Playing with Anima Mundi (Soul of the Earth) A Sculptural Retrospective George Kokis Works from 1960 Onward Initial Presentation at Clay Space Gallery Store • Eugene, Oregon November/December 2013 ©2013 George Kokis Playing with Anima Mundi (Soul of the Earth) A Sculptural Retrospective Invitation to Retrospection Looking ahead. Looking within. Looking over a life lived loving art, loving students, loving those on the journey together, believing Art Saves Lives. Looking ahead the path is short. Seven decades gone. Looking within to observe what remains to be passed on for others to possibly incorporate: the body of the clay, the joy of a life in clay. Art echoes that all is passing though l live with shelves and walls filled with artifacts. How can all this be given away, sparing the family the task of dispersal? Perhaps a retrospective can be “the wind and the water” that passes along the art? Here it is! A sale that passes all profits to Clay Space, A wonderful Clay studio in Eugene, creation of Jim Laub; once a student, now a colleague. A place where art is saving lives and will for years to come. Teaching. Community. Laughter. Empty the shelves and spread the invitation: Art Saves Lives. 1960’s George Kokis The Sixties The Sixties found me finishing my MFA at Alfred University and beginning employment at The Brooklyn Museum Art School where I mostly fired Kilns. At first I had no clear reason to imagine I should seek a teaching position. But after the occasional fill-in for absent teachers, my focus on that matter changed considerably. Now I had to teach! The chief problem was the lack of such employment; there being only 10 or so teaching jobs in the whole country with around 100 clay folk trying to land one. At that time there was nothing like the number of clay programs available today with thousands of seekers. Nope — I didn’t land a teaching job at a school so I took a teaching assignment at a Air Force Base in Puerto Rico! It seemed an odd choice at the time but Cindy and I thought it would be a chance to have an adventure. It was, but a year was enough. We returned to the same job situation and hatched a plan that would hopefully lead to a teaching position. We would live with Cindy’s parents for a year while Cindy taught part-time and I would produce a body of work at the Port Chester Clay Studio. Our passport for this plan was 2 lovely girl children whom Cindy’s parents found irresist- ible. The risky plan worked as we hoped and, after a couple of shows in New York, led to a teaching assignment at Ohio University in 1965. I have few pieces from that period and offer 5 for your consideration. The abstract forms are typical of my work at that time and all were fired in my stoneware kiln, numbers 4 & 5 are Salt glazed. It’s clear I was totally captivated by the lush surfaces the sodium fire produced. KokiS : List of Works: Decade 1960 SCULPTURE Stoneware 1 8” x 6” wt. 4 lbs SCULPTURE Stoneware 9” x 8” wt. 5 lbs 2 SCULPTURE Stoneware 3 11” x 12” wt. 9 lbs SCULPTURE Salt Glazed Stoneware 11” x 9” wt. 10 lbs 4 KokiS : List of Works: Decade 1960 SCULPTURE Salt Glazed Stoneware 12” x 9” wt. 11 lbs I seem to have been drawn to a process of reduction to sim- plicity. The ceramic forms I’ve been working with lately are basic in shape and coloration. The materials are common as 5 are the techniques; the kind normally experienced and left behind by the serious student of ceramics in short order. Well, why bother? Why go back to rudimentary forming of a mate- rial literally as common as dirt? Why spend hours shaing, honing, impressing with old signs and symbols? I would answer in this way: The content, for me, is powerful and compelling. Though uncomplicated structurally they carry broad psychological references exactly through their generic simplicity. I’ve never been at the center of my profession – I’m always sniffing around the edges, bringing back interesting things. Not a giant but maybe one of the more interesting dwarfs. Sniffing like a dog around the edges, I bring back items stuck to my coat – later I pick at them. I’m interested in connections between things far from the center that fundamentally relate to the center. A web-maker! I like to ponder form relation- ships. 