition of casse­ roles and covered baking dishes; open to potters residing in Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Ontario or Manitoba. Juried from up to 3 slides per work. Fee: $15 for up to 4 works. Juror: Judy Onofrio. For prospectus, contact Northern Clay Center, 2375 University Ave., W, Saint Paul 55114; or telephone (612) 339-6151.

Fairs, Festivals and Sales November 10 entry deadline Pasadena, California “Contemporary Crafts Market” (May 12-14, 1995). Juried from 5 slides

58 CERAMICS MONTHLY

Call for Entries (standard size, $125). For application, send SASE January 6, 1995, entry deadline to Brush Mountain Arts and Crafts Fair, The Stevens Point, Wisconsin “23rd Annual Festival Voluntary Action Center, Post Office Box 565, of the Arts” (April 2, 1995). Juried from 5 slides Blacksburg 24060-0565; for further information, and resume. Entry fee: $50. Jurying fee: $10. or photographs and resume. Entry fee: $15. Booth telephone Julie Earthman (703) 552-4909. Purchase and cash awards. Send SASE to Festival of fee: $300-$750. Contact Roy Helms and Associ­ December 22 entry deadline the Arts, P. O. Box 872, Stevens Point 54481. ates, 1142 Auahi Street, Suite 2820, Honolulu, Gainesville, Florida “SFCC Spring Arts Festi­ January 13, 1995, entry deadline Hawaii 96814; or telephone (808) 422-7362 or val” (April 1-2, 1995). Juried from 3 slides. Entry Gaithersburg, Maryland “Sugarloafs Fall fax (808) 423-1688. fee: $12. Booth fee: $100. Contact Spring Arts Gaithersburg Crafts Festival” (November 16-19, Santa Monica, California “Contemporary Festival, 3000 Northwest 83rd Street, Gainesville 1995). Juried from 5 slides, including 1 of display. Crafts Market” (May 19-21, 1995). Juried from 32606; or telephone (904) 395-5355. Booth fee: $400-$500. For application, send 3 5 slides or photographs and resume. Entry fee: January 5, 1995, entry deadline loose stamps (87<£) for postage to Sugarloaf Moun­ $15. Booth fee: $290-$870. Contact Roy Helms New York, New York “ 19th Annual American tain Works, 200 Orchard Ridge Drive, Suite 215, and Associates, 1142 Auahi Street, Suite 2820, Crafts Festival” (July 1-2 and 8-9, 1995). Juried Gaithersburg 20878; telephone (301) 990-1400. Honolulu, Hawaii 96814; or telephone (808) from 6 slides. Booth fee (per weekend): $440 for Gaithersburg, Maryland “Sugarloaf s Winter 422-7362 or fax (808) 423-1688. an 8x8-foot space; $495 for a 10x7; $575 for a Gaithersburg Crafts Festival” (December 8-10, December 1 entry deadline 10x 10. Send SASE (with 52

60 CERAMICS MONTHLY November 1994 61 Suggestions From Readers

Homemade Kiln Posts Make your own kiln posts by cutting a 25-pound block of Cone 11 sculpture clay into the desired sizes. Then, using an ice pick, pierce down through each post about five times. Pierce both ends of 6-inch-high or taller posts. After a bisque firing, they are ready for use. Just remember that in the first high fire, they will shrink, but so will your pots. I’ve used my homemade posts for years.—ShirleyJohnson, Spokane, Wash.

Inexpensive Light Table An under-the-counter fluorescent light fixture (the kind with an opaque plastic cover)An expanded-metal tray facilitates removal of tiles for postfiring reduction. makes an excellent, inexpensive light table for sorting slides.—Linda Mauy Saratoga, Calif. I simply fold about 2 inches up on oppo­the tray from the kiln, I use blacksmith’s site sides of a sheet of ½-inch expanded steel.hooks, lifting from both sides. Expanded-Metal Trays for Raku The resulting tray not only offers an insula­ When rakuing, personal protection is para­ Flat objects and raku, more specifically tion layer of air between the kiln shelf and themount. I wear a fireproof shirt, a heat-resis- tiles and raku tongs, don’t mix. For a while,tile, but is lightweight and durable enough totant face shield and Kevlar gloves with added I fired tilework in a charcoal basket (basicallyhold tiles up to 18 inches square. When firingindividual finger insulation purchased from a a screen with two metal handles) from a many times in succession, and especially whenscientific lab safety company. I also wear a full wood-burning stove. When it finally gave firing large tiles, I put a few rolls of clay onrespirator the and glasses. out, I made a new tray from expanded metal.kiln shelf for added air insulation. To remove For repeated firings, the expanded-metal

62 CERAMICS MONTHLY November 1994 63 Suggestions

tray has worked wonders for me. Usually I can fire all day without losing a shelf or tile. Each tray should last 50-75 firings before warping or breaking apart.—Christine Merri- man, Bridgewater, Vt.

Rough Hand Remedy Need a sure-fire fix for rough potters’ hands? The following homemade remedy (learned from a German nurse) has proven to be far more effective than any store-bought lotions. Put about ½ teaspoon of sugar and ½ teaspoon of vegetable, peanut or baby oil in your palm, then rub your hands together. The sugar will act as an abrasive. After about 15 seconds, rinse your hands in warm water; no need for soap. I keep a squeeze bottle filled with oil and packets of sugar (like those used in restau­ rants) near the sink in my studio. —Hannelore Fasciszewski, Harrison Township, Mich.

Free Sculpture Tools You can make up to five handy sculpture tools in just a few minutes from a “spent” retractable ballpoint pen. Start by discarding the ink cartridge, but save the spring. This is the key element. Stretch the spring out as straight as pos­ sible by securing one end in a vise, then grasping the other end with needlenose pliers and jerking sharply. The straightened wire can then be cut into sections and formed into variously shaped loops. Twist the ends of each loop together to form a stem. One of the loops can then be mounted in the original pen by pushing the stem into the ballpoint opening and securing it with epoxy. The other loops can be inserted into other worn-out pens or drilled wooden dowels.— Paul Reutter, Lake Havasu City, Ariz.

Burnishing Rocks Urban potters may have trouble finding smooth river rocks for burnishing. Instead, try using a glob of glass. You can get them at craft stores that sell supplies for stained glass work for about 24 each .—Neely Hachtel, Point Lookout, Mo.

Dollars for Your Ideas Ceramics Monthly pays $10for each sugges­ tion published; submissions are welcome indi­ vidually or in quantity. Include an illustration or photo to accompany your suggestion and we will pay $10 more if we use it. Mail ideas to Suggestions, Ceramics Monthly, Post Office Box 12788, Columbus, Ohio 43212-0788; or fax to (614) 488-4561. Sorry, but we cant ac­ knowledge or return unused items.

