Cover: Richard Hensley Spotlight: Cynthia Bringle ... · las, Texas. For that project, Earline...

Cover: Richard Hensley

Spotlight: Cynthia Bringle

Technical: Reduction Misnomer

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Earline’s other grandmother, Mama Ginger,taught her advanced quilting patterns. Later this in-fluenced the design of Earline’s stoneware quilt tilemosaics displayed in the entrance of the PaulLaurence Dunbar Lancaster-Kiest Library in Dal-las, Texas. For that project, Earline fired 284 whitestoneware tiles—all in her faithful Paragon Dragon.

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Earline Green’s clay spirit quilts on display in the Dunbar Lan-caster-Kiest Branch Library in Dallas, Texas.

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M O N T H L Y

[email protected]: (614) 794-5869fax: (614) 891-8960editor Jessica Knappassociate editor Holly Goringassistant editor Forrest Sincoff Gardeditorial support Jan Moloneyeditorial support Linda Stovertechnical editor Dave Finkelnburg

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Editorial Advisory BoardLinda Arbuckle; Professor, Ceramics, Univ. of FloridaScott Bennett; Sculptor, Birmingham, AlabamaDick Lehman; Studio Potter, IndianaMeira Mathison; Director, Metchosin Art School, CanadaPhil Rogers; Potter and Author, WalesJan Schachter; Potter, CaliforniaMark Shapiro; Worthington, MassachusettsMichael Strand; Fargo, North DakotaSusan York; Santa Fe, New MexicoCeramics Monthly (ISSN 0009-0328) is published monthly,

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cover: Richard Hensley’s platter, 21 in. (79 cm) in diameter, wheel-thrown porcelain, cobalt-oxide wash under #24 Crackle Clear glaze, Smokey Green glaze applied over top with a thin layer of Hensley Matte glaze sprayed over, fired in reduction to cone 10.15

contents march 2016 volume 64, number 3

editorial11 From the Editor Jessica Knapp

12 CM Interactive

exposure14 Images from Current and Upcoming Exhibitions

techno file58 Reduction Misnomer by Ryan Coppage, PhDWe all know what reduction is right? Or do we? The science behind what happens in a reduction-fired kiln and the resulting color palette my not be exactly what you think it is.

tips and tools60 Wax Brush Holders by Linda Arbuckle and Forrest Sincoff GardLearn a few easy DIY hacks that will keep the bristles of your wax brushes suspended in water so they don’t dry and harden up in between use.

resources77 Call for EntriesInformation on submitting work for exhibitions, fairs, and festivals.

78 ClassifiedsLooking to buy? Looking to sell? Look no further.

79 Index to Advertisers

spotlight80 Evaluate and AppreciateCynthia Bringle shares a few words of wisdom and advice garnered over a 50-year career of making functional pots for everyday use.


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clay culture22 Ceramic Craftivism by Betsy GreerCarrie Reichardt is a renegade potter and a craftivist. Her work on the mosaic-tiled car, the Zulu VooDoo Liberation Taxi is an honest, altruistic, and unapologetic wish for justice.

26 Freedom of the Press by Mitch LyonsImagine keeping a slab of clay damp and using it to print new work for 35 years. Now imagine throwing it a birthday party and inviting everyone to celebrate with you.

studio visit30 Kate and Daniel Johnston, Seagrove, North CarolinaDaniel and Kate make work in a log cabin studio that Daniel built using wood that came from his property. The raw beauty aesthetic of their work and their studio attracts a wide range of customers and collectors.

features34 Jun Kaneko: The Surface Figures; The Figure Surfaces by Glen R. BrownFrom his early Chunks to the iconic Dangos and his recent Tanukis, Kaneko has combined a mastery of ceramics and an interest in culturally significant, reductive forms with explorations of vibrant non-objective painting. The resulting pieces express both physicality and immateriality.

40 Tom Turner: A Passion in Porcelain by Patrick Taylor and Don PilcherThroughout Turner’s 52-year career he has continued to hone his precise yet generous forms and glazes through critical observation, meticulous notes, and a focus on invention.

44 Beth Katleman: After Folly by Lilianne MilgromA single exhibition catapulted Beth Katleman into the limelight. Since then she has explored a number of narratives using her carefully constructed figurative tableaus.

48 Betty Woodman: The Ultimate Still-life Object by Kathleen WhitneyAn iconic and tireless innovator, Woodman deftly combines references to an eclectic set of influences gained over 60 years of studying art and architecture with an innovative use of materials to create sculptural compositions that look effortless.

52 Exploring Glazes: From Perfect Fit to Crackle and Matte by Richard Hensley After years spent getting his clay and glazes to play nicely together, Hensley found himself gravitating toward some of the very qualities he had worked so hard to avoid.

glaze56 Cone 10 Glazes by Richard Hensley

62 Cone 9 Glazes by Tom Turner


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of later, deconstructed vases and multi-media pieces made me think about and look for space within an installation or sculpture as an active, engaging, and powerful element both in my own work and that of other artists.

Cynthia Bringle has worked for over 50 years to make din-nerware and vessels to populate domestic spaces (see two examples below as well as in her Spotlight article on page 80). She has made pots for several generations of families, and strives to teach adults and kids alike about the importance of using pots and the value of having artists in our society. Bringle is renown for her influence as a generous mentor and teacher both in her backyard at Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina, and at institutions nationwide. Her approach includes helping students to learn skills and develop their own styles, encouraging them to strive for more, and being an example and role model for those who want to pursue a career as a full-time artist and potter.

Mastery often goes beyond the individual as well. Studio visit artists Kate and Daniel Johnston, who live and work in Seagrove, North Carolina, talk about how the continual process of building on the foundations of knowledge and skills laid by generations of master potters and the open sharing of ideas has contributed to the advancement of artists working in the region today.

We can learn many things from our mentors, not only about how to advance our own work, but also how to collectively advance our field through a variety of approaches.

Pots by Cynthia Bringle: 1 Pitcher, 9 in. (23 cm) in height, stoneware, salt fired to cone 10. 2 Platter, 17½ in. (44 cm) in diameter, stoneware, glaze, fired to cone 10 in a gas kiln. Photos: Mercedes Jelinek.

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“I want the work to look as if it was rather easy, even if it wasn’t.”—Betty Woodman

As we put together this issue, focused on masters in clay, this state-ment kept resurfacing in my thoughts. For me, it gets to the core of why it can be both exhilarating and intimidating to be in the presence of pots and sculptures made by master artists. They do indeed look assured and effortless, but the wealth of conceptual, historical, and technical knowledge these pieces embody is inspiring.

The editorial staff also has this feeling of wonder when we put together an issue like this one, covering the careers of a few of these master artists; those who have had long, influential careers both making work and helping others as mentors, teachers, friends, and colleagues. These artists, Cynthia Bringle, Jun Kaneko, Tom Turner, and Betty Woodman, all share a tendency to look forward to the next piece they will make, and think about how they can improve upon the one they just completed.

Jun Kaneko has long been considered an innovator who creates deceptively simple yet singular sculptures in clay and other media that are both monumental technical feats and enigmatic presences no matter the environment in which they are situated. He is also known for community building and expanding access to art through his work as a cofounder of the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art and the creative space KANEKO: Open Space for the Mind, both in Omaha, Nebraska, and through numerous public commissions.

Tom Turner is well known for his scientific approach to his re-search, technical knowledge, development of precise and generous forms, and stunning surfaces through a meticulous, scientific and creative approach. Although he works full time as a potter, he has also mentored and shared his knowledge with many students through teaching positions and workshops.

Betty Woodman has been an influential artist as well as teacher for generations of students. Her influence loomed large when I attended the University of Colorado, Boul-der, even though she had retired several years prior. I can still remember seeing her pillow pitchers for the first time, and wondering at their distinctive form and concise but perceptive art his-torical references. Seeing examples


cm interactiveFrom Idea to Finished FormWe are excited to announce that the call for entries is now open for our second annual “From Idea to Finished Form” contest, which will be included in the September 2016 issue. Show us how you brainstorm and develop your ideas then build on and resolve them in the studio. We will publish two images per selected artist: one that shows an idea you feel has potential, (a sketch, CAD drawing, templates, work-in-progress, prototype, etc.), and a second image of the finished piece in which you resolve the ideas originating from the first one. The contest is open to all artists making work that is at least 50% clay. For more information, visit http://ceramicartsdaily.org/ceramics-monthly/submit-content and click on the name of the contest at the top of the page.

Expanded ContentWant to see more artwork related to this month’s articles? Visit the Subscriber Extras section online (http://ceramicartsdaily.org/ceramics-monthly/subscriber-extras) where we have more images from Exposure, the Studio Visit with Daniel and Kate Johnston, Richard Hensley, Jun Kaneko, Tom Turner, and Cynthia Bringle.

We also included two archive articles to provide context for this month’s feature on Jun Kaneko’s career and the Spotlight with Cynthia Bringle.

Find it difficult to get a sense of large in-stallations and the process involved in making them in still images? Watch the video on Beth Katleman’s dark yet opulent sculptures and hear how late nights in the studio influence the narratives.

Social InspirationShare images of what your kiln looks like when it is firing in perfect reduc-tion for your work. Is there lots of soot

building up around the door and orange flames escaping past the spy plugs and out the chim-ney? Use the hashtag #reductionfiring to share.While you’re at it, show us any simple tools or holders you’ve devised for use during work sessions to make tasks easier and more efficient. Share them using the hashtag #studiohack.

Learn more about our contests and see images of work made by last year’s Emerging Artists and From Idea to

Finished Form contest winners. Visit us on Pinterest to find more im-ages of work by Cynthia Bringle, Jun

Kaneko, Tom Turner, and Betty Woodman on our Masters in the Field board.


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for complete calendar listings see www.ceramicsmonthly.org

exposure

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1 Shoji Satake’s On-na, 6 in. (15 cm) in height, slip-cast, altered, and 3-D printed clay, glaze, 2015. 2 Shoko Teruyama’s oval plate, 12 in. (30 cm) in diameter, earthenware, slip, glaze, 2015. 3 Yoko Sekino-Bové’s A Thousand Feathers Pillow, 10 in. (25 cm) in length, mid-range porcelain, underglaze, 2015. “Michi: Distinctive Paths, Shared Affinity,” at Baltimore Clayworks (www.baltimoreclayworks.org) in Baltimore, Maryland, through March 5, 2016. 4 Scott Lykens’s Cherry Blossom Basket, 8 in. (20 cm) in length, earthenware, majolica, 2015. “At Your Service,” at Baltimore Clayworks (www.baltimoreclayworks.org) in Baltimore, Maryland, March 11–May 7, 2016. 5 George Timock’s Vessel SSS, 10½ in. (27 cm) in height, porcelain, luster, 2014. Photo: EG Schempf. 6 Peter Pincus’ vessel, 26 in. (66 cm) in height, colored porcelain, gold luster, PC-11, 2015. 7 Cary Esser’s Veil (15-10-2), 16¾ in. (43 cm) in height, glazed earthenware, 2015. Photo: EG Schempf. “The Once and Future: New Now,” at Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art (www.sherryleedy.com) in Kansas City, Missouri, February 5–March 19, 2016. 8 Julia Kunin’s Rock Vase, ceramic. “Dysfunction,” at Burlington City Arts (www.burlingtoncityarts.org), in Burlington, Vermont, through April 9, 2016.



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1 Katelyn Gettner’s Beehive, porcelain, glaze, 2014. “Every Semester: Collecting KCAI Ceramics 1995–2015” at The Belger Arts Center (www.redstarstudios.org) in Kansas City, Missouri, through March 19, 2016. 2 Mariko Paterson’s Eye of the Tiger, 13 in. (33 cm) in diameter, clay, glaze, lusters, decals, 2015. 3 Colleen Toledano’s Grandiose Growth, 4 ft. (1.2 m) in height, stoneware, commercial decals, balsa wood, 2015. “Decalcomaniacs” at The Belger Arts Center (www.redstarstudios.org) in Kansas City, Missouri, March 4–May 21, 2016. 4 Kim Dickey’s Monochrome Corner, 4 ft. 2 in. (1.3 m) in length, glazed terra cotta, aluminum, rubber, grommets, silicon, 2015. 5 Kyle Triplett and Rain Harris’ Tulpomanie (detail), 4 ft. (1.2 m) in length, black clay, metal, 2015. “The Garden Party” at The Belger Arts Center (www.redstarstudios.org) in Kansas City, Missouri, February 5– May 21, 2016.