1970’s George Kokis The Seventies In 1973 I took a leave of absence from Ohio University and accepted a one year appointment at The University of Oregon. When the year was up I was invited to join the faculty at Oregon. I accepted. It was a momentous deci- sion moving our family clear across the country from our roots in New York City. Looking at the work in the catalog from the seventies, it’s clear that I was still (like so many others), enamored with Salt Glazed Firing. I loved the intimate process which was spectacular compared to the tidy quite low temperature electric kilns. SALT WAS THE BIG THING! VESSEL WITH HANDLE Salt Glazed Stoneware 6 4” x 8” wt. 1 lb VESSEL WITH HANDLE Salt Glazed Stoneware 5” x 8” wt. 1 lb 7 KokiS : List of Works: Decade 1970 STONEHOLDER Salt Glazed Stoneware 8 11” x 8” wt. 4 lbs STONEHOLDER Salt Glazed Stoneware 12” x 8” wt. 3 lbs 9 CUP 10 Salt Glazed Stoneware 3.2” x 5” wt. 1 lb CUP Salt Glazed Stoneware 4” x 5.5” wt. 1 lb 11 KokiS : List of Works: Decade 1970 CUP 12 Salt Glazed Stoneware 4” x 5” wt. 1 lb CUP Salt Glazed Stoneware 3” x 6” wt. 1 lb 13 CUP Salt Glazed Stoneware 14 4.5” x 5” wt. 1 lb What is art-making but spiritual exercising. One’s spirit is animated to reconstruct a passage or bridge to that pre-exile place; to restore communication with that place no longer available to easy access. Art-making is healing – but the cure must be repeated again and again. We all need this ritual curing of the psychic fabric – both the individual and the society. It makes us more pliable, malleable, supple, limber and tender – more able to perform our various functions. Art is making obsessional ideas conscious: thus dissolving their hold on you. Art-making is learning to make your own medicine. KokiS : List of Works: Decade 1970 1980’s George Kokis The Eighties My years of the Eighties were marked by my zeroing in on several themes: • Lo-Tech Smoke Fires, • Reassembling Broken Forms, and • “Cultural Intrigues” After many years of Cone 10 fires of every description, I began to think I had used up all the high-end procedures I was entitled to for a while. Simplifying my working scheme allowed for diverse approches and expansion of my range of options. Pieces were bisque fired, then broken, followed by smoke firing the shards. What delight it is putting the shards back together again – now very different, a kind of creative archeology. I think that adding (what I call) cultural intrigue to the mix produced some of my best work to date. The wonderful academic practice of a Sabbatical every seven years to recharge one’s batteries was a wonderful opportunity. It meant multiple trips to visit distant family in Greece (Crete chiefly) and to study the ancient pottery forms. What especially intrigued me was the work of the Minoan culture. I think anyone who knows about the Minoans would find echoes of that in my work from that point on. KokiS : List of Works: Decade 1980 LEGGED VESSEL Reassembled Smoke Fire 16 12” x 6.5” wt. 4 lbs LEGGED VESSEL Reassembled Smoke Fire 9” x 13” wt. 5 lbs 1 7 VESSEL Salt Fire Stoneware 18 16” x 9” wt. 11.5 lbs VESSEL Low Temperature 16” x 9” wt. 10 lbs 19 KokiS : List of Works: Decade 1980 VESSEL Low Temperature 20 21” x 10” wt. 15 lbs BOX VESSEL Reassembled Smoke Fire 12” x 9” wt. 14 lbs 21 VESSEL ON STAND Reassembled Smoke Fire 22 9” x 7” wt. 2.5 lbs STONEHOLDER Salt Glazed Stoneware 11” x 5.5” wt. 3 lbs KokiS : List of Works: Decade 1980 23 STONEHOLDER Salt Glazed Stoneware 2411” x 5.5” wt. 2.5 lbs SCULPTURE WITH STAND Smoke Fire 11” x 7” wt. 10 lbs 25 1990’s The Nineties The decade of the nineties was marked by a concentration on a few visual themes that had been traveling with me for quite some time. Chief among this select group was the Vessel as symbolic presence. It may be that no theme has been so overworked as the Vessel. It is usually the first notion the novice confronts and the world of domestic ware opens wide to all who continue. And it is a wide threshold containing the hobbyist, the diligent village Potter, all the way to those who honor the vessel by reproducing it as an Artistic metaphysical structure. My commitment had long been marked by an interest in a principal aspect of the primary container, the first and last vessel (known to some as the Anima Mundi) that accommodates us in our earthly coming and going. The fundamental method employed in all my work is a historical technique known and used by every potter/artist due to the ease of giving form to the notion; the repetitive examination of formal ideas by producing multiple versions for deliberation.