64 CERAMICS MONTHLY November 1994 65 blages; at Northcutt Steele Gallery, University of Potters: Mary and Edwin Scheier”; at Arizona Calendar Montana. State University Art Museum, Nelson Fine Arts Events to Attend—Conferences, New Mexico, Santa Fe November 4-29 Robert Center, corner of Mill Avenue and Tenth Street. Turner; at Okun Gallery, 301 North Guadalupe. California, Davis November 5-30 Exhibition of Exhibitions, Workshops, Fairs New York, New York through November 12 porcelain sculptures by Lucian Pompili and Tom Ryoji Koie, “The Energy of Fire”; at the Gallery Rippon; at John Natsoulas Gallery, 140 F Street. at Takashimaya, 693 Fifth Avenue. California, Los Angeles through January 8, 1995 Conferences through November 12 “After the Fire: The Later, “Painting the Maya Universe: Royal Ceramics of Minnesota, Minneapolis March 22-25, 1995 Greater George Ohr”; at Kurland-Zabar Gallery, the Classic Period”; at the Los Angeles County “Borderline Clay,” National Council on Educa­ 19 East 71st Street at Madison Avenue. Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Blvd. tion for the Ceramic Arts’ (NCECA) 29th annual November 28—December 10 Yasuhisa Kohyama, California, Sherman Oaks December 3-30 uClay conference. Will include lectures and panels on “A Slice of Earth”; at the Toraya Shop and Tea Creatures,” three-person exhibition with sculp­ “An Historical Survey of the Mingei-sota Move­ Room Gallery, 17 East 71st Street. ture by Gloria Moses; at Orland Gallery, 14553 ment,” “Canadian Earthenware,” “Contempo­ New York, Piermont through November ^Rose­ Ventura Boulevard. rary Manitoba Clay,” “A Room of Their Own: mary Aiello, “New Creations from Fire”; at California, Ventura November 15-December 10 Japanese Women Ceramists, 1994,” “Erotics and Piermont Fine Arts Gallery, 218 Ash Street. “Art in Clay,” exhibition of works by Ventura Aesthetics/Ceramics and Sexualities,” “Pottery/ New York, Syracuse through November 13 Matt County Potters’ Guild members; at Buenaventura Ceramics Timeline,” “Studio Equipment from Nolen, “Family”; at the Everson Museum of Art, Gallery, 700 East Santa Clara Street. Recycled Materials,” “Ceramics in a Virtual 401 Harrison Street. Hawaii, Kahului, Maui through November 27 World,” “Clay, Fire, Intent,” “Clay in the Inner- North Carolina, Asheville November 19—Decem­ “Contemporary East European Ceramics”; at the City High School,” “Figurative Clay and Cultural ber 31 Nancy Humeniuk, “lizard pots”; at the Maui Arts and Cultural Center Exhibition Gal­ Borders,” and “Idea Development in the Ceram­ Folk Art Center and Southern Highland Handi­ lery, Kahului Beach Road. ics Classroom/Studio.” Will also include demon­ craft Guild, Blue Ridge Parkway. Hawaii, Makawao through November 27 “Con­ strations on throwing and handbuilding tech­ North Dakota, Valley City November 7-Decem­ temporary East European Ceramics”; at Hui niques, a glaze clinic, emerging talent slide presen­ ber 16 Elizabeth Arnold; at 2nd Crossing Gallery, No'eau Visual Arts Center, 2841 Baldwin Ave. tations, international slide forum, a K-12 slide 200 North Central, Straus Mall. Illinois, Champaign November 19—January 22, room, and exhibitions. Contact Regina Brown, Ohio, Columbus through November 6 Joan Wobst; 1995 “Alfred Now: Contemporary American NCECA Executive Secretary, P. O. Box 158, Ban- at the Schumacher Gallery, Fourth Floor Library, Ceramics,” works by Anne Currier, Val Cushing, don, Oregon 97411; telephone (503) 347-4394. Capital University. Andrea Gill, John Gill and Wayne Higby; at Vermont, Bennington February 1—5, 1995 “2nd Oklahoma, Norman through November 14 Keith Krannert Art Museum and Kinkead Pavilion, North Country Biennial Craft Studio Confer­ Ekstam, sculpture; at the Firehouse Art Center, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 500 ence” will include the following workshops: “The 444 South Flood. East Peabody Drive. Portable Studio: Journal Making and Keeping” Oregon, Salem through November ^Lillian Pitt, Illinois, Chicago through November 6 “British with Paulus Berensohn, “Functional Pots—Al­ “Fragments”; at Bush Barn Art Center, 600 Mis­ Delft from Colonial Williamsburg”; at the Art tered Forms” with Ellen Shankin, and “Clay and sion Street, Southeast. Institute of Chicago, 111 S. Michigan Ave. Myth” with George Kokis. Sponsors: League of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia through November 26 December 2-31 “19th Annual Holiday Show and New Hampshire Craftsmen and Vermont Crafts Paul Chaleff, “Crucibles”; at Snyderman Gallery, Sale”; at Lill Street, 1021 West Lill Street. Council. Contact North Country Studio Confer­ 303 Cherry Street. Indiana, Indianapolis November 11-December 9 ence, 205 N. Main St., Concord, New Hampshire Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh through November 16 “Clayfest 9”; at Christel DeHaan Fine Arts Cen­ 03301; telephone (603) 224-3375 or 224-8558. Kirk Mangus, new work; at the Clay Place Gal­ ter, University of Indianapolis, 1400 East Hanna lery, 5416 Walnut Street. Avenue. Solo Exhibitions December 2-January 6, 1995 Chris Gustin; at the Louisiana, New Orleans through December 4“Gt- Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild, 1815 Metropoli­ lestial Dreams: Chinese Blue-and-White Porce­ California, San Francisco November 3—26 Jun tan Street. lains from the Dorothy and Robert Hills Collec­ Kaneko. December 1—31 Annette Corcoran; at Tennessee, Nashville through November 73 Sylvia tion”; at the New Orleans Museum of Art, City Dorothy Weiss Gallery, 256 Sutter Street. Hyman; at the Tennessee State Museum, Polk Park, 1 Collins Diboll Circle. Florida, DeLand November 7-December 15 Gene Cultural Center, 505 Deaderick Street. Maryland, Baltimore November 18-December 30 Hotaling; at Duncan Gallery of Art, Foyer Gal­ Texas, Houston November 4—December 8 Vir­ “Uncharted Territory: Contemporary Taiwanese lery, Sampson Hall, Stetson University. ginia Cartwright; at North Harris College, 2700 Ceramics”; at Decker Gallery, Maryland Institute Georgia, Valdosta through November 9 “Exhibi­ W. W. Thorne Dr. College of Art. tion of Soldner Clay: Retrospective and Recent”; November 19-December 17Don Reitz; at Artables Massachusetts, Ipswich November 12—December at Valdosta State University, Department of Art. Gallery, 2625 Colquitt. 31 “Holiday Traditions”; at Ocmulgee Pottery Massachusetts, Worcester through November 12 Texas, San Antonio December 1—17Linda Talley, and Gallery, 317 High Street-Route 1A. Anne Elliot, “Worcester Carpets in Clay”; at the “Colores del Fuego,” handbuilt raku vessels; at the Michigan, Detroit through November 2Works by Worcester Center for Crafts, 25 Sagamore Road. Southwest Craft Center, 300 Augusta. Leah Hardy, Beth Lo and Carrie Ann Parks. Michigan, Ann Arbor November 4-December 18 Texas, Waco through December 12 Danville November 18-December 31 “Holiday Invitational John Stephenson, “After the Fire, A Retrospec­ Chadbourne; at Moody Memorial Library, Baylor Show and Sale”; at Pewabic Pottery, 10125 East tive,” with works from the 1950s to the present; University. Jefferson Avenue. at Slusser Gallery, University of Michigan School Utah, Logan through December 11 “David Shaner; Minnesota, Saint Paul November 18-December of Art. A Potter’s Work: 1963-1993”; at the Nora Eccles 23 “ 1994 Holiday Market”; at the Northern Clay November 4-January 15, 1995John Stephenson, Harrison Museum of Art, Utah State University. Center, 2375 University Avenue, West. “After the Fire, A Retrospective”; at the Univer­ Washington, Kirkland through November 6 Jim New Jersey, Newark through June 1995 “Ameri­ sity of Michigan Museum of Art. Kraft. December 8-January 2, 1995 Geoffrey can Art Pottery: An Uneasy Evolution, 1880- Michigan, Farmington Hills November 5-26Y\xn- Pagen; at Foster/White Gallery, 126 Central Way. 1930”; at Newark Museum, 49 Washington St. Dong Nam. Sugi Kasuaki; at Habatat/Shaw Gal­ Washington, Seattle December 1—31 Anne Hiron- New York, New York through November ./^“Ref­ lery, 32255 Northwestern Highway, #25. delle, sculpture; at Foster/White Gallery, 311½ erences,” works by Jack Earl, Michael Flynn, Mo Michigan, Ferndale through December 3 Susanne Occidental Avenue, South, Pioneer Square. Jupp and Richard Milette; at Nancy Margolis Stephenson; at Revolution: A Gallery Project, Wisconsin, Eau Claire November 8-December 19 Gallery, 251 West 21st Street. 23257 Woodward Avenue. Richard Joslin, functional ware/sculpture; at Eau November 16—December 17 “Annual Faculty Ex­ Montana, Billings through November 17 Susan Claire Regional Arts Center, 316 Eau Claire Street. hibition”; at Jane Hartsook Gallery, Greenwich Eisen, handbuilt vessels, sculpture and assem- Wisconsin, Milwaukee November 6-26 Dick House Pottery, 16 Jones Street. Woppert, porcelain and stoneware; at Marnie North Carolina, Charlotte through June 4, 1995 Send announcements of conferences, exhibitions, ju­ Pottery, 2711-13 North Bremen. “Native American Pottery of the Southwest”; at ried fairs, workshops and other events at least two the Mint Museum of Art, 2730 Randolph Road. months before the month of opening (add one month Group Ceramics Exhibitions Oregon, Salem through November 6“ Sisters of the for listings in July; two months for those in August) to Earth: Contemporary Native American Ceram­ Calendar, Ceramics Monthly, Post Office Box 12788, Arizona, Phoenix November 12—December2“Fired ics”; at the Bush Barn Art Center, Bush’s Pasture Columbus, Ohio 43212-0788; or telephone (614) Up”; at Shemer Art Center, 5005 E. Camelback. Park, High and Mission streets. 488-8236. Fax announcements to (614) 488-4561. Arizona, Tempe through November 13 “American Pennsylvania, Philadelphia through November 15