Exhibitions through May 21st, 2016 Desire

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Beth Cavener, Unrequited, 2015, resin-infused refractory material, paint, steel base, 15” x 45” x 16”, courtesy of the artist

Exhibitions through May 21st, 2016

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exposu re

1 Sue Johnson’s Blue Plate Special (Dory with Dirty Rice), Black Set from the Incredible Edibles series, ceramic. Courtesy of Arts/Industry Program, John Michael Kohler Arts Center. “At Your Service,” at Houston Center for Contemporary Craft (www.crafthouston.org), in Houston, Texas, through May 8, 2016. 2 Edmund De Waal’s the first day and the first hour, 5½ ft. (1.6 m) in length, porcelain, wood, aluminum, glass, 2013. Photo: Mike Bruce. 3 Ai Weiwei’s Bowl of Pearls, 3 ft. 3 in. (1 m) in diameter, porcelain, 2006. 4 Setsuko Nagasawa’s Nomade, 18½ in. (47 cm) in length, ceramic, 2008. “Ceramix,” at La Maison Rouge (www.lamaisonrouge.org) in Paris, France, March 8–June 5, 2016. 5 Steven Heinemann’s untitled (disc), 20 in. (51 cm) in height, terra cotta, engobe, 2003. Photo: Mauro Magliani and Barbara Piovan. “Passion for Ceramics: Frank Nievergelt Collection,” at Musee Ariana (http://institutions.ville-geneve.ch/fr/ariana) in Geneva, Switzerland, April 8–September 25, 2016. 6 Martha Russo’s Nomos, 18 ft. (5.4 m) in length, porcelain, wood, Styrofoam, paper, pigment, 2007. Photo: Oren Eckhaus. Courtesy of Claudia Stone Gallery, New York, New York, and Goodwin Fine Arts, Denver, Colorado, “Coalescere,” at Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (http://bmoca.org) in Boulder, Colorado, March 31–June 12, 2016.

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1 Afghan Traditional Pottery's Istalif ceramics, ceramic, Ishkar glaze. “Turquoise Mountain: Artists Transforming Afghanistan,” at Arthur M. Sackler Gallery (www.asia.si.edu) in Washington, DC, March 5–January 29, 2017. 2 Jenny Mendes’ Both Sides, terra cotta. “Equality,” at The Ohio Craft Museum (www.crafthouston.org), in Columbus, Ohio, through March 26, 2016. 3 Koren Christofides’ Chicken Little, 20½ in. (52 cm) in height, mixed clays, terra sigillata, slip, washes, glaze, fired to cone 10 in a reduction kiln, 2014. “A Modern Medieval Bestiary,” at Gallery IMA (http://galleryima.com) in Seattle, Washington, March 3–April 2, 2016. 4 Anne Drew Potter’s Three Little Girls with the Shirley Temple Curls, 5 ft. 4 in. (1.6 m) in length, terra cotta, 2012. “InCiteful Clay,” at the Cultural Lab at Mid American Arts Alliance (www.maaa.org) in Kansas City, Missouri, March 4–19, 2016.1

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CLAY CULTURE

ceramic craftivismLondon artist Carrie Reichardt blurs the boundaries between craft and activism, using mural and mosaic techniques to create intricate, highly politicized works of art.

by Betsy Greer

Sometimes our craft is more than the product of our own two hands. It is a lifeline. In the case of Carrie Reichardt, it is a lifeline that also allows her to amplify the voices of others. But as with many things in life, it took her some time to find it. We sat down to talk at the end of her two-month residency at The Clay Studio in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, about the beginnings of the Zulu VooDoo Liberation Taxi and then again after it was finished months later.

First and foremost, when it comes to her work, Reichardt is a renegade potter and craftivist. Her work is about more than the sum of its parts, and invites viewers into the conversation it begins. Her work first came up on my radar a decade ago, when I learned she had mosaicked her townhouse in London in part to raise aware-ness of the Angola 3, three prisoners who had been held at Angola State Penitentiary in Angola, Louisiana, in solitary confinement for decades. Since then her work has continued to amaze me with its raw openness, honesty, and unapologetic wish for justice.

Therefore, when I heard she was working on a new project, the Zulu VooDoo Liberation Taxi, a London black cab that she covered in a mosaic to raise awareness for the case of Kenny “Zulu” Whitmore, also an Angola prisoner, I had to learn more.

Reichardt was originally brought to The Clay Studio by Garth Johnson, who now works at Arizona State University as curator of

ceramics. “I always like to talk about craftivism and political craft being a Trojan horse. The craft and the form are something that people can relate to, can understand culturally, and put within context,” states Johnson. And in mixing ceramic components with glass tiles on top of an already-iconic black cab, she is taking something highly relatable and infusing it with familiar objects that create an entirely new vehicle of education. As Johnson notes, “Carrie really gets the push and pull of being able to draw an audience in visually.”

During a visit to The Clay Studio, I helped Reichardt glaze ceramic slip-cast elements for the mosaic—bones, skulls, and babies’ heads—for the kiln. A nod to her anarchic aesthetic, these components add a bit of punk to the glass tile pieces, which also adorn the taxi. Adding these ceramic pieces to her work is important, as she says, “I think there is a real connection that if you look at civilizations for any period or any place, they’ve all got their own form of ceramic.” She places her work firmly within the history of ceramics, knowing that it is continu-ing the conversations of those that came before.

While she makes pieces herself under the name Mad In Eng-land, the taxi was made by the collective Reichardt started, The Treatment Rooms. The name comes from a sign she found in a derelict psychiatric facility in London. “I took that sign and I screwed it to my studio door, because even then I was conscious of this [the studio] as my daycare. This is where I go to have my therapy.” In doing fairly large-scale work, such as covering a black cab with tiny individual pieces, she is quick to add that one of the benefits of making socially conscious work is that people find you. The work inspires other makers to join in, given the meaning the final product will have.

When her residency at The Clay Studio was over, Reichardt packed up her pieces, bringing them back to London to start work on the Zulu VooDoo Liberation Taxi, the idea being that the dream goal of the finished taxi was to give Kenny “Zulu” Whitmore a ride from prison to freedom. With the help of Lori Bell (also known as Lady Muck), Karen Wydler, Sian Wonnish, Eoghan Ebrill, and street artist ATM, they were able to create a moving art object that they eventually took to several English festivals in the summer of 2015. At the festivals, the taxi served well as a Trojan horse. “All these people come up to you; they are drawn to it because it’s beautiful.

Continued on page 24.

From left to right: Carrie Reichardt, Eoghan Ebrill, and Yohanna Parketny work on the Zulu VooDoo Liberation Taxi outside of Reichardt’s home in London. Photo: Sian Smith.

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And it’s shiny, and it’s bling, and it’s a car. And they come up and they go, ‘Oh my god, you mosaicked this car!’” It is at moments like this where a doorway appears in the realm of political craft, where it exists as a beautiful work entirely on its own, yet with the right understanding or by asking the right questions, it also stands to become something imbued with incredible meaning and depth. Reichardt continues, “and then you show them the portrait on the front of Zulu and then you would lead them to the back, it has a statement by Zulu.” And just like that, it’s at once both a lovely piece of work along with a lesson in injustice.”

After 37 years in solitary confinement, Kenny “Zulu” Whitmore recently was allowed to move back into a prison dormitory. Right before I spoke to Reichardt the second time, she had just finished a phone call with him, another new privilege for Whitmore. He’s apparently “overjoyed” with the taxi. “He’s overwhelmed by the idea that there are so many people in England, so far away who are so committed to what’s happened to him.”

The collective took the taxi to festivals to not only share the work with festivalgoers, but also to educate them about Whitmore’s case as well as the problems with the US justice system. This is part of the brilliance of Reichardt’s work, says Jennifer Zwilling, curator of Artistic Programs at The Clay Studio, as by taking it outside of gallery walls she’s encouraging people to openly ask questions about it, giving her “a non-threatening platform to kind of transition the conversation over to causes she feels are important.” Reichardt’s journey into mak-ing work around prisons began in 2000, when she saw an ad asking people to write to death-row prisoners. When she received her first letter back, however, she wondered, “what have I done?” But when she opened the letter, from an inmate, who by coincidence was also a mosaic artist, she says, “what smacked me in the face was humanity. Every preconceived idea I had, everything I thought, just went out the window in that instance. I just realized, this is a human being.”

In the 16 years since, she has been a fierce advocate against injustice, making pieces about issues such as the inhumanity of animal cruelty and to raise awareness of lesser-known heroes such as suffragette Mary Bamber. There is an empathy and compassion that echoes through both her work and the work of The Treatment

Rooms Collective, as it exists to call attention to issues and people that may go easily overlooked. That “everyone in the Treatment Rooms recognizes that art is the thing that enables them to func-tion” is not too surprising and I think part of the lynchpin of their work, allowing them to easily connect with others. In the making, they don’t only work with items made from the earth itself, they also create connective tissue to the outside world as well.

Judith Schwartz, author of the book Confrontational Ceramics and New York University art professor, calls artists like Reichardt “visual philosophers,” noting that “any artist who is able to get us to experience the social condition that they’re trying to change makes an incredible impact on our lives.” And with her work, Reichardt makes an impact that flows from the artist to the work to the audience, and then back again, allowing her to make and connect seamlessly. What begins as therapy for the self becomes a way to help connect the ills of the world spiraling outward, raising awareness one piece at a time.

the author Betsy Greer lives in Durham, North Carolina, where she writes about craftivism and makes political craftwork. She can be found at http://craftivism.com.

1 The Zulu VooDoo Liberation Taxi as part of Artcore’s “Esthisis” exhibition at the Crows Nest Gallery in West London. Photo: Mark R. Baker. 2 Laying out the slip-cast and handmade ceramic components for the bonnet of the taxi.

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CLAY CULTURE


NCECA... Congratulations on 50 years of serving the Ceramics community!!!

Visit the SHIMPO booth at NCECA for our special NCECA 50th

Anniversary T-shirt Giveaway!

Visit the SHIMPO booth at NCECA for our special NCECA 50th

Anniversary T-shirt Giveaway!

While you’re visiting, ask us about our Teabowl Call for Entry for NCECA 2017!While you’re visiting, ask us about our Teabowl Call for Entry for NCECA 2017!

NCECA... Congratulations on 50 years of serving the Ceramics community!!!

CLAY CULTURE

freedom of the pressExperiments printing raw clay on rice paper and nonwoven materials led to the birthday celebration for a clay slab that’s been in use as a printing surface for 35 years.

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While a student potter in the 1960s, I felt that the time between forming a pot, waiting for it to dry, bisque firing, glazing, and finally retrieving the finished work out of a hot kiln, often took weeks or even months. By the time I received my work back, I had lost the continuity, spontaneity, and inspiration that had first drawn me to clay. That nagging feeling led me to try to circumvent the traditional glazing process by directly adding the color and texture to the wet clay before forming the vessel. This would allow me to keep the continuity intact because the color and texture would become more of a synchronized unity.

To achieve this effect, I added pigmented coils of colored clay into a slab of white clay. I then placed newsprint over the slab, and rolled it with a wooden rolling pin to inlay the colored clay; I continued to add one colored clay coil over another until the design was finished. I noticed that when I rolled newsprint over the clay slab inlaid with colored clay, the ghost images from the colors were transferred to the newsprint. This is when the idea of printing with clay first inter-ested me. I also observed that rolling clay onto canvas and cutting it with a knife left a thin line of colored clay on the surface of the canvas. So I began to wedge more intense ceramic pigments—i.e. iron oxide, cobalt oxide, black iron oxide, and yellow ochre—into white clay to experiment with the idea that colored clay could be used for printing. If it worked on newsprint, then perhaps it could work on better paper.

After weeks of trying a variety of printmaking papers, I found that Tableau rice paper worked the best. It has long fibers, high wet strength, and extreme flexibility when dampened. The dampened

rice paper, when placed over the design and rolled with a wooden rolling pin, pulled some colored clay from the slab onto the substrate. For twelve years (1968–80) I tried many different printing and wa-tercolor papers. In March 1976 I took a paper-making workshop, believing that an absorbent surface was the only surface with which to experiment.

Finding the Right SubstrateMy journey took me to unusual places to look for a substrate that pulled more clay, not just color from the slab. In late 1979 I found myself in a fabric store and noticed a roll of white fabric hanging from the ceiling that looked very much like canvas, so I inquired about it. I was told that the roll was called Pellon, a nonwoven, nylon-based material that is manufactured and used mostly for the clothing industry (as interfacing material) and is not very absorbent. I purchased a yard, and when I tried it out, it worked much better than paper.

For the very first time I was printing more colored clay from the slab, not just color. What was going on here? Why was it printing better? My thinking shifted with two very important revelations: first, I really did not need a very absorbent surface; and second, since printing with clay was so unique, I needed to rethink my direction to continue investigating this process. That decision was very liberating for me, and so I started to look for other nonwoven substrates that pulled clay from the slab. After all, a new printmaking technique needed a new substrate.

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by Mitch Lyons

Continued on page 28.

1 Attendees selecting compositions and creating prints at the public monoprint event celebrating the 35th birthday of Mitch Lyons’ leather-hard stoneware printmaking slab. 2 Detail of a section of the slab, which Lyons prepared prior to the event by adding colored slip, textures, and marks to the surface.


At the same time that I was experimenting further with Pellon, I learned that the DuPont Company in Wilmington, Delaware, had also developed a similar nonwoven material called Reemay, and begun to distribute some to local artists, thinking it might replace traditional painter’s canvas. I was fortunate to receive a sample early in 1980.

