My Work. FIFTYMy YEARS IN THEWay. STUDIO Harlan House A-01 A-02 ForDedication my friend Miss Maureen McBride, and our Marnie and Abraham. I don’t know how many times I have been asked if our children work in the arts. Nope. They know… MY WORK, MY WAY: FIFTY YEARS IN THE STUDIO Copyright © 2018 by Harlan House All rights reserved. First Printing, 2019 23 22 21 20 19 / 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed and bound in Canada Printer: Allan Graphics, 170 Binnington Court, Kingston, Ontario Cover Design, Interior Design and Layout: Miriad Design + Production Front Cover: Hand-built electrical porcelain vases, with wax resist Lithium blue glaze, 1971–’72 made in Calgary Inside Cover: Morgan Glaze at its best with after 2000 chop mark Back Cover: Shoe Ship chandelier, slip cast porcelain with HH celadon glaze, Murano glass oars and copper decks added. 2014 www.harlanhouse.com Table of Contents I took the photographs in this book except where credits are given. I will take the heat for any errors in this book. I endured the system and managed to get a grade 12 education. Mostly. I wrote the Grade 12 math exam three times. The total of all three exams is a way less than 50. So there might be errors. I did better in English because I have a good imagination. Along the way I had some very good advice. Gloria Hickey told me that it was a good idea for potters to wash their own dishes. More than once. I saw this on a wall. Life is short; start with dessert. A-05 RCA HSTUDIOarlan POTTERHouse photo credit Ned Pratt I am a potter. This book is for potters. The differencePrologue between being a studio potter and a teacher is night and day. Potters get to work all day, and into the night. Teachers don’t. I tried both and chose the night life. So why write? I had a plan. Pick some of my favorite pieces and run a slideshow. I asked our son Abraham if there was room on the website. He said “yes”, and asked “why?” My work, my way, covering fifty years in the studio. “Fine but it is just a picture show,” Meet Your Maker recumbent Mei Ping 2006 he said. Abraham suggested that I write about the I was given some Chinese porcelain. I used it in this shadow, as a way of pieces explaining why works were chosen and in saying ‘thank you’ to generations of old Chinese potters who did such some cases how they were made. Improvement. fine work. The Mei Ping is glazed in Imperial Snapdragon Yellow, and More work. Maybe, like a good teacher, I can be of the shadow self-portrait is RGM celadon. 6.5 inches or 16.5 cm high, some use to aspiring potters. Let’s find out… and 15 in. or 38 cm long. This is my work, my way, but my hope is that this is less about me, and more about how and why creating is so important. As robots and Artificial Intelligence replace human occupation, there is even more need for us to make relevant art. Making clay objects that are alive with expression is essential because they are made by a human and made for a human. Even though you are reading this on a very modern platform, we, as humans have not changed very much in thousands of years. We still need, and should touch, whether it is with our hands or our eyes or both. Enjoy. Wall plate Lithium blue flashed ash glaze rim 1 AnThere has alwaysintroduction been a reason for making an object aside from the enjoyment of just being a maker. I go to work but I play. If I needed dinner plates for our family, I made them. If I needed lamps for our house, I made them. If I needed a vase for tulips, I made tulip vases. If I was curious or cynical or amused about anything, I made something in response to those feelings. In short, I did pretty much what I was taught to do in art school. See, respond, think, and then make fine Art. I have also been very fortunate to have had good friends who asked me to make things for them. It has been a pleasure to stretch out and solve problems that I didn’t even know existed. Samsung Galexy cell phones I love accidents. Every good change or variation in my work has started with an Morgan and temmoku 2017 accident. It was even a secretary’s accident that got me into art school. Mrs. Stevenson When cell phones started to mistakenly sent me an acceptance letter instead of a rejection. Sweet! ignite themselves I reacted. These The thing I like most about accidents is not so much making them, but do not cost anything monthly, and will never bother you. And looking at them. Is it good, is it bad? Is it something I can do again? Can I keep you still have a phone. the flavour? Is it adding to the statement? Is it worth remembering? This project is a record of some of my accidents. It might be about some of my best work, but it really is about what makes an accident turn into better work, and a more satisfying life. It has been a life of phases for me. Whatever technique I picked up in art school was never enough to do the whole job. For me life has been about having ideas, and then finding the tools/skills to do the work on the idea. Always catch-up. I think potters are a lot like good cooks in that respect. In order to learn how to poach an egg, a cook will waste a hundred eggs, and then get the hang of it while working on the next hundred. I did exactly that with each form, and with each glaze and each function and each foot and each lip and each shoulder. The gathering of tools and the refinement of ideas is a long drawn-out process for all of us who make ceramics our living. Maureen’s Christmas dinner ware plate 1982 The rippling rim on Maureen’s Lithium Blue Glaze formula Christmas plate was a complete accident that led [makes 25 pounds] from my to all kinds of things. teacher Bert Borch Nepheline Syenite 11.4 Barium Carb 8.4 Lithium Carb 0.28 The Butterfly wall plate Ball clay 1.8 Lithium blue and ash glazes Silica 2 The butterfly piece is a result of Bentonite 0.5 adding iron oxide slip to the rim, over Copper Carb 0.75 an ash only glaze. It shouldn’t have been a surprise, but it was. 2 Thomas Glaze formula Thomas glaze starts out as TOM or touch of the moon. Just add 10 pounds of 400m or 40 micron silica to the below TOM formula, and use Grolleg kaolin instead of EPK. It is a matt, dry whitish glaze that I used on many of the iris vases. They were sprayed with TOM in the green state, and once fired. An over glaze brush full of wet chrome oxide gave me green leaves. You can scratch through the chrome to make all Large branch Mei Ping celadon (t) Thomas scalloped Garlic head flower sorts of linear marks…have fun. vase with ash and peach black wall plate 1976 vase 1981 Cobalt water color over glaze glaze cobalt and 1978 33 cm across gives a good light blue, and wet iron oxide wash (b) Wall iris plate in cobalt slip yields a deep blue. 46 cm high flashed Thomas Add Manganese and you may get into the blue-purple range. My studio creativity image looks like a bicycle wheel. I am the hub. I go out A whiter, dryer version of TOM on a spoke and push an idea as far as I can. I retreat to the hub, and go out on and a little less crackle when it another spoke with a different idea and push that idea as far as I can. Rest, think, is thick. These two glazes were always applied quite thin. retreat. Repeat. In time, I re-enter a spoke that I created and push the idea a little further out. Re-visit and re-work and re-think and then retreat once again to the TOM formula hub. It can always be better, and it only gets that way if the work gets done. As Nepheline Syenite 50 Picasso said, “ inspiration will come, but it must find you working”. Whiting 30 EPK kaolin 20 Bentonite 4 (l) The largest Iris vase I made Thomas glaze flashed 59 cm or 23.25 in. high; (r) detail of very large iris vase [see appendix for complete formula] (l) Thrown faceted bud vase in Lithium blue flashed (r) Thrown vase with Iris added in flashed Thomas glaze 1978 I have had a creative life with many spokes and many interests. Not a wheel for comfort and smooth riding, but a wheel that is rough, unfinished and always changing; it’s not a boring ride. And no marks earned for finding an idea or form and riding it into fame. The sections of this book are organized like the bicycle wheel I mentioned. I will start in Calgary, and then explore the spokes of the wheel. The photo- graphs are not in chronological order. In my life, time does not matter. 3 GettingArt school and basStarted..