66 CERAMICS MONTHLY November 1994 67 Calendar sculpture and paintings by Brenda Bradley; at John Lyman Center for the Arts, Southern Con­ necticut State University, 510 Crescent Street. November 12—December 24 “The Celebration of Exhibition of ceramic sculpture by Wesley American Crafts”; at Creative Arts Workshop, 80 Anderegg and Gretchen Ewert; at the Works Audubon Street. Gallery, 319 South Street. Delaware, Wilmington November 18-December Texas, Fort Worth November 20—February 12, 17 “A Crumble of Cookies”; at the Delaware 1995 “Tomb Treasures from China: The Buried Children’s Museum, 601 North Market Street. Art of Ancient Xi’an”; at the Kimbell Art Mu­ D.C., Washington through February5,1995“Con­ seum, 3333 Camp Bowie Boulevard. temporary Crafts and the Saxe Collection”; at the Texas, Houston November 12-December 1 Exhi­ Renwick Gallery of the National Museum of bition of works by Judy Adams, John Foelber, American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Tom Lammons, Monti Mayren and Michael through May 1995 “Beyond Paper: Chinese Cal­ Unger; at Foelber Pottery Gallery and Studio, 706 ligraphy on Objects”; at Freer Gallery of Art, Richmond. Smithsonian Institution. Wisconsin, West Bend November 4—January 7, Florida, Belleair through November 13 “Florida 1995 “Built, Thrown and Touched: Contempo­ Gulf Coast Art Center Biennial I”; at the Florida rary Clay Works”; at Gallery of Fine Arts. Gulf Coast Art Center, Shillard Smith Gallery, 222 Ponce de Leon Boulevard. Ceramics in Multimedia Exhibitions Florida, Daytona Beach through November 26 “Art Furniture: Adorned, Embellished, New, Re- Alabama, Huntsville December 4-January 8,1995 Constructed, Revived and Re-Assembled”; at “Celebrations: Greece”; at Huntsville Museum of Gallery of Artifacts and Treasures, 222 South Art, 700 Monroe Street, Southwest. Beach Street. Arizona, Mesa through November 5“Going Home­ Florida, Jacksonville through November 6 “42nd less.” November 15—December 77“ParticipArt”; at Florida Craftsmen Exhibition”; at the Jackson­ Mesa Arts Center, 155 N. Center. ville Art Museum, 4160 Boulevard Center Drive. Arizona, Scottsdale through November 6“¥or the Florida, Tampa November 5-December 27 “All Table”; at Mind’s Eye Gallery, 4200 North Beliefs Accepted—Visual Representations of the Marshall Way. Spiritual”; at Artists Unlimited, 223 North 12th Arizona, Tucson through November5“Dia de Los Street, Channel District. Muertos,” with clay shrines by Johanna Hansen Georgia, Atlanta through May31,1995“ Atlanta’s and functional clay objects by Susie Ketchum. Consummate Collector: Philip Trammell Shutze”; November 12-January 7, 1995 “Holiday Exhibi­ at Atlanta History Center, 3101 Andrews Drive, tion”; at Obsidian Gallery, Saint Philips Plaza, Northwest. #90, 4340 North Campbell Avenue. Hawaii, Honolulu November 25—December 11 Arkansas, Little Rock through November 13 “Concepts IV,” works by members of the Artists “Working in Other Dimensions: Objects and Group; at Linekona Art Center, 1111 Victoria St. Drawings II.” November 20-January8,1995“22nd Kentucky, Lexington November 18-December31 Annual Toys Designed by Artists Exhibition”; at Two-person exhibition including ceramics by Lisa the Decorative Arts Museum, Seventh and Rock. Austin; at the Kentucky Gallery for Fine Art and November 11-January 15, 1995“Mad Hatter T ea Crafts, 105 Short Street. Party: Drawings and Objects from the Permanent Kentucky, Louisville November 8-January 8,1995 Collection”; at the Arkansas Arts Center, Ninth “The Ideal Home: 1900-1920”; at J. B. Speed Art and Commerce streets. Museum, 2035 South Third Street. California, Davis December 3-31 Three-person Maryland, Rockville through November 20 exhibition with ceramic sculpture by Richard “Heaven on Earth II,” with ceramics by Arnold Newman; atJohnNatsoulas Gallery, 140 F Street. Schwarzbart; at Goldman Art Gallery, JCC of California, Downey November 10—December 23 Greater Washington. “California”; at Downey Museum of Art, 10419 Massachusetts, Boston November 15-December Rives Avenue. 31 “Memories 94,” Christmas ornaments; at Sig­ California, La Jolla November 12—December 31 nature, Dock Square, 24 North Street. “All Dressed Up for the Holidays”; at Gallery Massachusetts, Cambridge through March 5, Eight, 7464 Girard Avenue. 1995 “Women and the Arts of Asia”; at the California, Los Angeles through November 5 “A Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard University Gathering: Of Tea,” including ceramics by 19 Art Museums. artists; at Freehand, 8413 West Third Street. Massachusetts, Chestnut Hill November 15-De­ California, Oakland through January 8, 1995“ An cember 31 “Memories 94,” Christmas ornaments; Impromptu Exhibition of Outdoor Sculpture.” at Signature, the Mall at Chestnut Hill, Boylston “25 Years of Collecting California”; at the Oak­ Street. land Museum of California, 1000 Oak Street. Massachusetts, Mashpee November 15-Decem­ California, Sacramento through November 6“From ber 31 “Memories 94,” Christmas ornaments; at Hannibal to St. Augustine: Ancient Art of North Signature, Mashpee Commons, 10 Steeple Street. Africa from Musee du Louvre”; at Crocker Art Massachusetts, Northampton November 12—De­ Museum, 216 O St. cember 31 “Culinaria II,” functional work for use California, Santa Ana through November 10“Up­ in the kitchen; at Ferrin Gallery, 179 Main. date II,” alumni exhibition; at Rancho Santiago Montana, Helena December 8-March 31, 1995 College Art Gallery, 1530 West 17th Street. Six-person exhibition with ceramics by Sue Abbres- Connecticut, Brookfield November 18-December cia; at the Governor’s Mansion, 2 Carson St. 24 “18th Annual Holiday Craft Exhibition and New Jersey, Millburn through November 12“ Ab­ Sale”; at Brookfield Craft Center, Route 25. stractions 3,” three-person exhibition with ceram­ Connecticut, Middletown November 26-Decem- ics by Bob Smith; at Sheila Nussbaum Gallery, ber 11 “The Wesleyan Potters 39th Annual Ex­ 341 Millburn Avenue. hibit and Sale”; at Wesleyan Potters Craft Center, NewJersey, Montclair through December 4“ When 350 South Main Street (Route 17). Attitudes Become Form: Selections from a Con­ Connecticut, New Haven through November 30 temporary NewJersey Collection.” through June “Mattress Springs, Creatures, Dancers and 25, 1995 “Patterns in Culture”; at the Montclair Things,” two-person exhibition with ceramic Art Museum, 3 S. Mountain Ave.

68 CERAMICS MONTHLY New Jersey, Newark through December 31 “Project West Berkeley. For maps, send SASE to Artisans Annual Westport Creative Arts Festival”; at Staples 3: Artes Magnus,” functional tableware by artists Map, 1250 Addison Street, #214, Berkeley 94702; High School, 70 North Avenue. commissioned by the company Artes Magnus; at or telephone (510) 845-2612. Florida, Coral Gables November 12-13 “Coral the Newark Museum, 49 Washington Street. California, Los Angeles December 2—4 “Art Los Gables International Festival of Craft Arts”; along New York, Catskill November 19-January9,1995 Angeles 1994”; at Universal Studios Hollywood, Alhambra Plaza and Ponce de Leon Boulevard. “Holiday Arts and Crafts Exhibit and Sale”; at Spartacus Square. Florida, Gainesville November 19-20 “13th An­ Greene County Council on the Arts, Mountaintop California, San Francisco December 3—4 and 10— nual Downtown Festival and Art Show”; on South­ Gallery, 398 Main Street. 11 “Celebration of Craftswomen”; at Fort Mason east First Street and the Community Plaza. New York, Geneseo through November 12 “Al­ Center, Herbst Pavilion. Florida, Tampa December2—4“ ACC Craft Fair”; legheny Abstracts,” two-person exhibition with California, Santa Monica November 4—6 “Con­ at the Tampa Convention Center. ceramic sculpture by Amara Geffen; at Bertha V. temporary Crafts Market”; at the Santa Monica Georgia, Atlanta November 11—13 “26th Annual B. Lederer Gallery, Brodie Fine Arts Building, Civic Auditorium, 1855 Main St. at Pico Blvd. High Museum Antiques Show and Sale”; at State University College. California, Sierra Madre November 11—13 “An­ Buckhead’s Phipps Plaza, 3500 Peachtree St., NE. New York, New York through January 15, 1995 nual Art Festival”; at Creative Arts, 108 North Illinois, Evanston November 4-6 “The Midwest “An Enduring Legacy: The Mr. and Mrs. John D. Baldwin. Clay Guild’s 22nd Annual Holiday Exhibit and Rockefeller 3rd Collection”; at the Asia Society, Connecticut, DanburyNovember 25-27 “Holi­ Sale”; at Midwest Clay Guild, 1236 Sherman Ave. 725 Park Avenue. day Art and Craft Expo”; at the O’Neill Center, Illinois, Libertyville November 17-28 “The An­ through February 26,1^5“Revivals! Diverse Tra­ Western Connecticut State University. nual Holiday Sale”; at David Adler Cultural Cen­ ditions: 1920-1945: The Second Exhibition in Connecticut, Westport November 19-20 “19th ter, 1700 N. Milwaukee Ave. Continued the History of Twentieth-Century American Craft: A Centenary Project”; at American Craft Mu­ seum, 40 West 53rd Street. Ohio, Cincinnati through December 2 “Rebind­ ing: Psyche, Spirit, Soul,” with ceramic sculpture by Halena Cline and Ana England; at the Ma­ chine Shop Gallery, Emery Center. Ohio, Cleveland through December 31 “New Ob­ jects/New Insights: Recent Chinese Acquisitions”; at Cleveland Museum of Art, 11150 East Blvd. November 25—December 31 “Holiday Collectible Show”; at American Crafts Gallery, 13010 Larchmere Boulevard. Ohio, Columbus through November 10 “New Works: Department of Art Faculty Exhibition, Part Two,” including ceramics by Mary Jo Bole and Michael Chipperfield; at the Ohio State Uni­ versity, Hopkins Hall Gallery. Ohio, Lancaster November 12-January 7, 1995 Two-person exhibition with ceramics by Gil Sten­ gel; at the Gallery at Studio B, 140 W. Main St. Oklahoma, Norman November 26-December 30 “Christmas Gift Gallery”; at the Firehouse Art Center, 444 S. Flood. Oregon, Eugene November 1-December 24 “Le Petit II”; at Alder Gallery, 160 East Broadway. Oregon, Portland December 4-31 “Holiday Show,” with burnished and smoked porcelain vessels by Ros Samnang; at Graystone Gallery, 3279 Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard. Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh through November 5 “Bridge III,” three-person exhibition with ceram­ ics by Adrian Arleo; at the Society for Contempo­ rary Crafts, 2100 Smallman Street. Tennessee, Chattanooga November 6-December 30 “Second Annual Salon Show”; at River Gal­ lery, 400 East Second Street. Tennessee, Nashville through November 12 “Vaanguard ’94,” regional juried exhibition; at Vaanguard Gallery, 324 Broadway. Texas, San Antonio December I—77 “Endeavors 6,” juried exhibition of works by program partici­ pants; at Southwest Craft Center, 300 Augusta. Wisconsin, Madison through November ^“South­ ern California: The Conceptual Landscape,” with ceramics by Gifford Myers; at Madison Art Cen­ ter, 211 State Street. Wisconsin, Sheboygan through January 8, 1995 “Of Dancing Frogs and Altarwings: Animal Alle­ gories in Contemporary Art”; at John Michael Kohler Arts Center, 608 New York Avenue.