Reemay is stiffer than Pellon, a little easier to handle, and stronger because it has longer fibers and great wet strength. It also comes in larger rolls, which allows for a variety of sizes. Because it is non-absorbent, it does not stretch when wet; it goes back into perfect registration when printing. Most importantly, it is manufactured with an electromagnetic surface, which eventually made it useful for household products such as Swiffer, the filtering industry (air and water conditioning), vacuum bags, surgical gowns, etc., because it allows water or air to pass through the fibers while the built-in static charge traps impurities on the surface.

Clay bonds to the Reemay because of a physical reaction. The nega-tive static charge of the Reemay attaches to the positive-charged clay, and adheres magnetically. Because no drying agents are used, it is less acidic and non-toxic, making it more archival. The colored pigments become much more light-fast by combining them with clay. Most of the other painting and printmaking mediums have drying agents that bond to substrates chemically and are therefore less archival.

Over the four decades I have been printing with colored clays and colored slips on Reemay, I have never seen any changes to any of the finished clay monoprints. They always retain the charge and keep the clay bonded magnetically.

Over the past 42 years, the process has slowly changed. I only print on Reemay, and I use both ceramic pigments (iron oxide and yellow ochre), and painter’s pigments (Rose Madder, Ivory Black, and Phthalo Blue) to mix with china clay. I use both because painter’s pigments are more brilliant than most raw ceramic pigments.

Birthday CelebrationIn September 1980 I rolled out a clay slab that was 6 ft.× 6 ft.× ½ inch thick and started printing larger clay monoprints. To this day, I still use that same wet stoneware slab. It is now over three inches thick with thousands of colored slips layered on top of the original half-inch of clay. I do not scrape or remove any clay or slip from the slab.

September 19th, 2015, marked the 35th birthday of my clay slab. To celebrate this milestone, we invited the community to visit my studio in New London, Pennsylvania, to make their own clay monoprints from the slab. During the weeks before the Saturday event, I added lots of colored slips, textures, and marks onto and into the slab. I also cut out cardboard window templates so my visitors could choose any spot on the slab from which to pull their prints.

Over 100 people turned out for the event, from as far north as New York and as far south as Virginia, to pull a print from the slab and enjoy some birthday cake. It was such a huge success that I may do it again for its 50th birthday.

the author Mitch Lyons is a studio artist living and working in New London, Pennsylvania.

A detail of a finished print taken from the slab using one of the prepared cardboard window templates.

CLAY CULTURE

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UNCONVENTIONAL CLAY : ENGAGED IN CHANGE

FEBRUARY 26 – JUNE 12, 2016

THE NELSON-ATKINS MUSEUM OF ART KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI

OPENING RECEPTION: MARCH 17, 2016 6–8PM Curated by: Catherine L. Futter & Leigh Taylor Mickelson

Dylan Beck

Jessica Brandl

Andy Brayman

Trisha Coates

Bryan Czibesz in collaboration with Shawn Spangler

Chase Grover

Ben Harle

Robert Harrison

Beth Katleman

Mika Negishi Laidlaw in collaboration with Dave Ryan & Steve Ryan

Simone Leigh

Nathan Mabry

Zemer Peled

Adams Puryear

Carrie Reichardt

Tom Sachs

Thomas Schmidt

Paul Scott

Adam Shiverdecker

Anthony Stellaccio

Brendan Tang

Ehren Tool

Joey Watson

Dustin Yager


StudioThe log cabin studio we share stands proudly on top of a hill, down a long dirt road. The original cabin has been Daniel’s primary making space for 12 years. He cut the logs from the property, hewed and notched them with a chainsaw. The brick foundation, windows, and doors were all reclaimed from old houses. The space is 16×32 feet, a doubling of the traditional log tobacco houses from this area. Daniel has wooden benches, his wheels, and a small pot-drying rack. The back of the cabin opens up into a 16×32 foot red brick room with benches for large-pot drying and storage. The slips and glazes are kept here, and the apprentices’ wheel and workbench are also in this area.

Following the slope of the land, my brick and cedar studio steps down toward the woods. I have a wheel, a slate table, workbenches, and a small pot drying rack. The floor is packed dark-red clay, which is the local earthenware. The building design was influenced by the studios of Mark Hewitt and Clive Bowen, the large bamboo structures where Daniel worked in Thailand, as well as the traditional tobacco barns from North Carolina.

The layout allows each of us to have our own work space and yet still be social. We can easily see each other and converse. The glazes are centrally located for everyone’s ease, and the large pot benches are equally accessible to both of us. The clay processing and dry materials storage are around the back of the building. The kiln and kiln shed are placed adjacent to the studio, taking equal prominence in the landscape.

Just the FactsClayDaniel and Kate: local stoneware processed in small batches for spe-cific pro ects and Star or s clay for everything else

Primary forming method aniel and ate: wheel throwing

Primary firing tem eratureaniel and ate: cone in a large

cross draft wood/salt iln

Favorite surface treatmentsDaniel: poured, dipped, and slip-trailedKate: carved patterns, inlaid slip, and painting with gla e

Favorite toolsDaniel: handmade wooden ribsate: a bamboo nife made by

Terry Childress

Studio laylistDaniel: mood-based music selectionKate: NPR and science-based podcasts

Wishlistaniel: a lift system for the larger pots

Kate: more heat in the winter

ST iO ViSiT

Kate and Daniel Johnston Seagrove, orth Carolina


We primarily use rainwater collected from the roof for our throwing water, clay mixing, and general cleaning. We have an outdoor wood stove that pumps hot water through reclaimed cast-iron radiators in the studio for heat.

A renticesThe apprentices are an important part of our studio life. We have one or two, depending on our workload. They spend the mornings doing the many chores of a pottery studio: cutting wood, clean-ing shelves, preparing clay, and such. We cook lunch and all eat together. In the afternoon, the apprentices focus on making pots. The pots can be wholesale orders, pots that Daniel has selected for them to make, or an item that the apprentices have worked with Daniel to design. The studio owns and sells all of the pots that the apprentices make. This ensures that they receive a regular paycheck.

The apprentices are expected to work 9am–6pm with an hour lunch break Monday–Friday, with kiln firings and shows altering the schedule as necessary. The schedule for the apprentices creates

the framework for our studio schedule, but we frequently work nights and weekends as well.

Paying Dues and BillsThe life of a potter is demanding, and requires equal amounts passion and self discipline. Both of us were exposed to the rigors of studio life at an early age.

Daniel was hired as a production thrower by Cole Pottery in Seagrove when he was 16. He apprenticed with Mark Hewitt from 18–22 years old, with time spent in England working with Clive Bowen and Svend Bayer; all three are part of the Michael Cardew lineage. Daniel also studied in the village of Pon Bok in Thailand to learn their technique for making traditional large water jars.

I was hired by potter Terry Plasket as a studio intern at Whea-ton Arts and Cultural Center in Millville, New Jersey, at the age of 14, and became the youngest employed craftsperson there at 16. I earned a BFA from Alfred University in the New York State College of Ceramics.


Neither of us have additional employment outside of the studio, but we have had great opportunities. Daniel was a visiting profes-sor at Eastern Michigan University for a semester, during which I became the studio technician. We also travel to give demonstrations, lectures, and workshops at craft schools.

We host kiln openings three weekends a year. Our studio is de-signed in such a way that it can become a temporary gallery. Many of our supporters drive out to the studio to find us and our work. These openings allow the customers to see a full body of work—a complete thought—and take a piece of it home with them. Our customers appreciate seeing the pots in context of each other and the space in which they were made. We are constantly improving the aesthetics of our studio, working toward a raw beauty. It is for our own pleasure, but we are aware of how much our customers enjoy the space as well.

Our customers are mostly regional (from the Southeast) but we are gradually reaching people throughout the country. Social media and the Internet have played a huge role in the growth of our busi-ness. Traveling and giving lectures throughout the year is also highly effective and much more enjoyable for us.

Daniel also sells online with Schaller Gallery, Crimson Laurel Gal-lery, The Mahler, and American Folk Art Gallery. His large projects, such as the 100 Large Jar Project, attract a lot of attention. During

these projects, customers witness his artistic development and growth through seeing a large body of work made in a series. People enjoy traveling that road with him and want to own a part of it.

I belong to the Piedmont Craftsmen Guild and exhibit with them annually. I also sell work in galleries along the East Coast, but most of my work is sold directly out of the studio.

We are fortunate to live and work in an area with a wealth of ceramic artists. North Carolina, and more specifically Seagrove, provides many advantages. The work produced here seems to evolve quickly, sped up by our closeness and frequent interactions. Ideas are shared quickly and resolved in many ways. The diversity of the studios educates customers and shows them the depth and breadth of ceramics. The research of local clay and materials is a massive group project that has been going on for generations here. It is humbling to live and work where there are so many amazing ceramic artists and supportive customers.

www.katejohnstonpottery.comwww.danieljohnstonpottery.comdanieljohnstonwoodfiredkiln.blogspot.comFacebook: Kate Johnston; Daniel Johnston PotteryInstagram: @ kayetjohnston; @ danielpottery

1 Kate Johnston’s Helianthus Dinnerset (detail) 2 Daniel Johnston’s vase. 3 Kate Johnston’s Passiflora Incarnate large jar and Pinnate storage jar. 4 Daniel Johnston’s jar. 5 Daniel Johnston’s pitcher. 1, 3–5 Photos: Jason Dowdle Photography.

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JUN KANEKOTHE SURFACE FIGURES; THE FIGURE SURFACES

by Glen R. Brown


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An artist’s acumen is often measurable by the degree to which his or her work is apparently straightforward, even elementary, yet impossible to imitate without invoking that artist’s presence. Who could paint a composition of three vivid, nested squares without instantly referencing Josef Albers or a trio of stratified rectangles of feathered color without simultaneously conjuring Mark Rothko? And who could create anything approaching a Dango, reductive as it may appear, without immediately calling to mind Jun Kaneko? Uniting the vertical grandeur of an ancient stele, the mysterious polished purity of a Shiva lingam, and the flat, bold, and patterned compositions of Color Field painting, Kaneko’s Dangos are, despite their affinities for minimalism, among the most immediately recognizable of contemporary ceramic sculptures—indeed sculptures in any medium. Such monopolizing of otherwise unremarkable form takes a certain genius. Like the late paintings of Matisse, the Dangos are decep-tively simple, but there is simply nothing else like them.

To describe Kaneko as a master ceramic artist might seem to belabor the obvious, but in fact it obscures to the point of misrepresentation the complex sensibility that accounts for his work. If his glazed surfaces offer occasional allusions to the decorative schemes of historical pottery they are inseparable from the innovative current of non-objective painting that swept from late Modernism not only the remains of representation but also the last vestiges of intimacy of scale. If his monumental Dangos can be compared to oversized vessels, albeit ones in which func-tion falls to an autonomy of form, they are engineering feats more typical of architecture than of pottery. If his sculptures are physically composed of clay, they are constituted conceptu-ally as much in the immateriality of space as in the physicality of three-dimensional form. Kaneko is—like Isamu Noguchi, the great Modernist murmurer of poetry in stone and void—as attuned to the tremulous energy of landscape, literal or figura-tive, as to the ponderous stillness of the monolith that stands within it. His art transcends any particular medium to embrace the deepest sources of effectiveness in all media, whether he is working in clay and glaze, glass, paint, or even stage-set design.

Artistic Breadth

Kaneko’s early biography has been well picked over in the quest to expose his aesthetic roots, but it is worth returning to if for no other reason than to emphasize the degree to which clay has been only one vehicle for and not the indispensable terra magna of his art. Born in Japan in the throes of the Second World War, Kaneko grew up with a rebellious streak that turned him away from the conformity necessary for success in academics but sparked an interest in his mother’s pastime of painting. Displaying an apti-tude for drawing while still in his teens, Kaneko bargained with his parents for daytime lessons with the contemporary painter Satoshi Ogawa in exchange for his diligent completion of high school through evening classes. Ogawa, who recognized Kaneko’s talent, saw an opportunity for the burgeoning artist to develop through studying abroad. Drawing on his acquaintance with American ceramics professor Jerry Rothman, who had completed

1 Installation of Tanuki at Millennium Park in Chicago, Illinois, each up to 8 ft. 9 in. (2.6 m) in height, handbuilt glazed ceramic, 2013. 2 Construction, 8½ in. (22 cm) in length, glazed ceramic, 2014. 3 Dango, 7 ft. (2.1 m) in height, glazed ceramic, 2013. 2, 3 Photos: Colin Conces.

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a project in Japan in the 1950s, Ogawa arranged for Kaneko to travel to Los Angeles, California, in 1963.

Finding Clay Through Serendipity

Although this was the time and place of the so-called West-Coast revolution in clay, Kaneko had come to the US to study painting. Only serendipity would divert him from that path and into a career that wed his aptitude for expression in two dimensions to a new interest in three-dimensional form. Immediately after meeting Kaneko at the airport, Rothman deposited him at the home of mathematics professor Fred Marer and his wife Mary, enthusiasts of contem-porary ceramics whose extensive collection would later become a mainstay of the Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery at Scripps College. Three weeks spent as a house-sitter among extraordinary works by such avant-garde California ceramic artists as Rothman, Paul Soldner, Peter Voulkos, Ken Price, Michael Frimkess, and Henry Takemoto was sufficient to enamor Kaneko of objects in clay and inspire him to take up the medium in his own work.