Fairs, Festivals and Sales Alabama, Birmingham November 19—20 “22nd Annual Alabama Designer/Craftsmen Fall Art Show”; at Birmingham Botanical Gardens. California, Berkeley November 26-27, December 3—4, 10—11 and 17—18 “Berkeley Artisans 1994 Holiday Open Studios”; throughout South and

November 1994 69 Calendar

Illinois, Winnetka November 4—6“The Modern­ ism Show: An Exposition and Sale of 20th-Cen­ tury Design”; at the Winnetka Community House, 620 Lincoln Street. Indiana, Indianapolis November 19—20 “Best of the Season”; at the Exposition Hall, Indiana State Fairgrounds. Maine, Portland November 4—6 “Portland Craft Show”; at the Holiday Inn by the Bay. Maryland, Baltimore December 9—11 “First An­ nual National Crafts’ Christmas Fair”; at the Baltimore Convention Center. Maryland, Gaithersburg November 18-20 and December 9-11 “Sugarloaf Craft Festival”; at the Montgomery County Fairgrounds. Maryland, Timonium October 7-9 “Sugarloaf Craft Festival”; at the Maryland State Fairgrounds. Massachusetts, Hamilton November 25—26 “North Shore Clayworks First Annual Show and Sale”; at Hamilton-Wenham Community House, 284 Bay Road (Route 1A). Massachusetts, Worcester November25-27 “ 12th Annual Festival of Crafts”; at the Worcester Cen­ ter for Crafts, 25 Sagamore Road. New Jersey, Demarest December 2—4 “20th An­ nual Pottery Show and Sale”; at the Old Church Cultural Center School of Art, 561 Piermont Rd. New Mexico, Albuquerque November 10—13 “22nd Annual Southwest Arts and Crafts Festi­ val”; at the New Mexico State Fairgrounds, Ex­ hibit Hall. New York, Herkimer November 12-13 “Herkimer County Arts and Crafts Fair”; at Herkimer County Community College campus. New York, Long Island November 18-20 “20th Harvest Crafts Festival”; at Nassau Coliseum. Ohio, Beachwood November 6-7 “Agnon Fine Art and Craft Exhibition”; at the Agnon School, 26500 Shaker Boulevard. Ohio, Cincinnati November 25-27 “Crafts Af­ fair”; at the Cincinnati Convention Center, down­ town. Ohio, Columbus December 1-4“ Winterfair”; at the Multi-Purpose Building, Ohio State Fair­ grounds. Ohio, Dayton November 5-6“ 11th Annual Day­ ton Art Expo”; at Sinclair Community College, Building 12. Oklahoma, Norman December2—4“ A Christmas Fair”; at the Firehouse Art Center, 444 S. Flood. Oregon, Portland December 2-4 “Artists’ Festi­ val”; in the Pavilion at the Japanese Garden, Washington Park, 611 Southwest Kingston. Pennsylvania, Philadelphia November 10-13 “Philadelphia Craft Show”; at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, 12th and Arch streets. Pennsylvania, University Park November 18-20 “Holiday Ornament Juried Sale and Exhibition”; at the Palmer Museum of Art, Pennsylvania State University. Pennsylvania, Wallingford December 2-4 “30th Annual Holiday Sale”; at the Community Arts Center, 414 Plush Mill Road. Tennessee, Nashville December 11—17“Holiday Arts Festival”; at Sarratt Gallery, Vanderbilt Uni­ versity. Virginia, Richmond November 11-13 “30th An­ nual Craft and Design Show”; at the Richmond Centre, Third and Marshall streets, downtown.

Workshops California, Concow December 27—January 6,1995 “Wood-fire Workshop” with Nolan Babin, mak­ ing work and firing a 200-cubic-foot kiln; or

70 CERAMICS MONTHLY November 1994 71 Calendar

participants can bring own work (7 days). Fee: $350/full session or $250/partial; includes mate­ rials, firing and lodging. All skill levels. Contact Nolan Babin, 13191 Mullen Way, Oroville (Concow), California 95965; or telephone (916) 534-9137. California, Hesperia November 12 “Earth and Ceramic Architecture” with Nader Khalili, de­ signing, constructing, glazing and firing houses, domes, vaults, apses built from adobe, bricks, extruded ceramics, etc. Instruction in English, Persian and Greek. All skill levels. Fee: $100, includes materials and lunch. For further infor­ mation, contact Nader Khalili or Iliona Outram, Cal-Earth, 10225 BaldyLane, Hesperia92345; or telephone (619) 956-7533 ortelephone/fax (619) 244-0614. California, Santa Ana November 19 Lecture by James Danisch on alternative clay bodies; vessels of Burma, India, Nepal and Thailand; and primi­ tive rituals of pottery. Fee: $30. Contact Patrick Crabb, Rancho Santiago College, 17th and Bris­ tol streets, Santa Ana 92706; or telephone (714) 564-5613. Connecticut, Brookfield November 6^‘Tax Issues for Artists” with Kim Butler. For further informa­ tion, contact Brookfield Craft Center, Post Office Box 122, Brookfield 06804; or telephone (203) 775-4526. D.C., Washington November 12-13 Workshop (November 12) and lecture (November 13) with Don Reitz, constructing large vessels on the wheel. Fee: $50; James Renwick Alliance members, $45. Workshop location: George Washington Univer­ sity. Lecture location: Renwick Gallery. Contact James Renwick Alliance, c/o Mary George Kronstadt, 4414 Klingle Street, Northwest, Wash­ ington, D.C. 20016. Florida, DeLand November 11 A session with Richard Notkin. January 20, 1995A session with Jack Earl. Contact Duncan Gallery ofArt, Sampson Hall, Stetson University, DeLand 32720; or tele­ phone (904) 822-7266. Florida, Saint Petersburg November 12 “Expres­ sive Function” with Jenny Lou Sherburne. Fee: $50; Arts Center members, $40. Registration deadline: November 4. For further information, contact the Arts Center, 100 Seventh Street, South, Saint Petersburg 33701; or telephone (813) 822- 7872. Illinois, Champaign November 19 Roundtable discussion with ceramists Anne Currier, Val Cushing, Andrea Gill, John Gill, Wayne Higby and Nancy Weekly; with moderator Donald Kuspit. For further information, contact Krannert Art Museum and Kinkead Pavilion, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 500 East Peabody Drive, Champaign 61820; or telephone (217) 333-1860. Michigan, Detroit November 14and 77“Making a Tile Mural” with Carolyn Wilson, hands-on workshop for teachers. Fee: $30. Registration deadline: November 1. For further information, contact Education, Pewabic Pottery, 10125 East Jefferson, Detroit 48214; or telephone (313) 822- 0954. New Mexico, Santa Fe November 72—73 “Shining Clay” with Paulus Berensohn. Fee: $115 plus lab fee. For further information, contact Santa Fe Clay, 1615 Paseo de Peralta, Santa Fe 87501; or telephone (505) 984-1122. New York, New York November 5—6 and 12 “Making Musical Instruments in Clay” with Charles Bryant and Suzanne Greene, making (November 5—6) and glazing (November 12) wind

72 CERAMICS MONTHLY November 1994 73 Calendar

instruments and rattles. For further information, contact Artworks at the West Side YMCA, 5 West 63rd Street, New York 10023; or telephone (212) 875-4129. North Carolina, Brasstown January 27—February 4, 1995 “Forms and Surfaces for Wood Firing” with Ken Sedberry. Fee: $350. For further infor­ mation, contact John C. Campbell Folk School, Route 1, Box 14A, Brasstown 28902; or tele­ phone (800) 365-5724. North Carolina, Durham January 21—22, 1995 “What Pots Are All About” with David Shaner. Fee: $85. Slide presentation and reception: Janu­ ary 20, 1995. Contact Leonora Coleman, 117 Seeman Street, Durham 27701; or telephone (919) 683-3193. Oregon, Portland November 5-6 “The Figure in Clay” with Donna Polseno. Fee: $118. Contact the Oregon School of Arts and Crafts, 8245 Southwest Barnes Road, Portland 97225; or tele­ phone (503) 297-5544. Pennsylvania, Philadelphia November 18-20\,tc- ture and workshop with John and Susanne Stephenson. Lecture fee: $5. Workshop fee: $ 115; members, $100. Lecture location: Philadelphia Museum of Art. Workshop location: the Clay Studio. Contact the Clay Studio, 139 North Sec­ ond Street, Philadelphia 19106; or telephone (215) 925-3453. Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh December 10-11A ses­ sion with Chris Gustin. Advance registration re­ quired. For further information, contact the Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild, 1815 Metropoli­ tan Street, Pittsburgh 15233; or telephone (412) 322-1773. Texas, Houston November 4—5 A session with Virginia Cartwright. Fee: $30. Contact Roy Hanscom, Art Department, North Harris Col­ lege, 2700 W. W. Thorne Dr., Houston 77073; or telephone (713) 443-5609.

International Events Australia, N.S.W., Buccarumbi January 15-20, 1i?95“Summer Workfest,” workshop with Sandra Taylor and guest artist Virginia Hollister, creating large-scale works. Fee: Aus$785 (approximately US$584), includes materials, lodging and meals. For further information, contact Sandra Taylor, Blackadder, Buccarumbi NSW 2460; or tele­ phone/fax (66) 494 134. Canada, British Columbia, Vancouver through November30 *Chinese Ceramic Figurines”; at the Museum of Anthropology, 6393 Northwest Ma­ rine Drive (northwest corner of University of British Columbia campus). Canada, Ontario, East York November 18—20 “Potters’ Studio Fall Sale”; at the Potters’ Studio, 2 Thorncliffe Park Drive, Unit 16. Canada, Ontario, Toronto through January 22, 1995“ Home Sweet Home: Pastille Burners of the 19th Century”; at George R. Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art, 111 Queen’s Park. England, Chichester November 4—6 “Throwing and Turning” with Alison Sandeman. December 9-11 A session with Alan Saunders, sculptural modeling using terra-cotta techniques. January 27-29, 1995 “Master Potter Series: Decorating Stoneware” with Chris Speyer. For further infor­ mation, contact the College Office, West Dean College, West Dean, Chichester, West Sussex P018 0QZ; or telephone (24) 381-1301. England, Cornwall through November 26 “The Melting Pot Project,” exhibition of ceramics and textiles, includes ceramics by Chris Bramble, Lubna

74 CERAMICS MONTHLY November 1994 75 Calendar

Chowdhary, Magdalene Odundo, Taja Simpson and Takeshi Yasuda; at Tate Gallery Saint Ives. England, London November 23—December 23 “White Christmas,” with ceramics by Lubna Chowdhary, Joanna Constantinidis and Cleo Mussi; at the Crafts Council Shop at the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington. England, Stoke-on-Trent through April 1995“The Robert Pinchon Collection of Studio Pottery”; at the City Museum and Art Gallery, Arnold Mountford Study Gallery, Hanley. France, Allegre November 14-19 “Raku,” work­ shop with Simonot Michel. Beginning and inter­ mediate skill levels. Instruction in French and English. Fee: 2400Fr (approximately US$444). For further information, contact Simonot Michel, Mas Cassac, F-30500 Allegre; or telephone (66) 24-85-65. France, Dunkerque through January 15, 1995 “Poterie Negre,” exhibition of ceramics by Thiebaut Chague and Camille Virot; at Musee d’Art Contemporain, Jardin des Sculptures, Ave­ nue des Bains. Germany, Stuttgart through November 20 “Im­ ages of Nature,” exhibition of ceramics; at Wiirt- tembergisches Landesmuseum, Schillerplatz 6. Jamaica, Queen of Spain Valley January 17-24, 1995 A workshop with Joe Bennion, throwing, loading, firing and unloading a Japanese-style, fast-fire, wood/salt kiln. Location: Pottery of Good Hope. Participants will have time to make pots for firing at the 92nd Street Y on December 1-2 and 8-9. Fee: $ 1500, includes materials, 2 meals daily, lodging and round-trip airfare. For further infor­ mation, contact Jeff Cox, Director of Ceramics, 92nd Street Y, 1395 Lexington, New York, New York 10128; or telephone (212) 415-5565, or fax (212) 415-5575. Mexico, Mitla January 2-10, 1995 “From the Zapotec Tradition and Beyond,” workshop with Nancee Meeker. Contact Horizons: The New England Craft Program, 108-P North Main Street, Sunderland, Massachusetts 01375; or telephone (413) 665-0300. Netherlands, Delft November 10-December 11 Exhibition of ceramics by Yvonne Kleinveld; at Terra Keramiek, Nieuwstraat 7. Netherlands, Deventer through November 12 Sculpture by Marion Askjaer-Veld and anagama- fired pots by Eric Astoul. November 13-December 24 Exhibition of ceramics by Felicity Aylieff and Takeshi Yasuda; at Loes and Reinier International Ceramics, Korte Assenstraat 15. Netherlands, Oosterbeek through November 20 “Keranova,” exhibition of about 25 Dutch ceram­ ists; at Galerie Amphora, Van Oudenallenstraat 3. Netherlands, ’s-Hertogenbosch through Novem­ ber “Signals of Color from South Africa,” three- person exhibition with ceramics by Norman Trapman. Exhibition of ceramics by Magdalene Odundo, “African Beauty”; at Het Kruithuis, Municipal Museum of Contemporary Art, Citadellaan 7. New Zealand, Surfers Paradise through Novem­ ber 6“ 13th National Gold Coast Ceramic Award”; at the Gold Coast City Art Gallery, 135 Bundall Road. Portugal, Lisbon November 9—February 28, 1995 Exhibition of ceramics by Sara Carone; at Museu Nacional do Azulejo, Rua Madre de Deus, 4. Switzerland, Geneva through January 25, 1995 “De l’eclectisme a l’Art Nouveau,” exhibition of late 19th- and early 20th-century objects; at Ariana, Swiss Museum of Ceramics and Glass, 10 Avenue de la Paix.

76 CERAMICS MONTHLY November 1994 77 Metamorphosis of a Small Business by Diane Hutchinson

After seven years of concentrated labor, who need the volume capacity of our My Dad, on the other hand, is a continuous experimentation, endless de­ hydraulic press. master moldmaker, potter and sculptor, signing and redesigning, our small art I am Diane Hutchinson (the “H” even though he has had no formal ce­ pottery (D&H Studio in Lake Park, part of the name). My Dad is Robert ramics training. He learned from study­ Florida) has become a viable business. Dittmer (the “D” part of the name). I ing, experimenting and working in the We produce a line of functional ceram­ studied ceramics in college and have field. He once owned a mold company ics and one-of-a-kind architectural also had experience in business man­ that supplied the hobby ceramics in­ pieces. We also offer design and mold- agement. But until my full-time involve­ dustry, but grew dissatisfied with de­ making services for various clients, and ment in D&H Studio, I did not consider signing pieces for others to decorate and green- and bisqueware for other potters myself a ceramist. sign as their own, so he sold the busi­ ness. Dad then began designing new art pieces, making molds from them, and selling the designs and their block-and- case molds to other mold companies. Meanwhile, a love of porcelain and crys­ talline glazes kept him interested in pro­ ducing ware, and he developed a Cone 8-9 translucent porcelain (suitable for slip casting), along with several glazes. Dad was operating a small studio, doing his crystalline vases and custom molds for various clients when I be­ came fascinated with his work. It wasn’t until then that I realized he not only has an extensive knowledge of ceramic pro­ duction techniques stored in his head and in his “bible” of notes, but he also has an inexhaustible knowledge of clay bodies, glazes, firing methods, etc. About the time I started helping with some of his chores (and we began to discuss forming a partnership), the emer­ gency services in our area were begging people via radio, TV and newspaper to identify their homes with prominent address numbers. In this part of Florida, we have many elderly people, and ac­ cess to emergency service is a serious matter. To meet this need, we designed a line of ten ceramic plaques to frame Diane Hutchinson glazing a plaque designed to frame tile house numbers tile house numbers. Ceramic house numbers are ideal in South Florida, where most other materials either oxi­ dize, rot or mildew. We launched the business in Dad’s 450-square-foot studio with two elec­ tric kilns and not much more. Under

78 CERAMICS MONTHLY his watchful eye, I designed the feet in a warehouse. We also had to drying racks. We also bought two used plaques—some modeled directly in clay, have a hydraulic press for maximum electric kilns for more firing capacity. some carved into plaster. Once Dad production, and scraped together a Then we started experimenting with had made molds of them, we started down payment. It took a lot of creative pressable clay bodies, aiming for a ma­ casting, glazing and firing, building up financing to manage this, but that’s an­ turing temperature under Cone 6. We our inventory. other story altogether. finally settled on a white body that vit­ To test market this product, we ap­ Other expenses included the pur­ rifies at Cone 4. Of course, we then had plied to a ceramic tile trade show in the chase of a new 5hp compressor, casting to redesign the glazes to fit that clay Miami Beach Convention Center. We rings and dies, urethane rubber for body, opting for single-fire recipes to set up in a 10x10-foot space, using ea­ model making, and materials to build save handling time and storage space. sels to display our new wares. This was a four-day show—three for wholesale buyers, with the last day open to the general public for retail sales. On retail day, we were swamped; four of us con­ tinuously wrote orders (and took money) for four straight hours. Seeing this response, many dealers among the spectators approached us to handle our house-number plaques in their retail stores. Needless to say, we were thrilled with this response and knew we were headed in the right direction, but we also learned some very sobering facts. This was an international show and, through discussions with other tile manufacturers, we learned that our plaques were not vitreous enough to withstand the rigors of northern win­ ters; if we wanted to deal in an interna­ tional marketplace, we had to develop a new clay body. We also realized that slip casting would not be fast enough and that the molds would require an inordi­ nate amount of space. We filled all the Florida orders from the show (thank goodness it was a Mi­ ami Beach show), but had to refund money from the northern customers, both wholesale and retail, explaining that we would contact them when we Robert Dittmer turning a plaster prototype on a vertical lathe. began producing plaques suitable for their climate. Then we analyzed our needs, which were a lot easier to analyze than to exe­ cute. First, we needed more space, so we rented an additional 1000 square

November 1994 79 “Geranium” plaque with number tiles, 16 inches long, glazed terra cotta, $49.95.