In 1966, Marer introduced Kaneko to Voulkos, who accepted him as an as-sistant in his studio at the University of California, Berkeley. Incited more by the general fire of Voulkos’ creativity than by its specific manifestation in Abstract Expressionism, Kaneko produced some vaguely anthropomorphic sculptures painted with broad swatches of thin and dripping glaze but soon began to exhibit the rudiments of his own style in quieter monumental forms embellished with areas of opaque color and vivid patterns. Despite Kaneko’s lack of an undergraduate degree, his obvious talent would secure him admission to the graduate program at Scripps College, where he earned an MFA under the tutelage of Soldner in 1971.

That Kaneko could interact regularly with two such dynamic personalities as Soldner and Voulkos and

still emerge from his studies without owing a crippling aesthetic debt to either is surely a testament to the clarity of his vision even at this early stage of his evolution as an artist.

That vision, concentrated on simple masses and well-defined areas of unmod-ulated color, was reified in a series of sculptures begun in the early 70s while Kaneko was serving as a faculty member at the Rhode Island School of Design. Known variously as Chunks, Stones, or Potatoes, these relatively small and aesthetically terse solid ceramic objects were glazed in bright colors and bold patterns. Although conceived for the pedestal, they represented a significant step toward the later Dangos and slabs in terms of their aesthetic economy. In this phase of his career Kaneko was still coming to terms with simplicity, recogniz-ing that the same range of expression that encompassed agitation equally embraced serenity and that any fraction of this range was open to the artist’s exploitation as a means of touching something fundamentally

human in the viewer. The uncomplicated

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givenness of the resulting sculptures, which stood only at a slight remove from the shape and size of wedged clay, proved a perfect pendant to the quiescent mind.

While achieving this kind of resonance with the viewer through such understated means can be extraordinarily difficult, Kaneko’s true genius revealed itself as he began to exceed the intimate scale of his sculptures—in fact, augment that scale to the point of monumentality—without sacrificing the calming serenity of his forms. After accepting a position as artist-in-residence at the Cranbrook Academy of art in 1979, he embarked on the project of setting his sculptures free from the pedestal and providing them with the size to hold their own in the infinitely more complicated space of the world at large. The result was the first of the Dangos, rounded like the earlier Potatoes, but asserting a more obvious material presence. Their name, however, gave implicit assurance that, regardless of the physical heights that they might reach, their benign nature would not alter. A dango, after all, is a ball-shaped Japanese pastry of sweetened rice flour often colored with the cheerful hues of red bean paste or green tea.

Experimenting with Scale

A 1982 part-time residency at the Alternative Worksite (now the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts) in Omaha, Nebraska, and the concur-rent opportunity to use one of the enormous beehive kilns at the Omaha Brickworks provided the means to experiment with a radical jump in scale. The pioneering Omaha Project consisted of four Dangos, 6 feet tall and 7 feet wide, and four gigantic Slabs, each weighing about 3000 pounds. The opportunity to pursue an even more ambitious project arose ten years later when Kaneko was granted access to some out-of-service beehive kilns at Mis-sion Clay Products in Fremont, California. Accompanied by three assistants, Kaneko brought the necessary equipment from Omaha and proceeded to mix a ton of clay every other day for nearly three months. Consisting of 24 Dangos ranging in height from 5 to 11½ feet, the project saw technical advances that included a shift from a single firing to one involving two cycles.

The Dangos of the Omaha and Fremont Projects established what might be described as the tentative grounding of an archetype in matter. Like the motifs of Willem de Kooning’s Woman series or Robert Motherwell’s Elegies to the Spanish Republic the Dango is a primal form to be explored through variation of detail rather than metamorphosis. Con-sequently, proportions have fluctuated, with shoulders

4 Installation of Mission Clay Pittsburg Project Dangos at Millenium Park in Chicago, Illinois, up to 8 ft. 9 in. (2.6 m) in height, handbuilt glazed ceramic, 2013. Copyright Jun Kaneko Studio LLC. Photo: Takashi Hatakeyama. 5 Dango, 10 ft. 2½ in. (3.1 m) in height, handbuilt and glazed ceramic, 2013. 6 Dango, 9 ft. ½ in. (2.7 m) in height, handbuilt and glazed ceramic, 2013. 7 Heads, up to 8 ft. 8 in. (2.6 m) in height, handbuilt and glazed ceramic, galvanized steel, 2013. 8 Kaneko pictured with one of the Tanukis from his public commission at the Henry Doorly Zoo, Omaha, Nebraska, 2014. 9 Construction, 18 in. (46 cm) in length, handbuilt and glazed ceramic, 2014. 5–7, 9 Photos: Colin Conces.

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sometimes parallel to bases in lozenge-like symmetry and sometimes broadening to form wedges, but the feeling of the Dango, the impression it conveys as a touchstone for something intuited but ineffable has remained constant. Its bulk, which might have moved the viewer to apprehension—especially in the case of examples more than 11 feet in height—has always constituted its primary link to the corporeal and the instinctive. Its patterns, whether linear or planar, are its ties to the cerebral and the rational. In the unity of physical form and surface pattern, the Dango is like a Pyrenean boulder incised with ancient petroglyphs: a harmony of the eternal and the ephemeral, of geological epochs and biological lifetimes, of the persistence of inanimate matter and the fleeting, nebulous nature of the living.

The Dangos, though universally regarded as Kaneko’s signature works, define only one front of what has been a concerted advance into largely unprecedented scale for ceramic art. While still at Cranbrook, Kaneko, like Voulkos, took up the platter form, negating its utility through cumbersome size and a vertical orientation of display. Evolved from the equivalent of large test tiles, the Ovals became occasions for cultivating synergy between painted designs and concave, elliptically delimited surfaces. The Wall Slabs—decedents of examples first made at Cranbrook as well as tiles produced for a mural in 1986 during a three-month residency at the renowned Arabia Factory in Helsinki—are the most obvious indicators that Kaneko’s early experiences as a painter in oils on canvas have never ceased to inform his relationship with clay. In these works pictorial depth is shallow, with motion emphasized primarily through vertical, and sometimes horizontal, line. Bearing flat pattern, the surfaces are effectively both figure and ground.

JUN KANEKO

Traveled from his home in Nagoya, Japan, to Los Angeles, California, to

pursue studies in art, stayed at home of collectors Fred and Mary Marer, and

was introduced to contemporary California ceramics.

1963

Studied at Claremont Graduate School, Claremont, California with Paul Soldner.

1971

Taught at Cranbrook Academy of Art.1979–86

1981Along with Tony Hepburn,

Lorne Falk and Ree Schonlau, Kaneko

established an artist-in-industry program called Alternative Worksite in

Omaha, Nebraska (later the Bemis Center).

19821982 Residency at

Alternative Worksite/ Bemis Center.

Archie Bray Foundation Fellowship.1967

1970 Early ceramic sculpture.

Taught at University of New Hampshire.

1972–73

19811981 Piece from the Ceramic

Constructions series.

Cofounds Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, (renamed and expanded from earlier Alternative

Worksite) in the newly renovated Bemis Bag Warehouse in Omaha’s Old Market district.

1985

Studied at University of California, Berkeley with Peter Voulkos.

1966

Studied at Chouinard Art Institute, and California Institute of Art, Los Angeles. Studied ceramics at Jerry Rothman’s

Studio, Paramount, California.1964

National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.

1979, 85

Wall Slab, 30½ in. (77 cm) in height, cast raku clay, glazes, 2014. Photo: Colin Conces.

Taught at Rhode Island School of Design.1973–75

Taught at Scripps College.1974

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The Figure Surfaces

The figure in a more literal sense surfaced in Kaneko’s work—un-expectedly at the time though, in retrospect, as a logical scion of his investigations of matter and energy—in 1993 in the first of a series of gigantic paired Heads. Given the scale of these sculptures—like that of the marble portrait of Constantine on the Capitoline Hill or the heads of the Great Buddhas at Nara and Kamakura—comparison with the Dangos is perhaps inevitable. Like the Dangos, the Heads seem enveloped by an invisible field, not emptiness but rather the strange, immaterial fullness of the void. In a state of supreme seren-ity, they face one another in suggestion of a mute conversation that holds them, as if bound by gravitational attraction, to a symmetry of form, presence, and energy.

Aberrations from a previously non-objective art, the colossal Heads might have acquired an unfortunate explanatory status with respect to Kaneko’s Dangos—might, in fact, have come to serve, like the revelation at the end of a B-grade mystery, to deflate an allure of the inexplicable that would have been better left alone. Kaneko, how-ever, would not be pinned down or, worse still, inflict that fate on his art. In apparent antithesis of the timeless, detached, and profoundly cerebral Heads, he recently introduced a series of figural sculptures based on the Tanuki, the raccoon dog that is both an actual mam-

mal native to Japan and, like Coyote in Native American folklore, a mythical trickster. Originating in the multitude of ceramic tourist trinkets made and sold at Shigaraki, Kaneko’s rendition of the Ta-nuki seems a fugitive from Japanese anime, a sprightly embodiment of the contemporary that jolts the universal and eternal gravitas of his earlier work. Gathered in brightly colored and boldly patterned packs in public spaces, perhaps most appropriately Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo, the Tanukis seem to express the playful, spontaneous, childlike counterpart of the reserved and disciplined rationality of the mind. That the Dangos, somewhere beneath their serene exteri-ors, harbor both the wellspring of the Tanukis and the origin of the colossal paired Heads clearly speaks for an aesthetic complexity to Kaneko’s art that runs far deeper than relations of surface and form.

the author Glen R. Brown, a frequent contributor to Ceramics Monthly, is a professor of art history at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas.

2000Founded

KANEKO: Open Space for Your Mind, Omaha,

Nebraska.

1989Piece from the Chunk series.

Residency at Arabia Factory, Helsinki,

Finland.

1986

Installation at Gallery Takagi, Japan.

1991

1996Ceramic Tile Walls

created at European Ceramic Work Center.

Public Commission, Waikiki Aquarium, Honolulu, Hawaii.

1998

2009Public Commission Philadelphia City

Hall, Pennsylvania.

Wall Slabs.

2005

2004Dango.

Public Commission, five Dangos, Principal River Walk, Des Moines, Iowa,

Greater Des Moines Public Art Foundation.

2012

Public commission, Henry Doorly Zoo,

Omaha.

2014

Learn more about Kaneko’s career in his article “On Being an Artist” from the June/July/August 1988 is-sue available to subscribers at http://ceramicartsdaily.org/ceramics-monthly/subscriber-extras.

Porcelain Tom Turner: A PAssion in

BY PaTricK TaYLor anD Don PiLcher

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A Personal Archive

by Patrick Taylor

Throughout his distinguished career Tom Turner has created por-celain vessels. An exhibition of Turner’s work recently held at The Bascom Center for the Visual Arts in Highland, North Carolina, revealed a continuous creative evolution of this major American potter. “Tom Turner: A Passion in Porcelain” was a 52-year retrospec-tive that featured 129 selections from the artist’s massive personal collection. It was the first time this legacy body of work had ever been presented in a single exhibition.

The process of growing his collection, a life-long journey for Turner, became a methodical ritual embedded in his creative working process. In the infancy of his career, Turner embraced nourishing his aesthetic needs first, by retaining what he thought to be his best pots. The process quickly evolved to a point in which Turner would not sell his work directly from a kiln opening. Instead, his first glance into a newly fired kiln was the start of a meticulous process of observation and evaluation of the finished work. Consistently, Turner would photograph the stacked pots as they cooled together in the kiln. As each piece came out of the kiln, Turner conducted a detailed analysis and further photographic documentation of almost every piece. His personal archive of his works being glazed and fired, as well as the construction of his kilns and studios, remains intact at his studio home in Mars Hill, North Carolina.

In a series of interviews, Turner describes how he was routinely so disappointed about a firing that he followed the advice of his former mentors, legends like Don Reitz, David Shaner, and Vivika

Heino, and left the studio for several hours to decompress from his heightened expectations. Once he returned to the studio, he had the psychological distance to re-engage with the pots with a new, albeit critical, perspective. He would then reassess the results of the firing for several days. From this arduous process Turner selected what he believed to be the best work from a firing and retained them for his personal collection.

Works in the exhibition came from distinct periods in Turner’s career, beginning with two examples from his high school ceramic classes. His work in undergraduate school formed another period, including a piece that was accepted in the historic exhibition, “Young Americans: 1969.” There were several works from the period when he was a drafted soldier working in the Army Crafts Program, including large salt-fired pots that were tribute works to his mentor, Don Reitz. Copper-red, salt-fired pots in porcelain created while he was a teacher at Clemson University highlight another important period in his development. Other periods in the exhibition include pots coming from his studios in Lake Mary, Florida, and from his well-known Peachblow Studio near Delaware, Ohio. The latest period, from his Mars Hill, North Carolina, studio includes copper-red porcelain pieces that were chemically reduced in electric kiln firings.

Turner confesses that his long-term goal as a professional potter has always been to make unique, distinctive pots that no one in the future will have to speculate as to the potter who created them. As Turner has stated on numerous occasions, his deliberate intention has been to create the timeless pot.

1 Vase with four bird sentinels, 9 in. (23 cm) in height, paddled, carved, and stamped porcelain, blue teadust and flambé glazes with iron oxide over them, fired to cone 9 reduction, at Peachblow Pottery, Delaware, Ohio, 2003. 2 Porcelain teapot, 11½ in. (29 cm) in height, stamped and stretched, simulated ash glaze with glaze trailed dots, fired to cone 9 reduction at Peachblow Pottery, Delaware, Ohio, 2004. 3 Porcelain gourd bottle, 12¾ in. (32 cm) in height, titanium micro-crystalline glaze over celadon glaze, fired to cone 9 in reduction, at Mars Hill, North Carolina, 2009.

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IPE

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4 Vase, 7¾ in. (20 cm) in height, porcelain, electric fired, chemically reduced, copper-red oxblood glaze, oxidation fired, 2013. 5 Covered jar, 9½ in. (24 cm) in height, paddled, stamped, and fluted porcelain, turtle finial, copper red oxblood glaze, fired to cone 9 in reduction, Mars Hill, 2007. 6 Bottle vase, 7½ in. (19 cm) in height, paddled and stamped porcelain, multiple crystalline glazes, fired to cone 9 in an electric kiln, Mars Hill, 2012.

Looking at Tom Turner’s Work

by Don Pilcher

Even to the untrained eye, Tom Turner’s work is fulsome and exquisite. His work is conspicuously inflated and carries a signature style of abundance, generosity, and grace.

But to fully appreciate Turner’s work, and his uniqueness as a potter, one must attend to qualities which are eclectic, aesthetically nuanced, and deeply technical. Historically speaking, his production is tethered by the longest of leads to the finest and simplest Chinese, Japanese, Greek, and Roman pots ever made. Within that quadrant Turner

TOM TURNER

Octo Jar, stoneware, ash glaze, made during graduate school at Illinois

State University, 1968. Included in the “Young Americans: 1969” exhibition.

1968

1970Vase, 11½ in. (29 cm) in height, stoneware, salt

glazed, made in the Army Crafts Program in Lexington, South Carolina.

Covered jar, copper-red, vapor-salt-glazed blue porcelain. Cobalt and rutile slips and uranium with tin chloride were vaporized in the cooling cycle for the iridescence. Fired to cone 9 in reduction, 1973, in Liberty, South Carolina.

1973

1976Bi-form bottle vase, copper-red, vapor-salt glaze. Made at

the Liberty, South Carolina, studio. Exhibited and published in the corresponding book for “35 Artists of the Southeast”

at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia.

Porcelain covered bowl, slip trailed with iron glazes over. Fired to cone 9 in reduction in the Liberty, South Carolina salt kiln (a salt-resistant

kiln that allowed Turner to switch to glazes when he stopped salting in 1976).

1977

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creates a personal expression of invention, atmospheric coloration, and seductive detail. All of these expressive gestures are made in both large and small scale, whether we look at the full arc of a piece—from tip top to the foot—or within a single plump appendage, in that half inch separating its beginning, middle, and end. He achieves this abundant sensuality by a compression of clay particles and an expansion of form; not a Botox expansion but the honest to God promise of a potent spring.

What does this mean? How can a person speak through compressed particles and expanding form? In Turner’s case it’s his deep knowledge of ceramic science. In a quest of over 50 years, he has captured an aesthetic that is singularly dependent on clay particle size, saturation, lamination, vitrification, and purity. I doubt it, you say! I’d agree, but I’ve known him for over 40 years and I know how he studies, tests, records, and eventually solves ceramic puzzles that never even occur to most of us. He has spent a professional lifetime immersed in the literature and dust of thousands of combinations of kaolins, feldspars, fluxes, extenders, and plasticizers. His bathroom reading consists of material data sheets that describe the purity and modulus of rupture of many of the world’s kaolins. The results are his own porcelain clay bodies (sold nationwide) that usually exceed all others, particularly when one seeks a combination of whiteness, plasticity, and strength. This is Turner the ceramic engineer. Does it matter that he is the original source of such an important and popular commodity? No, if we are talking about getting into heaven. But yes if we are talking

1990Bottle vase, 9½ in. (24 cm) in height,

porcelain, copper-red oxblood, flambé, and iron glazes.

Covered jar, 8½ in. (22 cm) in height, porcelain, ash glazes, sticker resist, glaze

trailing. Featured on the April 1985 cover of Ceramics Monthly.

1985

Stoneware covered jar with simulated ash glaze, Peachblow Pottery, in Delaware,

Ohio. Included in Phil Rodger’s book Ash Glazes, second edition.

2001

1980Porcelain lidded bowl, iron blue celadon and slip trailing, fired to cone 9 in reduction, at

the studio in Lake Mary, Florida.

2012Porcelain bottle vase,

chemically reduced copper-red oxblood with zinc/titanium

crystalline glazes, fired to cone 9 in an electric

kiln at the Mars Hill, North Carolina, studio.

Porcelain covered jar, turtle finial, temmoku glaze with iron over it, fired

to cone 9 in reduction at the Mars Hill, North Carolina, studio.

2006

about receiving credit for making a truly great porcelain—and simul-taneously enhancing the value of his own artwork.

Turner is more deeply attached to his material than most pot-ters, and potters are notorious for their attachments. He finds his direction in the potential of a white paste to take form, give itself to fire, and become all but glass. It’s an orgy of process, insight, prestidigitation, and sequential chemistry. The detailed appendages on his work—like the rims and lips on every piece—roll, crease and extend as if they contained 65% butterfat. Look closely—that’s not an exaggeration.

Though he would never say so himself, his forms are created at the intersection of function and the lexicon of gl- words. This result is a body of pottery that demonstrates this aesthetic and linguistic array—globe, glaze, gloss, glass, gley, glamor, glint, glow, and wonder-fully, even glop. Turner achieves these igneous effects by his rare ability on the potters’ wheel and the tedious composition and application of glazes, layering of glaze combinations, and specific, complicated firing cycles. The results are decades of pots that are respectful of tradition, uncompromising, complete, and personally branded. They are not the whole world of pottery making but they own a part of it and, as such, remain beautiful, instructive, and inspiring.

the authors: Don Pilcher is an artist and writer living in Champaign, Illinois. Patrick Taylor is a potter, educator, and administrator living in Highlands, North Carolina.


FollyBY LILIANNE MILGROM

AfterBETH KATLEMAN

When Beth Katleman pitched her concept to Greenwich House Pottery’s Sarah Archer in 2009, she had no inkling that her career was about to soar into the stratosphere. What she did have was a clear image in her head of an ornate, immersive installation composed of multiple Rococo-inspired ceramic islands that, upon closer inspec-tion, would reveal tiny porcelain inhabitants engaged in surprisingly dark behaviors. Fortunately, Katleman got the go-ahead and she spent the next year creating her seminal work, Folly. The rest is history.

A New York Times review set things in motion; Folly re-ceived an almost unanimous chorus of accolades across the fine art, design, and fashion worlds and then, as Katleman puts it, “everything changed dramatically in 2011 when Todd Merrill (of Todd Merrill Studio Contemporary) walked up the dusty steps of Greenwich House Pottery in his Prada black leather jacket. All of a sudden my work was in London, Paris, Basel, Seoul, and Hong Kong!” Since that time, her work has been exhibited and acquired by private and institutional collections worldwide and regularly makes the circuit of the most influential art fairs. Katleman is the recipient of the 2011 Moët Hennessey Prize, a Mid-Atlantic Foundation grant, and a Kohler Arts/Industry Fellowship among other numerous awards.

Folly marked an important departure from the artist’s previous use of bold color and gold detailing. Katleman likens the departure as “killing the thing you love.” She now takes advantage of the purity and natural manifesta-tion of her material to add another layer of tension to her work. The stark, unadorned white of the porcelain not only unifies the discordant elements but also falsely lulls us into thinking we have stepped into Marie Antoinette’s private chambers with riffs of harpsichord music and the swish of silk crinolines in the air. Katleman’s work, how-ever, is anything but pastiche—she imbues her opulent porcelain assemblages with a raw 21st-century edge.

A Floating World

Katleman is cognizant of the fact that she walks a fine line between kitsch and high-concept art. It is largely her narrative that rescues her work from becoming a nostalgic, even saccharine throwback to a more genteel time. Katleman is drawn to the darker side of the human condition and all that lurks beneath the exterior front of how we as individuals and as a society like to present ourselves to the world. Domestic violence, sexual perver-sion, and rampant consumption are all free game for an incisive commentary delivered out of the mouth of babes.

It is not surprising therefore, that Nabakov’s Lo-lita provided the inspiration for Hotel Mirana, Katle-man’s first in a series of mirror-based works that followed Folly. Admittedly obsessed with the novel Lolita, Katleman found a rich source of material in the

Opposite: Katleman in her Brooklyn studio, working on a commission for Christian Dior’s London flagship store, 2015. Photo: Clay Gardner. 1 Hostile Nature (detail), 8 ft. (2.4 m) in length, cone 10 porcelain, wire, chain, 2013. This allegory, from a larger installation, combines cast toys with themes from Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus. 2 Hotel Mirana, 4 ft. (1.2 m) in height, cone 10 porcelain, mirror, wire, wood, chain, 2014. Channeling Nabokov’s Lolita, this opulent mirror immerses the viewer in a private universe, with moments from the novel brought forth in 1950s Americana. 1–2 Photos: Malcolm Varon.

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private universe of the protagonist’s imagination wherein he indulges his fantasies with impunity. His prey, the innocent, uncultured, gum-popping Lolita, is the perfect foil for his own Old World, refined sensibilities. When these two worlds collide the result can be devas-tating, a scenario that dovetails perfectly into Katleman’s leitmotif of ordered chaos. “I try to create a floating world where no rules apply,” explains Katleman. The artist credits at least some of this dark humor and cabalistic worldview to her habit of working late into the night. She likes the idea of putting people at ease only to jolt them with the specter of brides teetering over the precipice in swan boats, frogs eating flies, or nymphs guarding macabre relics.

Process

Using dime store trinkets, gadgets, dolls, and even vintage Playmobil toys, the artist spends hours making molds from which she casts the foundational components of her intricate compositions. Katleman trolls flea markets and quirky internet sites for ever more outlandish characters and props to add to her arsenal. Transformed by context and material, a plastic, mass-produced, bikini-clad figurine meant to adorn a cake at a bachelor’s party becomes a porcelain Venus sitting on a tree branch engaging a bird in philosophical reparteé. Similarly, Curly from The Three Stooges functions as a tragicomic mask befitting a Greek chorus.

Katleman freely uses analog and digital means to finalize her vision. The process begins by scanning an image of a well-researched, historical

reference into Adobe Illustrator. She then picks and chooses from her personal digitized catalog of cast-porcelain characters and overlays them onto the original image like a director selecting leads for a play. Using a candidate composition as a guide, she gathers together the actual cast pieces from her studio shelves and begins to arrange them until an interesting narrative emerges. She intuitively creates new clay forms to add to the composition until she arrives at a layout that reflects an irresistible tension among the various figures. She then photographs the three-dimensional work, scans it, and refines the final layout on the computer before starting the challenging task of casting the new work.

Good Fodder

As a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome in the sum-mer of 2015, Katleman was able to visit her beloved Salottino di Porcellana room at the Royal Palace of Capodimonte in Naples and immerse herself in the dazzling display of elaborate, rather prissy Italian porcelains from the Baroque and Rococo periods that feed her creative inclinations.

Katleman’s work evokes a period when ornamentation was valued for its time-consuming attention to detail, delicacy of material, and sheer over-the-top sensibility. When pressed to explain the overwhelm-ing public tributes about her work, she muses, “We have had a steady diet of minimal, conceptual art for 50 years or so and it has become something of an orthodoxy. Maybe the embrace of ceramics reflects an urge to put the ‘visual’ back in visual arts—one can only hope.”

Katleman continues to push boundaries and explore new territory. She is recently turning to literary sources such as Shakespearean tragedy and Greek mythology for fresh inspiration (or “good fodder” as the artist describes it). The future is looking bright for Katleman and her

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studio. Over the past year she has been hard at work on a number of private and institutional commissions including a new piece for the Nelson Atkins Museum to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) Conference in March 2016 in Kansas City, Missouri. She is also col-laborating with a commercial enterprise on a wallpaper design—what seems like a natural extension of her cinematic ceramic landscapes.

In retrospect, Katleman chalks up Folly’s success to her own per-sonal mantra: Life makes you a better artist. She believes that her artistic breakthrough occurred due to a self-imposed hiatus following the birth of her twins. The time away from a daily studio regimen allowed her to distill and clarify her singular vision.