There were many frustrating times periodic company of our peers so that while we struggled through this period, we don’t end up creating in a vacuum. but we doggedly stuck to it. When we We also like to create special pieces for finally brought our new plaques back to the shows so we can keep our hands in the marketplace, we were delighted clay and, subsequently, avoid some of when many of the northern customers the stiffness of manufactured products. we contacted wanted to reorder. Barely a show goes by that we don’t Sales are now increasing, and we are establish some type of wholesale or re­ steadily expanding our line. Because of tail account. It seems that businesspeople the popularity of terra cotta, we have are always looking for new products. developed a red clay body. We’ve also In order to take full advantage of our added five new designs with larger num­ press, we also do custom pressing for bers; they are also terra cotta with color­ other production potters. They throw ful, once-fired glazes that break into or handbuild the model they want us to “Sailfish” house-number plaque, iridescent and variegated surfaces. reproduce for them. We make the 16 inches in length, $59.95, by D&H Studio, Lake Park, Florida. Every year we do four or five craft molds, faithfully preserving the artist’s shows to introduce new work to the original design right down to the finger public—in effect, test marketing our marks. Some have told us this service designs before we go into production. allows them to produce enough ware to Besides the public’s input, we need the survive and even thrive in this field.

CERAMICS MONTHLY Glazed drawer pull, custom made for a home in Palm Beach, Florida.

Clients also bring us ideas and we Palm Beach has commissioned terra­ cant wait to get into the studio. Some­ give them back in three dimensions. cotta ceiling tiles for the foyer and drawertimes I feel that I must have been a We make their block-and-case molds knobs for the kitchen. potter in a previous life. I love to handle and guide them into production. One We also have matched broken tiles the clay and see my ideas turn into of our clients has obtained a lucrative from a mural that came from Portugal. finished pieces. Additionally, I manage contract from an exclusive chain of These had a continuous hand-painted the business aspects of this partnership, stores, and he is in full production with motif. Now we are working on a series and have found courses at the local col­ his copyrighted idea. of terra-cotta tiles for the same designer. lege and information from the Small When we do art and mold work for Looking into the future from this Business Administration are invaluable, others, we require that the ideas be their vantage point, I know we will succeed offering everything from marketing ideas own. As a matter of policy, we will not with our fledgling pottery. Not only do to advice on handling employees. reproduce any article that is copyrighted we offer many services to many people, We now have two employees (who or designed by anyone other than the but we are committed to impeccable are learning various aspects of the pro­ customer. craftsmanship. Products cannot leave duction process) and are firing eight The word seems to be getting around our studio until they are right. My Dad kilns, but we have three more ready to about our own design work. Several has always been a fanatic about detail go as soon as we find more space. How­ interior designers from as far away as and nothing leaves his bench until it ever, we do not want to become too Chicago have had us design and make meets his exacting requirements. large. Whatever we do, we want to al­ special tiles for some of their projects. I find each day a new and exciting ways offer personalized services to our One designer working on a mansion in adventure. I get up in the morning and customers and friends. A

November 1994 81 PHOTOS: DEBBIE VANBLANKENSHIP AND COURTESY OF THE ARTISTS

Mixed-media wall sculpture, 6 feet wide, from the “Life in General” series by Brook Le Van; at the Artery in Davis, California.

Fifth Annual California Conference by Marilyn Moyle

TI he fifth annual “California Confer­ the earthquakelike energy he had un­ ence for the Advancement of Ceramic leashed on the art world in the sixties Art (CCACA)” and several concurrent and seventies. exhibitions hit Davis, California, with The final speaker at the conference, all the energy of an earthquake last Voulkos confessed to a rapt audience spring. According to John Natsoulas, that he was “forced to take a ceramics gallery owner and conference organizer, class in order to graduate. Thank god, I this was the biggest gathering so far, fell in love with it....I cant draw on attracting more than 300 participants. paper. I cant draw a head. You don’t At the John Natsoulas Gallery, sculp­ need paper and pencil to draw....I like ture by 57 artists was on view. “Walking to make marks.” Man,” a 1990 work by Peter Voulkos, Quieter, but no less powerful, works was in the place of honor in the front were on dispay at the Artery, a coopera­ window. This large, unglazed vessel with tive gallery in Davis. Sandy Simon (fac­ a stick figure carved on the side looked ulty artist at San Jose State) had been almost like a volcano—a container for the juror for this statewide competi­ tion. Her choices reflected her personal values: “I don’t support violence in art or ideas just for the sake of ideas. I’m Left: “Walking Man,” 27½ inches in height, unglazed stoneware vessel strongly for the object and for beauty. with incised markings, by Peter Voulkos; We’ve been cut off from traditional art, at the John Natsoulas Gallery. which nurtures the soul. What I want

82 CERAMICS MONTHLY “Rollin’ Joe’s Side Show,” 30 inches square, handbuilt earthenware with low-fire glazes and luster, wood and wire, by Heidi Bekebrede; at the Memorial Union Art Gallery, University of California, Davis.

to communicate is love. For me, mak­ figure sculpture. Now his imagery is ing pottery does that.” more autobiographical, inspired by Simon awarded one of the four top dreams and a personal crisis. His sub­ prizes to an installation by Brook Le dued monochromatic wall sculpture Van, a Pomona College professor of “Relative Tranquility” incorporates two ceramics. Le Van is a traditional potter enigmatic images: a monk whose head and conceptual artist who believes that is just barely staying above water and a art and life are the same thing. His ferocious wolf. installation was from his “Life in Gen­ Heidi Bekebrede was one of four eral” series. It featured a shelf of his local ceramists whose work was dis­ functional porcelain and a large, framed, played at the university’s Memorial black-and-white photograph of a pot- Union Gallery. Her “cuteware” is de­ luck dinner at which a group of artists rived both from the funk art tradition (who had built their own adobe ovens at U.C., Davis, and from her own in­ and baked bread together) used the ex­ terest in hobby ceramics. hibited pots. These were only a few of the artists Joe Mariscal, whose sculpture was whose vessels and sculpture graced the “Relative Tranquility,” 23 inches wide, shown at Pence Gallery in Davis, also local galleries during the CCACA con­ earthenware with terra sigillata, by Joe makes what he calls “real-world art.” ference. The quality, diversity and en­ Mariscal; at Pence Gallery. Mariscal used to work at local prisons, ergy of their works proved that and prisoners with tattoos and bulging earthquakes only add to the spirit and muscles were often the subject of earlier creativity of California clay. ▲

November 1994 83 Susan Low-Beer

Totemic figurative sculpture by Cana­ or watercolors. But I was still unhappy dian ceramist Susan Low-Beer was on with the overall results. About this time, view recently at the Sybaris Gallery in I saw several paintings done with a wax Royal Oak, Michigan. Handbuilt from medium—a surface that I thought whiteware, low fired, then surfaced with would work well incorporated into my encaustic (dry pigment mixed with sculpture. melted beeswax), each figure is com­ “In the mid 1980s, I started to work posed of several sections stacked together figuratively. I also began working larger in unlikely combinations. and more loosely, using encaustic on a Though trained as a painter, Low- white sculpture clay. This process fi­ Beer was drawn to working with clay nally allowed me the richness and di­ early in her career. “When I started to rectness of color that is found in sculpt, my work had to do with whimsy, painting. I thought of these sculptures with content and object, but not hu­ almost as if they were three-dimensional man form,” she recalled. “I used glaze, paintings. I could see exactly what I and raku fired the pieces. Then, as the would end up with, changing the sur­ surfaces became more complex, color face at will.” relationships became more important. Low-Beer describes her current work At this point, glazing became a frustra­ as “composites, fragments stacked one tion. A color would often disappear, on top of the other. A single figure become too glossy or too transparent.” appears at one moment, only to dis­ To eliminate the uncertainties of solve into separate stories at another raku glazes, she experimented with al­ glance. The narratives attempt to de­ ternative surfaces. “I attempted to gain scribe the contradictory nature of our more control over the colors by glazing contemporary persona, our histories, our some areas and leaving others bare. Af­ ambiguities, our emotions. I am forever ter the firing, I would fill in the amazed at how opaque and layered, nonglazed areas with either acrylic paint transparent and simple we are.” ▲

“Still Dances VIII,” 71 inches in height, stacked whiteware figure, by Susan Low-Beer, Toronto, Ontario.