Her featured spread in Harper’s Bazaar in September 2015 reinforced her position as an artist who has successfully blurred the boundaries between the various branches of visual art, and between fine art and commercial art and design. It remains to be seen where Katleman will take her miniature theater next and to what extent she intends to “mess with people’s heads,” albeit daintily.

To see more of Katleman’s work, visit www.bethkatleman.com and http://toddmerrillstudio.com.

the author Lilianne Milgrom is a multi-media artist and writer on the arts. To learn more, visit her website, www.liliannemilgrom.com.

3, 4 Girls at War, 14 ft. 6 in. (4.4 m) in length, cone 10 porcelain, wire and chain on wood, 2013. Inspired by 18th-century paneled rooms, this triptych delves into the dark side of childhood. 5 Folly, 16 ft. (4.9 m) in length, cone 10 porcelain, wire, chain, heat-shrink tubing, 2010. Installed at Greenwich House Pottery, New York, New York. 3–5 Photos: Alan Wiener. 6 Hostile Nature, 8 ft. (2.4 m) in height, cone 10 porcelain, wire, chain, 2013. This installation blends iconography from 18th-century print rooms with flea-market treasures and themes from Shakespeare. Photo: Malcolm Varon.

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Watch Katleman at work in the video posted to the subscriber extras section at http://ceramicartsdaily.org/ceramics-monthly/subscriber-extras.


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Betty Woodman’s eclecticism is astonishing; her influences are wide-ranging and include Persian vases, wallpaper, Japanese prints, and Baroque architecture. While fully embracing abstraction, her sculptures verge on realism; her early interest in functional ceramic objects is always visible. Woodman’s work plays in the territory between the high arts and craft and at the borders between painting and sculpture: it is shot through with humor and sensuality. Her imagery is bound to the realities of life, dealing with the accoutrements of pleasure and the experience of beauty. She blends the furniture of the table—platters, vases, cups, and tureens—with the history of art and architecture. Woodman has spent over six

1 Betty Woodman pictured with House of the South, 20½ ft. (6.23 m) glazed earthenware, epoxy resin, lacquer, paint, 1996. From The Art of Betty Woodman, April 25–July 30, 2006, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York. Courtesy of David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles, California.

Betty Woodmanby Kathleen Whitney

THE ULTIMATE STILL-LIFE OBJECT

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decades looking at art of all kinds and incorporates elements of old and new into each object. Conceptual boldness and extreme experimentation are her work’s most prominent characteristics. She has broken through the limits of traditional ceramics through innovative uses of materials such as lacquer paint on earthenware and terra sigillata on paper. One of the most significant aspects of Woodman’s work is its quality of effortlessness—as she says; “I want the work to look as if it was rather easy, even if it wasn’t.” This sense of effortlessness is contradicted by her relentless self-questioning and desire to keep her ideas developing. As she told the American Craft Council; “I’m always interested in the next piece I’m going to make perhaps more than the last one I made. Well, [you can be] seduced by the last one you made because you think, ‘Oh! Look at that.’ I’m the kind of person who may be totally seduced by it and think it’s the best thing I’ve ever done. . . . And then I look at it for a few days, and then I sort of realize, well, you know, this has got a lot of problems. Maybe it’s not that wonderful. Maybe I need to go back and think about something else, do something else.”

Woodman’s career started with a commitment to clay; the vase form became an obsession. She studied at the School for American Craftsmen at Alfred University in the late 1940s where

she began her career as a production potter. By the early 1960s, Woodman’s ideas shifted away from function, partly in response to a move to Italy where she and her painter husband, George Wood-man, spend part of each year. The Italian influence shows itself in forms inflected by the aesthetics of the Mediterranean, majolica, and Baroque architecture. The area between the stone balusters of Baroque staircases particularly fascinates her; her employment of negative space is a major facet of her work.

In the early 1970s, Woodman became involved with the Pattern and Decoration movement and began to emphasize surface design. She incorporated imagery from outside of what was considered fine art, focusing on the geometric and floral patterns used on fabrics, wallpaper, and quilts. In 1975, she produced the first of what be-came known as her pillow pitchers. These were loosely based on Cretan pitchers and made by joining two cylinders horizontally and pinching the ends closed. A narrow sash of clay that becomes a spout and handle often conceals the join. These forms are not functional and their pillowy curvatures provide a challenging

surface for glaze painting. The glaze is painted on in the loose and gestural fashion that is the hallmark

of her work. The simplicity and assertiveness of these forms makes them iconic; they are

completely original and have a clear correspondence between form

and meaning.By the late 1990s, Wood-

man’s forms became more diagrammatic

and Cubist in appearance.

She began us ing the vase form,

the ultimate still-life object, in

a number of differ-

2 The Red Window (overall and detail), 7 ft. (2.2 m) in height, glazed earthenware, epoxy resin, lacquer, acrylic paint, canvas, 2014. 3 Rose et Noir Pillow Pitcher, 32 in. (81 cm) in height, glazed earthenware, epoxy, resin, lacquer, paint, 1989. 2, 3 Courtesy of David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles, California.

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ent ways; flattening and deconstructing it, breaking it into its constituent pieces (tops, feet, spout, handles) and painting/glaz-ing in the details. She also does the opposite, emphasizing the three-dimensional, by presenting a faceted arrangement of vase-like objects with features so disparate that the back and front are stylistically unrelated. Around this time, she also began creating multi-part wall installations. These aggregations play with shifts between two- and three-dimensionality with a particular stress on the negative space between objects. House of the South, is one of numerous examples of enormous, mural-like arrangements of flat and modeled ceramic parts. Some of the pieces lay flush to the wall, others project out from it; the space in between the pieces is as important as the pieces themselves.

The densely packed and layered composition, Aeolian Pyramid, is one of the most spectacular of her pedestal-mounted assemblages. It’s a tiered, pyramidal arrangement of 44 flat pink, yellow, white, and black vase shapes cut from earthenware slabs and patterned with small raised or incised textures. Each is a different shape and size; there is much confusion between foreground and background, which works to the piece’s advantage. The imagery painted on the slabs is floral, geometric, and Mediterranean in style; the effect is of an archeological site or a shrine.

Over the course of the past decade, Woodman has been com-bining painted patterns on canvas with painted or glazed ceramic elements to create still-life tableaus that combine illusionism and tactility. The canvases serve as a backdrop to ceramic pieces and

are tacked directly to the wall or placed on the floor. The ceramic pieces are used in a variety of ways; positioned on a table-like shelf that appears to be projecting from the painting, placed on the floor in front of a painting or posed on top of a rug-like painted floor cloth. She also places sculptures on top of cut wood pedestals that magnify the extremely deconstructed nature of her ceramic vases. A recent Woodman exhibition at David Kordansky Gallery in Los Angeles, California, featured examples of all of these arrangements.

The Red Window combines several techniques and objects; a painted, wall-mounted canvas with a number of curving thin slab pieces nailed directly into it paired with a tall, freestanding ceramic sculpture. Every looping brushstroke on the canvas is articulated and magnified. Attached to the canvas are four calligraphic black and white ceramic fragments that create a vase form in the nega-tive space between them. An adjacent unglazed trio of fragments implies a handled pitcher with the flesh-pink of the background showing through between them. These stand above a pale brown area painted to resemble a heavily grained wood tabletop. A white, painted, uneven shape on the canvas resembles the big ceramic sculpture on the floor below it. This red, black, and white form resembles a vase, but the flanges coming off its sides make it into something exotic, both organic and architectural.

The Boardwalk is a canvas with a wedge-shaped tabletop built into it. The painting resembles a beach scene with blue sky, expanse of sand, and striped wooden boardwalk with a white fence. The tabletop echoes the stripes and bears two cylinders hidden by two

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large, flat, platter-like oval slabs. Each platter has painted on it half of a striped and curvy-footed vessel with spectacular red and yellow, long stemmed blooms emerging from it. When looked at from the side, the cylindrical forms come into view. They echo the stripe and grid motif of the canvas behind them but with a totally different color scheme. This view is so unexpected, its imagery so different from the front, that it has the impact of a totally different piece.

The aspects of surprise, difference, and multiplicity are typical of Woodman’s work. It is especially so of Aztec Vase and Carpet: Bumble Bee. The object is made up of a tall, central cylinder with a number of flat slabs projecting from it. These slabs effectively divide the piece into four quadrants, each of which is glazed so differently as to create the experience of seeing four different ob-jects. The sculpture is placed on a black and white striped canvas “rug” on which are scattered colorful flat forms that look as if they were cut out from the vase’s projections. This sculpture is almost encyclopedic in the number of references it makes. She’s parodied Cubism’s intention to show three dimensions while using only two. She’s plundered art history in combining the wild projections

and geometric and curvilinear surface decoration of ancient Aztec ceremonial objects with Modernist abstraction. As an aside, she’s borrowed the imagery of Persian carpets.

Woodman’s eclecticism is carefully considered; it is pure plural-ism, not a random gathering of styles and systems. Her organization of diverse sources into a single vision requires extreme selectivity. The fact that she doesn’t stick to a single standard, that she is the beneficiary of centuries of global art history, is what fuels the variety and vitality of her work.

Now in her 80’s, she continues to produce significant work. In 2014, she was the American Craft Council’s Gold Medalist recipient. Her work is in more than 50 museum collections, in-cluding The Metropolitan Museum of Art. She has had over 100 solo exhibitions around the world. Her 2006 retrospective at The Metropolitan Museum was the first such show to be given to a ceramic artist or a woman. She taught for 40 years, most recently at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

the author Kathleen Whitney is an artist and writer living in Los Angeles, California.

4 Aeolian Pyramid, 14 ft. (4.27 m) in length, 44 vases, glazed earthenware, epoxy resin, lacquer, paint, 2001–2006. From “The Art of Betty Woodman,” April 25–July 30 2006, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York. 5, 6 Aztec Vase and Carpet: Bumble Bee, 5 ft. (1.5 m) in length, glazed earthenware, epoxy resin, lacquer, acrylic paint, canvas, 2013. 7 The Boardwalk, 4 ft. 5 in. (1.3 m) in height, glazed earthenware, epoxy resin, lacquer, acrylic paint, canvas, wood, 2014. 4–7 Courtesy of David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles, California.

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Exploring GlazesFROM PERFECT FIT TO CRACKLE AND MATTEBY RICHARD HENSLEY


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I spent a large portion of my pottery career trying to learn the basics of making porcelain pieces that used a transparent clear glaze. I wanted to make marks and images on the clay surface and have a sheet of clear, watery glass over the pot that was perfectly clear and had a great color and bright-ness response. I had a lot of help from masters such as Victor Babu, Don Pilcher, and Tom Spleth and eventually the marriage of a good clay body and much glaze testing began to provide me with results that I liked. Having spent so much time making porcelain pots with transparent glazes, I eventually had a pretty normal desire to try some new ways of thinking about my work. About 12 years ago a friend introduced me to the glaze ideas of Ian Currie1 and I began exploring some new ways to think about my glaze palette. Currie’s grid method (see Techno File, CM Octo-ber 2015 issue and Currie’s book Revealing Glazes Using the Grid Method ) glaze blends showing the melt of the oxides in a base are really visually clear and instructive as to the effects of the various materials in the melt. Usually somewhere in the 35 little tests will be an area of interest and I am sure that most people who do the work to make a series will be surprised at what they find out. I have made many of these test tiles and have seen many more from other potters and I always see a square or two that are interesting and worthy of further investigation. Really! Give it a try.

For me the interesting tiles were always the deep crackle glazes, sometimes with magne-sium crystals in them. My lifelong interest in perfect glaze fit had divided off into a different direction: using drippy crackle glazes and matte glazes that have the curious property of being a matte glaze where they are thin but shiny in lines and depressions where they get a little thicker. The glossy parts are always complimen-tary in color and I think they are very pretty. It’s also interesting that some of my tests that were shiny crackles turned into matte glazes as I started testing different oxides with them. Some of that is explained by the fact that tests change when fired in a vertical position. I was also lucky to find some of the individual Cur-rie grid method tests that had lots of potential variety. The crackle glaze parts are still the most interesting to me, and now that I am thinking like this, it’s been interesting to see that some

1 Jar with #22 Rutile Blue, #24 Crackle Clear, and Smokey Green glazes. 2 Plate with #22 Base glaze in the center, #24 Crackle Clear glaze, and Pearl glaze over all. 3 Plate with Smokey Green and #24 Crackle Clear glazes along with cobalt oxide wash.

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of this way of organizing pottery surfaces is present in many historical pots that I love. I especially notice this in pots from Thailand and I marvel at the incising under their thick crackle celadon glazes—was I a Thai potter in another lifetime?

I think it is important for me to have limits on the number of glazes that I use. If I can learn to use two or three base glazes with various oxides for different colors, then I can get used to the thicknesses and overlaps that result. A little change in the base will also offer some interesting changes in color and texture. It’s always a little risky working with my glazes because of the many variables but so far I remain willing to stick to this ap-proach because the pieces that I think are successful are very exciting and pleasing to me. That’s the point isn’t it?