“With Desire to Comprehend II,” 16 inches in height, handbuilt whiteware with encaustic.

84 CERAMICS MONTHLY November 1994 85 Questions Answered by the CM Technical Staff

Q Page 186 of the book Warren MacKenzie by David Lewis [Kodansha International\ 1991] lists the following recipe: Glassy Green Glaze (Cone 4—5) Gerstley Borate...... 25.0% Lepidolite...... 50.0 Zinc Oxide...... 4.0 Flint...... 21.0 100.0% Add: Copper Carbonate...... 5.0% Iron Oxide...... 0.5 % It is recommended that this glaze be fired in a neutral to oxidizing atmsophere. I would like to try this recipe, but I have not been able to find a supply sourcefor lepidolite. Do you know of any? Or is there a common substi­ tute?—R.B. A lithium feldspathoid that was usually used as a secondary flux in mid- to high-fire glazes, lepidolite is no longer commercially available. However, since that recipe was published, War­ ren MacKenzie has recalculated its molecular formula, substituting spodumene, whiting and Custer feldspar for the lepidolite. In the revised recipe, he uses a relatively inexpensive industrial-grade spodumene (from a cache purchased several years ago), but says that anyone with a supply of the more expensive ceramic-grade spodumene would find it works equally well. Fired at Cone 01 in an electric kiln, the following revised recipe is “a beautiful green,” according to MacKenzie, that “looks just like the old lead glazes”: Revised Glassy Green Glaze (Cone 01) Gerstley Borate...... 26.57 % Spodumene ...... 45.41 Whiting ...... 4.35 Custer Feldspar...... 9.66 Zinc Oxide...... 4.35 Flint...... 9.66 100.00% Add: Copper Carbonate...... 4.00-5.00% Red Iron Oxide ...... 0.50% The iron oxide addition ensures that the recipe produces a true green, rather than the blue-green characteristic of copper carbonate.

Subscribers’ questions are welcome and those of gen­ eral interest will be answered in this column. Due to volume, letters may not be answered personally. Ad­ dress the Technical Staff, Ceramics Monthly, Post Office Box 12788, Columbus, Ohio 43212-0788.

86 CERAMICS MONTHLY November 1994 87 88 CERAMICS MONTHLY November 1994 89 Comment

Play, Ritual and Making Special by George Kokis

The clay folk of the world make up a from clay moistened by mist and breathes tribe that is heir to some of the most life into his nostrils. Up to then, the clay intimate traditions of human caring and figure is just an image, a hollow vessel is inextricably connected with all creative that this breathing in of the spirit ani­ art making. Still, it is a tribe grown some­ mates. The name Adam derives from what insecure of its place in the world “ground,” sometimes interpreted as “red today. We seem increasingly insecure earth.” In Greek mythology, there are about our fitness to survive the future several examples of clay origins; Pro­ we’ve planned for ourselves. The way that metheus creates us from clay mixed with potters and others who form clay images river water, and Hephaestus shapes Pan­ are considered and devalued in the mar­ dora from clay. ketplace is a metaphor for the way the Similar stories of our genesis in clay earth itself has been ill-considered from occur throughout the world. The Egyp­ the board rooms of the powerful to the tians visualized our forming on a potter’s average mega-consuming individual. In­ wheel; the Jivaro of South America, their trinsic values have been replaced every­ sky a great blue ceramic bowl, also be­ where by simulated, synthetic values. lieved creation the work of a potter. A California tribal people held that Mukat They’ve lost it, modeled the first people of clay, then and their children discussed with his brother whether or will never even wish for it not we should be immortal. The creator and I am afraid argued in favor of death because without that the whole tribes in trouble, death the world would become too small the whole tribe is lost and there would not be enough food for because the sun keeps rising everyone. The brother suggested we could and these days eat earth, but the creator, realizing he nobody sings. would have to be constantly increasing I think the poet, Aaron Kramer, is not the amount of earth available, decided entirely correct, though his admonition against a constantly expanding universe. is sobering. Some singing continues. Mak­ So we see that mythology heralds our ing art is one way of singing, and the place at the beginnings. But where is making of pots is one way of singing up there hard evidence of our earth-bound the sun. And this continues enthusiasti­ nature? Well, it is there; found in the cally despite the biases of tastemakers and traces of our earliest activities. We need dictates of the marketplace. only follow the tracks of one common Why is this? Is it that we need more earth substance to confirm the character pots? That’s arguable. But we certainly of our material presence from prehistory need what making pots teaches us, what forward. working with clay helps us learn. The oldest mine yet discovered is in Our mythologies, born long before Swaziland in Africa, estimated as more written history, assign clay folk a promi­ than 100,000 years old. The shaft is 40 nent place in human affairs. The most feet deep and the material sought was ancient metaphor of the creation of life ocher. Mining, in essence a violation of was of a god creating human beings from the mother earth, is accompanied every­ clay. The earliest literary account of cre­ where by elaborate rites and superstitions. ation through clay forming is Meso­ Once the material was gained, the min­ potamian, from 2000 B.C. This story ers painstakingly filled in the excavation, goes back even further to earlier Sumerian putting more than 1000 tons of earth sources. Fragments of Babylonian records back where they got it. The skirts of the tell of a goddess creating humankind from mother must be decently arranged. clay mixed with the blood of a slain god. Perhaps this started even earlier than In the Old Testament, God models Adam the Stone Age; ocher has been found at

90 CERAMICS MONTHLY sites dated 3 million years old, where ocher is not a naturally occurring mate­ rial. This would be 30 times earlier than cave paintings. Earth pigments have been used widely from these distant periods to the present. Ocher, this most sought-after pigment, is a form of hematite, an oxidized earth containing iron that leaches up into old beds of clay. Known the world over as bloodstone, ocher is the blood of the earth. It is used for adornment. Even today, Kalahari Bushmen cross hundreds of miles of desert for hematite. We buy this sacred material from mineral firms who mechanically purify it; upon its ar­ rival, we stick the sack on the shelf like any other commodity we take for granted. Australian aborigines travel hundreds of miles to sacred ocher sites, crawling the last mile on all fours. Another important use of ocher is for burials. One of the earliest burials found in the northern hemisphere was in south­ ern France: an arthritic old Neanderthal buried in a cave 46,000 years ago, his body packed round with red ocher. The earliest known deliberate interment was near that old mine in Swaziland, of a child who died 80,000 years ago, his skel­ eton showing a dusting of ash and ocher. From culture to culture, from continent to continent, evidence of ocher used in ritual and on ritual objects can be found: burials from all over the planet, the fu­ neral chambers of Chinese dynasties, Etruscan and Roman sarcophagi, all tinted with ocher. With gratitude to our mythologies and a slight bow to science, we now have a better understanding of ourselves. But there are three special and distinct apti­ tudes we share that bear special mention and brief examination if we want a true self-portrait. The first of these special attributes or behaviors is the need to play. We share this attribute with all mammals. Unlike other behaviors, play seems to be biolog­ ically purposeless and even disadvan­ tageous. The players do not gain a life-serving goal—as with finding food, mating, repelling intruders. A lot of en­ ergy is expended for no seemingly useful purpose. Predators may even be attracted and threaten chances for survival. Yet they play tirelessly, for plays sake, for the sheer enjoyment and intrinsic reward. Continued

November 1994 91 Comment man behavior: that very drive to order which qualifies us to deal successfully with our environment disqualifies us when it is Play can be said to be extra, outside in our interest to change; when our nor­ normal life. We know upon reflection mal solutions have run their course and that the potential benefits of play follow no longer work. The drive to excessive at a distance. Animals at play are practic­ order is the drive to eventual extinction. ing skills that will eventually enable them There must be some human activity to find food, defend themselves, mate that serves to break up orientations, to and so on. Humans at play are inventing weaken and frustrate the tyrannous drive solutions, establishing relationships with to order, to prepare individuals to ob­ dissimilar things. serve and question what their normal Play is our insurance policy, with the orientation tells us is irrelevant but may benefits of play deferred. M. C. Richards now become highly relevant. Play func­ says, “The apparent accidents of play are tions best in its traditional role, as it keeps really organic principles looking for a soft connected to its roots in ^equilibrium place to sprout.” and deep inquiry and provocation. Play Plays similarity to art-making is obvi­ must not get entirely serious; it must not ous, both being considered nonuseful; be trivialized into clever entertainment to art-making, like play, is something extra, confirm popular sentiments. Historically, it means more than itself—is metaphori­ play helped form visions that became so­ cal in nature. The experience of play is cial realities, and it will enable us to revi­ like a reservoir from which more flexible, sion—to revise those forms when it is imaginative, innovative behaviors arise, imperative to do so. as when we play around with an idea. The next special proclivity I want to There is a lovely creation myth told by mention is ritual. The dominant idea people who live up my way. They tell of about art in our culture, an idea not very the god Kumokums, who one day sat old at all, has been that it is superflu­ down in the middle of Tule Lake. There ous—an ornament or enhancement, was nothing but Tule Lake in the whole pleasant enough but hardly necessary. This universe. After some time, Kumokums is a relatively new notion. In earlier times, reached down into the lake and brought attempts to integrate new qualities were up mud. He reached down five times— made in a ritual context and with the down, down, down, down and again support of ones tribe or group. A ritual down—and he brought up mud. He was, and is, a special framework through spread the mud on the lake and it be­ which a person could reach beyond came land and trees and rocks, and birds known limitations to meet new challenges and animals began to move about. And and undiscovered personal powers. The Kumokums looked at all this and he said, individual could integrate these new ex­ “I didn’t know it would do that!” Cre­ periences without being overwhelmed. ation out of playing! Serendipitous play. This kind of experience is seldom avail­ When we play we are involved with able or trusted today. (If you were born our whole being—mind and body. Our within the last 50 years, you have 10 perceiving modes are especially maxi­ times as much chance of being seriously mized: our ability to experience the world depressed as you would have if you were through our outer senses and with our born in the previous 50 years. Some sub­ inner sensing we call intuition. We re­ scribe this dilemma to the lack of ritual spond kinesthetically to the world around in our lives. We are expected to survive us, and to the world within us, and they our confusions bravely—and alone!) merge magically into a new experience. Transitions from one state to another Plays function in human biology is to often provoke anxiety or strong emotion keep our adaptation equipment in shape. because they mark the end of something We hear much about the desire to pro­ known and the beginning of something duce and maintain order in society and unknown. There is always the possibility indeed in the whole world. There are of being stuck betwixt and between, nei­ some who consider that all problems are ther here nor there, in a sort of limbo— solely due to a lack of order and control. fraught with unease. At the same time, For such people, play is a waste of time. these emotional states sometimes produce Here is an interesting paradox of hu­ a transformational state where individu-

92 CERAMICS MONTHLY als feel themselves joined in a state of oneness, with each other, with powers greater than themselves—a state outside ordinary life. In circumstances that are perceived to be threatening or uncertain, where strong emotions are called up, hu­ mans have a tendency not to just fight or flee or to wait—but to do something— the imperative to act—to make ritual. All societies observe rites of passage, states of transition between one signifi­ cant material or social state and another, such as birth, puberty, marriage, death. Ritual preparation is as much a part of an activity like hunting as preparing spears or arrows. Before the hunt, the hunters fast, pray, bathe, obey food or sex taboos, wear special adornments, perform rituals concerning tools and weapons or mark them with symbols. These actions of shaping and elabo­ rating appear to be inherent responses to the world of unpredictable and, some­ times, unruly nature. They are responses that make us feel good. Some would say the imperative to establish ritual was more pressing and immediate than the need to produce tools. Long before the techno­ logical revolution came the social revolu­ tion. In ritual ceremony, while people united with the forces of nature, they also became familiar with the threshold of death and the cycle of life. Ritual signifies that something more is going on than meets the eye—something sacred. Now for the third and last of our special attributes; the third of these pro­ clivities that embrace, support and inter­ penetrate each other. Primal people usually don’t have a word for art, since it denotes an activity that everybody does and is undifferentiated from other life activities. I prefer not to use the word art at all, but use the term art-making, thus avoiding the “thingness” that the noun implies and promoting the verbness of the act. So the third attribute will not be called art here; instead, I will make use of the term “making special” used by Ellen Dissanayake in her marvelous book Homo Aestheticus. She states that it is an evolu­ tionary necessity. I must stress that; mak­ ing special or if you prefer, making art, is an evolutional necessity. Her claim is based on the observation that humans every­ where differentiate between a state of be­ ing that is ordinary and one that is unusual, extraordinary. Continued

November 1994 93 Comment of being, utilizing invisible points of con­ ately nonordinary. Both are formalized, nection. These connections are visible as structured and shaped. Ritual ceremo­ signs, forms and symbols—the language nies are always linked together with the That inclination toward acknowledg­ of art that tells our story. Art-making arts in practice. ing an extraordinary realm is inherent in originated and thrived for most of hu­ Ritual ceremonies and the arts are so­ the behavior of play where actions are man history as a communal activity, an cially reinforcing\ uniting participants and “not for real.” Humans somehow recog­ activity we recognize as ritual. audiences in one mood. When the classi­ nize, then proceed to elaborate “other” The connections between ceremonial cal Greek dramas were performed, it was worlds, through play, invoked ritual, or ritual and art-making, or “making spe­ feelings, not events, that were orchestrated by fabricating through art-making. To­ cial,” are provocative. Both compel us, and arranged. The manipulation of emo­ day, for some of us, art-making is the using various means to capture and hold tion is one of the essential features of ritual we have—or would like to have— attention. Both are fashioned to affect ritual ceremonies and remains the pur­ confidence in. In the act of making, we emotionally, to bring feelings into aware­ pose behind theatrical drama today. These can communicate between different states ness and display them. They are deliber­ origins go back to prehistoric ritual cer­ emonies of cleansing and atonement. In ritual ceremony and sometimes in dra­ matic performance, by entering a certain frame of mind, we are transformed from ordinary existence—a prelude to a social transformation. This is the best we can expect of dra­ matic ritual and I’m afraid our diet too often lacks such nourishment. The cul­ ture-bound obsession with the pragmatic leads to a consequent lack of regard for the special because it is deemed cost- ineffective and hence impractical. Most of our opportunities for shared ritual are trivialized into artificially energized en­ tertainment spectacles, and our hunger for meaningful creative exchange ex­ ploited for the private gain of the few. At the other end, the cool end of this spectrum, is the rarefied air of the aes­ thete critic who searches for and observes beauty at a distance. This is the academic mode of perception cultivated today that distrusts subject matter or content that is considered affiliative and emotional. Aes­ thetic means analysis and objectification; formality that makes myth and poetic thinking impossible. The high art of aes­ thetics divorces the object or experience from its place and disregards its social or spiritual significance. It is a questionable practice of short duration, being an in­ vention of the recent 18th century, but it intimidates many. Perhaps we have lost a sense of our being that our three inherent predilec­ tions represent: the first and second be­ ing play and ritual, those tendencies that recognize an extraordinary dimension of experience; and the third, to make special by shaping and transforming important things. Through these three predilections, we have the capacity and the potential to experience a transformative or self-tran- scendent emotional state. Continued

94 CERAMICS MONTHLY November 1994 95 Comment day, for most people, are occasions for touches us most deeply and continues to perplexity and confusion, a strange mix inspire our strongest feelings. We misrep­ of sacredness, beauty, privilege and re­ resent our human depth when we regard It is of no use to draw a circle around finement along with commodification, human history as being only some 10,000 ourselves and pretend to special status. exploitation and vulgarity. The art indus­ or at most 40,000 years in length—rather There is only one tribe and that is the try is a heavy protector of the status quo, than 100 to 400 times longer. human tribe. There is nothing I’ve said encouraging an art addicted to entertain­ Our modern idea of art is dependent about play, ritual and making special, ment, which increasingly distances us on commerce, commodity, ownership, that isn’t true for all human beings. These from relatedness. history, progress, specialization and indi­ three things form the ground of our hu­ I salute Carl Jung’s notion of instinct, viduality. Very few societies have thought man creative substance (rather than the which included creativity as a basic in­ of it as we have for the last two hundred exclusive possession of a select few) and stinctual element. He believed that elimi­ years. If we take the longer perspective, are, like swimming or love-making, a be­ nating it causes serious psychological we can see that our view is relative and havior potentially available to everyone deprivation—depriving us of human re­ will change again. But play, ritual and because all humans have a predisposition quirements as fundamental as food, making special, have always been with to do them. warmth and shelter. It is ironic that the us. Somewhere in the continuity of homi- The fact that the arts vary so widely creative attributes our modern culture nid evolution, during those 4 million from one society to another would sug­ considers dispensable are the very ones years, there arose a behavioral tendency gest that they are cultural in origin. But that make us most human—the biologi­ that helped individuals who possessed it these natural proclivities must manifest cally endowed proclivity of every human (and by extension a social group whose themselves in culturally learned forms, being, not a peripheral activity casually members had it) to survive better than much as we ceramists learn the particular lopped off vulnerable school budgets. those who lacked the tendency. language of our medium. This is not I say we are one tribe, one race—the Joseph Campbell called it the tendency obvious to everyone and it is the highly human race. Only recently have we been to produce “divinely superfluous beauty.” industrialized part of the great human domesticated into separate cultures. It is Whatever we call it—art, art-making, tribe that most suffers confusion about thought that hominids became distinct making special—it has been with us from our own natural gifts. If art-making origi­ about 4 million years ago. For 39/40ths the beginning. It helped us survive, to nated from and played a critical role in of that 4-million-year period, we inhab­ form ourselves and our communities, and human biological adaptation, then it is ited essentially the same environment and it is with us now. far more important, more primal, than lived the same way, as nomadic savan- has been recognized in our educational nah-dwelling hunter-gatherers in small The author George Kokis is a faculty art­ institutions or in the marketplace. groups of 25 or so. Cultural diversity has ist at the University of Oregon in Eugene; The buying and selling of artwork is a occurred so recently that what happened this text was excerpted from his “Invoca­ billion-dollar business and millions throng to us for 3,900,000 years, in that essen­ tion” presented at the 1993 “World Clay to major art exhibitions, yet the arts to­ tially uniform environment, is what still Stomp” in Flagstaff, Arizona.

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