With the pieces I am making now I am using only three base glazes and of course some different oxides to achieve different colors. I am also beginning to use a different white clay that is less glassy than my usual porcelain because I have realized that the joy and charm of a translucent clay can also turn to pain when my glazes react with the higher fluxed porcelain and run too much—potentially sticking to the kiln shelves! Porcelain that is not so tight can still be beautiful and in this case, I am using crackle glazes and matte glazes so glaze fit isn’t an issue that concerns me too much.

For many years I have been using incised patterns as a vehicle to create an array of spaces, lines, and textures to show the interactions and contrasts of these glazes. I tend to make forms that can carry a repeating pattern with spaces and lines intersecting so that there are glazes moving across lines and into space occupied by another glaze. I often incise, draw, press, and comb textures in a variation of 4–6 repeating modules. Sometimes they turn upside down from each other as they move around the pot but the general idea is to make spaces where the glazes can move into one another and still maintain the integrity of the drawing. Then I bisque fire the pots and start painting in the different glazes and wax over the glazed parts so that I can eventually dip the pot in a final overall glaze. Sometimes at the end I will even spray another glaze over the whole pot to create a special effect on the rim or upper part that will melt and pool down a bit and show the pull of gravity even more.

I suppose it’s clear by now that from throwing to glaz-ing and firing is quite a path of concentration. I think most good pots travel that same path of planning and execution and even the simplest pot that hits a high note didn’t get that way by accident. My goal with this work is to set images and drawings in proximity to other active agents such as my runny glazes so that the whole ensemble of colors and textures, and of course the movement of the different space of color shows a happy synchronic-ity. It’s in many ways for me the following of a feeling

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or remembering a dream. It usually seems just out of reach and it is such a pleasure when it works. I guess I am pursuing something just out of my range here but I think most potters realize how important it is to keep pushing into the slightly uncomfortable areas of our art. It’s how we grow and how we dig our wells a little deeper. I am so very happy to have the time and space to try to understand how to make this work better and have it reflect my long time interests in glazes and white clays.

the author Richard Hensley is an artist and professor at Hollins University living in Floyd, Virginia. To see more of his work, visit www.richardhensleypottery.com.

1 Ian Currie, Revealing Glazes, self published, 2000. ISBN 0958927537.

4 Wheel-thrown porcelain jar, Smokey Green glaze with Hensley Matte glaze lightly sprayed over it. 5 Slip-cast porcelain basket with #24 Crackle Clear and Orange Crystal glazes. 6 Slip-cast oval plate with #22 Rutile Blue and #24 Crackle Clear glazes. 7 Wheel-thrown porcelain plate with Pearl, Smokey Green, and #22 Rutile Blue glazes.

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recipes

Note: Mixing one part Pearl glaze and two parts Smokey Green glaze makes a glaze I call Pearly Green, which has the best at-tributes of both. The combination makes the Smokey Green melt a bit better, (since on it’s own, the Pearl tends to run).

Below: Plate with #22 Yellow glaze on the central flower, #22 Rutile Blue glaze, #24 Crackle Clear glaze (on larger leaves), and Smokey Green glaze.

SMOKEY GREENCone 10 Reduction

Barium Carbonate . . . . . . . . . . . 14.50 %Gerstley Borate . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.50Whiting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.67G-200 EU Feldspar* . . . . . . . . . . 57.40EPK Kaolin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.93 100.00 %

Add: Titanium Dioxide. . . . . . . . . 4.40 % Zinc Oxide . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.04 % Light Rutile . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.59 % Copper Carbonate . . . . . . . 2.29 %

Mix to a specific gravity of 1.4. To simplify the surface, try less copper and less rutile.

*G-200 EU Feldspar (from Spain) is equiva-lent to G-200 Feldspar (no longer mined).

#22 BASE (CURRIE CHICAGO SERIES)Cone 10 Reduction

Dolomite . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22.88 %Spodumene . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.62Ferro Frit 3134 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.62Nepheline Syenite . . . . . . . . . . . 38.13EPK Kaolin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.08Silica . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.67 100.00 %

For Yellow (shown above)Add: Iron Oxide (Spanish Red) . . . 2.00 %

For Rutile Grey/Blue Matte to GlossyAdd: Light Rutile . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.00 %

This glaze ranges from a matte to glossy glaze, depending on application thickness and textures under the glaze. It be matte where thin, and glossy where thick. Over textures, it tends to be glossy in recessed areas, and matte over the high points. It tends to run when thick. Mix to a specific gravity of 1.4 to 1.42; above this, the glaze may run excessively when fired to cone 10.

#24 CRACKLE CLEAR (CURRIE STRONTIUM SERIES)Cone 10 Oxidation or Reduction

Strontium Carbonate . . . . . . . . . 27.81 %Whiting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.00Ferro Frit 3110 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16.68EPK Kaolin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.50Silica . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35.01 100.00 %

Add: Red Iron Oxide . . . . . . . . . . 0.50 %A bit of iron seems to make it melt better. The Image shows the glaze with iron at 0.5%, which give a water blue color.

ORANGE CRYSTALCone 10 Reduction

Barium Carbonate . . . . . . . . . . . 13.71 %Gerstley Borate . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.62Lithium Carbonate . . . . . . . . . . . 3.05Whiting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.22Custer Feldspar . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54.47OM 4 Ball Clay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.81EPK Kaolin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.12 100.00 %

Add: Titanium Dioxide. . . . . . . . . 7.63 % Zinc Oxide . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.54 % Yellow Iron Oxide . . . . . . . . 1.67 %

Lithium activates the surface and makes this glaze work. Use specific gravity of 1.4 or 1.42. When the glaze is applied to the proper thickness, the surface crackles as it dries. If applied too thick, it will crack off.

HENSLEY MATTECone 10 Reduction

Talc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13.21Whiting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13.21Ferro Frit 3134 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19.73Nepheline Syenite . . . . . . . . . . . 19.73EPK Kaolin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.80Silica . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23.32 100.00 %

This glaze is best used in combination with other glazes rather than on its own. The tile above shows it sprayed over Smokey Green, resulting in an emerald color. Use sparingly: I spray a thin, wispy layer.

PEARLCone 10 Reduction

Gerstley Borate . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.68 %Barium Carbonate . . . . . . . . . . . 14.68Whiting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.78Custer Feldspar . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56.88EPK Kaolin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.98 100.00 %

Add: Titanium Dioxide. . . . . . . . . 4.28 % Light Rutile . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.17 % Yellow Iron . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.04 %

Mix to a specific gravity of 1.4 and apply thin. The Titanium Dioxide and Rutile give this glaze a microcrystalline surface.


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TECHNO FILE

reduction misnomerby Ryan Coppage, PhD

Defining the Terms Reduction: The process of gaining electrons and a decrease in oxidation state/charge.

Oxidation: The process of losing electrons and an increase in oxidation state/charge.

Electrons: Negatively charged particles that contribute to the net charge of an element.

Protons: Positively charged particles that contribute to the net charge of an element.

Oxidation State: The net charge of an atom with respect to other atoms in the molecule and the number of electrons/protons.

Net Charge: The number of electrons fewer (+ charge) or more (- charge) than the number of protons in an element.

The Reduction Firing ProcessAlmost as a standard, the process of “reduction” is described with some degree of equivocation no matter where you go or in which ceramic setting you work. Most pottery professionals don’t like to describe it, especially to a persnickety chemist. These descriptions vary from place to place, but the process of reduction is most commonly communicated as “reducing the amount of oxygen in a kiln,” such that the flame/fuel searches for more oxygen and will pull said oxygen out of clay bodies, etc. While this is absolutely parallel and incidental to reduction taking place, that phenomenon is not reduction and is not responsible for the vibrant, beautiful colors that are synonymous with the firing method.

Reduction is the process of electrons being donated to a metal/element/surface through some set of reactions, while another component in the same set of reactions is oxidized (electrons lost). This is your defined set of oxidation and reduction parameters. In a gas kiln, albeit natural gas or propane, you are using some set of hydrocarbons and oxygen. Your reaction breaks down to the following for an oxidation firing using propane:

With access to enough oxygen to efficiently burn your fuel, you are almost exclusively producing water vapor and CO2, which will cause oxidation of your ceramic surfaces. This is the clean-burning, efficient, blue flame, which is why easy temperature gains are synonymous with oxidation atmospheres. Upon limiting the amount of oxygen access to the inside of your kiln via vents, flue control, or passive dampers, you are no longer producing purely CO2 from your fuel; you are now producing carbon monoxide (CO) and carbon black in the form of soot and char (C:H compounds in the ratio of 8:1 or so).1 Your flame is bright orange (1A) and you can see smoke and soot often rolling up and out of the kiln. Conversely, a fully oxidative flame is bright blue (1D), with transitionary flame compositions between the two (1B, 1C). CO and soot both deliver electrons to the surface of your pottery in the kiln. CO reacts with oxygen at the surface and forms CO2, leaving electrons behind. Soot will flow and adhere to the surface of whatever it touches in the kiln as incredibly small, free-radical black carbon particulate.1 As small carbon particulates build up on pottery surfaces, they begin to aggregate as soot and oxidize, causing a small flow of electrons into the ceramic surfaces. These processes result in the metals in your glazes gaining electrons, which means the net charge or oxidation state is reduced. Potters take advantage of this atmosphere for reducing oxidation states of metal colorants, soot production in carbon trapping, and more specialized glaze effects via soaking.

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Reduction firing is often not properly understood or e plained. ind out what is really going on in the iln so you can get more color depth and a more refined color palette.

C3H8 + 5 O2 4 H2O + 3 CO2

1 Four different flame qualities are present, ranging from the most fuel rich (reductive) on the left to the most oxygen rich (oxidative) on the far right with intermediates between the two.

A B C D


Oxidation States of Metals and Their ColorsMost commonly pursued with reduction firings are the vibrant reds of copper, the deep reds/browns/blacks of reduced iron washes, reduced iron blues in celadon/chun, and the almost electric waterfall blues of reduced rutile. These glazes all obtain their color from the metal colorants undergoing a reduction in oxidation state or charge via distance between electron orbitals. For example, your starting copper source from both copper oxide and copper carbonate has an oxidation state of Cu+2, most commonly recognized as green malachite, CuCO3•Cu(OH)2 (2). In glaze, Cu+2 yields deep greens (oribe, as the ceramic world knows it), however, upon reduction, copper accepts one electron from CO/soot via a reducing flame and changes to Cu+1, yielding a ruby red color that is recognizable in the mineral cuprite, Cu2O (3). Reduced properly, a copper glaze will yield a bright to deep ruby red, but in oxidation a vibrant emerald green is maintained. If a kiln is not in reduction hard or long enough, incomplete reduction of your Cu+2 will result in red blushes on a copper green glaze surface.

of pin-holed mauve or tan staring at you after you open the kiln, you understand the other side of the rutile coin.

Streamlining Firing and GlazesBy understanding the actual process of reduction and the parameters of it therein, the method of gas firing can be better tuned for reductive atmospheres, oxidation climbs, and more properly fired glazes. Associating the process of reduction with the transfer of primarily CO, soot, and thus electrons to ceramic surfaces combines the otherwise somewhat separate knowledge pools of gas firing and oxidation state metal color chemistry. Additionally, selecting glazes based on the atmosphere required for them and the oxidation state of the metal colorant needed would lead to more efficient firings, fewer glazing mistakes, and more selective use of glazes that explicitly need reduction in gas kilns.

It is most advantageous to fire the kiln up to body reduction, put the kiln into hard reduction, and then maintain a soft reduction through

the remainder of the firing. This retains the oxidation state required for gorgeously reduced glazes without wasting the extra gas needed to smoke a kiln the entire way to cone 10.

Ultimately, the metals at the surface of your glaze are effectively receptive to oxidation/reduction changes until they are cooling back down and the glaze is solidifying. Because of this, a majority of metal reduction can happen during body reduction and then a soft reductive atmosphere can be maintained for the remainder of the firing to retain those oxidation states that are characteristic with gas firing.

Greater overall reduction firing and reduction glaze awareness leads to fewer misglazed or misfired ceramic works, less

pottery smashed in the throes of anger, less wasted pounds of clay and hours of work, and cheaper, more efficient, and faster firings.

the author Ryan Coppage is currently visiting chemistry faculty at the University of Richmond, Virginia. He assists with glaze formulation and mixing at the Visual Arts Center of Richmond and makes far too many pots. To learn more, visit www.ryancoppage.com.

References:1.Omidvarborna, H., Kumar, A. & Kim, D.-S. Recent studies on soot modeling for diesel combustion. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews. Volume 48, pp. 635–647 (August 2015).

2 3

Additionally, traditional red iron oxide exists as Fe2O3 with a Fe+3 oxidation state. Upon being fired in reduction, iron undergoes reduction through a complicated number of precursors to FeO with a Fe+2 state and changes from rust red to gun metal black/brown. This same process is responsible for the blues in celadons and chuns, and for the variable, beautiful blues in rutile and ilmenite glazes. The presence of iron in rutile (up to 10%, also some niobium) is responsible for its color and must exist in its Fe+2 reduced state for the traditional rutile blue. If you have had the misfortune of firing rutile or celadon/chun glazes in oxidation and have been horribly disappointed to see a mess

2 Specimen of the mineral malachite, with chemical formula Cu2CO3(OH)2. Copper has a 2+ oxidation state in this form. 3 Specimen of the mineral cuprite, with chemical formula Cu2O. Copper has a 1+ oxidation state in this form.

Identical white stoneware tiles dipped in Panama Red, fired in oxidation (left) and reduction (right).

PANAMA REDCone 6 Oxidation or Reduction

Dolomite . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.76 % Gerstley Borate . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.67 Strontium Carbonate . . . . . . . . . 4.17 Whiting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.60 Ferro Frit 3110 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.70Custer Feldspar . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44.10 EPK Kaolin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.60 Silica . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15.80 100.00 %

Add: Tin Oxide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.62 % Zinc Oxide . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.60 % Copper Carbonate . . . . . . .1.75–2 %


TIPS AND TOOLS

Tired of crusty, dried wa on the tips of your brushes Try these simple i brush holder solutions to eep your brushes suspended in water so they don t dry out.

brush holders by Linda Arbuckle and Forrest Sincoff Gard

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Wax Brush Holder by Linda ArbuckleMy majolica decoration methods require a lot of waxing. Since I’m using the wax frequently, I prefer to leave my wax brush suspended in water so it doesn’t dry out. I’ve used spring clothespins and narrow-necked containers for travel (1), but really an aluminum watercolor brush washer (available at most craft supply stores) is the best. I put a recycled plastic jar in the metal holder (ditch the perforated tray), and it works great for holding wax brushes suspended, so you don’t get a bent brush tip (2).

Over time, storing the brushes in water may loosen the glue that holds the bristles in the brush, and the clump of hair comes out of the handle (especially on bamboo brushes). If this happens, I gently wash off any debris from the wax, dry the parts, and use carpenter’s glue to fix the bristles back in the handle.

One more tip—if you do get dried wax in your brush, a laundry de-greaser (I use Shout®) can be used to gently shampoo the bristles and will take most of the wax out.

Send your tip and tool ideas, along with plenty of images, to [email protected]. If we use your idea, you’ll receive a complimentary one-year subscription to CM!

Foam Insulation Holder by Forrest Sincoff GardThe Ceramics Monthly editorial staff also came across another great DIY solution to keeping brushes suspended in water—using foam pipe insulation made to fit a ¾-inch diameter pipe. Foam pipe insulation can be purchased in the plumbing department at most home improvement stores. The outside diameter of the foam is 1½ inches, which give plenty of room for brush slots, while the inner diameter easily fits around the rims of most water containers (3).

Measure the bin or container that you use for rinsing brushes and cut the pipe insulation to the correct length with scissors. Use an X-Acto knife to cut 1-inch slots in the foam for the total number of brushes that you normally use.

Tip: For brushes with wider handles, make the slot slightly longer (1½–2 inches). Place the foam over the rim of your container and insert brushes, adjusting their placement so just the bristles are submerged in the water.

1 Linda Arbuckle’s brush holder for travel consists of a simple container, in this case a glass jar, and spring clothespins to hold the brushes in place so just the bristles are submerged in water. 2 Arbuckle’s studio brush holder is a converted watercolor brush washer that uses a recycled plastic jar instead of the perforated tray that is typically included with the holder. 3 A brush holder made from foam pipe insulation. The foam pipe insulation was cut to length with scissors and slots to hold the brushes were cut in using an X-Acto knife.


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Tom Turner shares some of his iconic, high fire reduction gla es that wor well on porcelain along with some helpful tips for using them.

RECIPES

cone gla es by Tom Turner40A

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TOM TURNER’S MARS HILLCOPPER RED (1)Cone 9 Reduction

Barium Carbonate . . . . . . . . . . . 2.77 %Gerstley Borate . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.95Magnesium Carbonate . . . . . . . 2.77Whiting (Pfizer Vicron 41-8) . . . . 19.76Custer Feldspar . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49.41EPK Kaolin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.58Silica . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19.76

100.00 %

Add: Tin Oxide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.00 %Zinc Oxide . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.19 %Copper Carbonate . . . . . . . 0.45 %Bentonite . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.00 %Epsom salts . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.10 %

Copper red glazes cannot be applied thin. Epsom salts are added to prevent the glaze from settling.

TOM TURNER’S BLUE TEADUST (3)Cone 9 Reduction

Talc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.26 %Whiting (Pfizer Vicron 41-8) . . . . 15.74Custer Feldspar . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39.81OM 4 Ball Clay . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.19Silica . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25.00

100.00 %

Add Cobalt Carbonate . . . . . . . 3.24 %Iron Oxide . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.78 %

This glaze layers well with Tom Turner’s Flambé glaze and iron-oxide wash.

TOM TURNER’S FLAMBÉ (3)Cone 9 Reduction

Barium Carbonate . . . . . . . . . . . 4.04 %Gerstley Borate . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.62Magnesium Carbonate . . . . . . . 4.04Whiting (Pfizer Vicron 41-8) . . . . 14.43Ferro Frit 3195 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.01Custer Feldspar . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41.56EPK Kaolin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.33Silica . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25.97

100.00 %

Add: Tin Oxide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.87 %Zinc Oxide . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.73 %Copper Carbonate . . . . . . . 0.43 %Bentonite . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.01 %

Flambé glazes cannot be applied thin.

TURNER TEMMOKU (2)Cone 9 Reduction

Whiting (Pfizer 41-8) . . . . . . . . . 11.28 %Cornwall Stone . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63.90OM 4 Ball Clay . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.02Silica . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18.80

100.00 %

Add: Red Iron Oxide . . . . . . . . . . 9.02 %Bentonite . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.50 %

My Temmoku glaze started with a glaze from the Harrow School of Art in England (their Cornwall 85, whiting 15 glaze). It requires different amounts of iron for stoneware and porcelain. The Cornwall stone has changed so much that I had to drastically change the glaze, so testing will be necessary.

1 Teapot, 11 in. (28 cm) in length, porcelain, Mars Hill Copper Red glaze with a wash of iron oxide and water over, fired to cone 9 in reduction, 2008. 2 Covered jar, 8 in. (20 cm) in height, porcelain, Temmoku glaze with a wash of iron oxide and water over, fired to cone 9 in reduction, 2006. 3 Vase with four bird sentinels, 9 in. (23 cm) in height, paddled, carved, and stamped porcelain, Blue Teadust and Flambé glazes, with a wash of iron oxide and water over, fired to cone 9 in reduction, 2003.

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APRIL 23 – 29, 2016POTTERY MAKING:wood and soda firingMATT LONG, DAVID PINTO & DOUG CASEBEER

SPRING DESTINATION WORKSHOPJAMAICA

Snowmass Village, Colorado | (970) 923-3181 | andersonranch.org

2016 faculty STUART ASPREY | KATHY BUTTERLY | DOUG CASEBEER VICTORIA CHRISTEN | MARK FISCHER | JULIA GALLOWAY | JOHN GILL ANDREA GILL | CHRIS GUSTIN | SAM HARVEY | MOLLY HATCH | RANDY JOHNSTON | SUZE LINDSAY | BENJAMIN LIRA | ANDREW MARTIN | JAN MCKEACHIE JOHNSTON | KENT MCLAUGHLIN | ALLEGHANY MEADOWS BRAD MILLER | SARA RANSFORD | PELUSA ROSENTHAL | JUDITH SALOMON RALPH SCALA | MICHAEL SHERRILL | CHRIS STALEY | NANCY TRAIN SMITH CHRISTIAN REX VAN MINNEN | STAN WELSH

50 years

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Join us for the Women Working with Clay symposium at Hollins University. Observe the presentation of various working methods in pottery and sculpture, and participate in discussions that examine and explore the connections of the history of women as vessel makers, artists and artisans. Led by remarkable ceramic artists, you’ll find inspiration and gain valuable insight from demonstrations, lectures and panel discussions. To register, visit hollins.edu/tmva or call (540) 362-6021.

W O M E N W O R K I N G W I T H C L A Y S Y M P O S I U M

Syd Carpenter | Michelle Erickson | Liz Quackenbush | Tara Wilson Donna Polseno | Louise Cort | Silvie Granatelli


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Applications must be submitted online by June 1, 2016or by midnight June 10 with a late fee.

For more information and the 2016 SFPN application:www.strictlyfunctionalpottery.net

Call for further information: 717.509.7547Exhibit is held at Kevin Lehman’s Pottery at

560 S. Prince Street in downtown Lancaster, PA

CALL FOR ARTISTS

ONLINE APPLICATION

2016 EXHIBITSEPTEMBER 17–

OCTOBER 22, 2016

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RECEPTION SEPTEMBER 16

2015BEST OF SHOW

MatthewMcGovernCedar, MI

June 10–12, 201

Join us June 10–12, 2016 for a workshop at the Maine College of Art in Portland, Maine, featuring presentations by Ayumi Horie, Kristen Kieffer, Kathy King, and Kari Radasch.

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EDUCATION

presents

Jan McKeachie Johnston earned her BFA at the University of Wisconsin at River Falls and went on to study at the University of Minnesota and Southern Illinois University. Since 1979, she has been very active teaching workshops and working in her Wisconsin studio. Her work has been exhibited widely throughout the United States, and she is represented in many private and public collections.

Randy Johnston is a professor at the University of Wisconsin at River Falls, and has been making work in his Wisconsin studio for more than 35 years. He earned his BFA from the University of Minnesota, where he studied with Warren MacKenzie, and his MFA from Southern Illinois University. He also ap-prenticed at the pottery of Shimaoka Tatsuzo. He is the recipient of numerous awards including two Visual Artist Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Jennifer Poellot HarnettyEditor, CeramicArtsDaily.orgProgram Manager, Ceramic Arts Daily Presents Video Series

ceramic artsdaily.org

In this installment of the Ceramic Arts Daily Presents Video Series, Randy Johnston and Jan McKeachie Johnston invite viewers into their studio for a look at their working processes. Soul mates as well as studio mates, Randy and Jan’s work shares the common influence of the Leach/Hamada traditions, but they each bring their own perspectives and techniques to the making process. Once an apprentice to Shimaoka Tatsuzo, Randy uses traditional Japanese tools and methods, and combines them with his own innovations and ideas about form. Jan incorporates a strong sense of form along with rich surface pattern and texture to her work. From Randy’s simple thrown yunomis and slab-built forms made from inventive molds, to Jan’s thrown, altered, and assembled baskets and slip-decorated dishes, this video is packed not only with inspiring techniques and tips, but also the stories from their rich lives in clay.

ceramic arts daily video library gCopyright 2015 The American Ceramic Society

Total Running Time: Approximately 4 hours

presentsceramicartsdaily 2-DISC SET!

IN THE STUDIO with Randy Johnst� and

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ceramic arts daily video library

To learn more about Randy and Jan, please visit their website www.mckeachiejohnstonstudios.com.

In their 4-hour DVD, clay power couple Randy Johnston and Jan McKeachie Johnston share their techniques for creating elegant, functional wood-fired pottery. It’s two

complete videos in one, but with one low price!

For more information and to view clips, visit www.ceramicartsdaily.org/bookstore

IN THE STUDIO Randy Johnst� and

Jan McKeachie Johnst�Randy Johnst�Randy Johnst�withMaterials

and Glazes

Ceramics Monthly’s Guide to

ceramic arts bookstore

Go online to download a free excerpt or order your copy today!

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MATERIALS& GLAZES

Ceramics Monthly’s Guide to

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One of the primary efforts of Ceramics Monthly magazine, from the very beginning in 1953 to the present, has been to illustrate and explain the technical aspects of ceramic art so that an individual in a studio has a high chance for success. Any good ceramic-art library needs to include Ceramics Monthly, and the technical-reference shelf in that library now needs to include this book.

Compiled from years worth of technical explanation and reference material from the magazine, Ceramics Monthly’s Guide to Materials and Glazes will help you interpret results in your own studio, assess recipes from others for possible use, and pursue new ideas with knowledge and confidence.

Testing, exploration, and experimentation are at the core of artistic discovery, and this volume is a resource for understanding common ceramic materials and their characteristics. Full of practical, applicable information you can put to use every day in your studio, it will help you bring your own ideas from inspiration to reality!

The American Ceramic Societywww.CeramicArtsDaily.orgPrinted in China

Since it was first published in 1953, a primary goal of Ceramics Monthly magazine has been to illustrate and explain the technical aspects of ceramic art so that an individual in a studio has a high chance for success. This book has been compiled from years of technical explanation and reference material from Ceramics Monthly, and will help you interpret results in your own studio, assess recipes from others for possible use, and pursue new ideas with knowledge and confidence.


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A R T S C E N T E R

Ceramics ProgramClasses • Exhibits • Workshops • Residency Program

Upcoming Exhibitions & Workshops:

Workhouse Clay International

August 13 - October 16, 2016Juror Jack Troy

Call for entries deadline: May 4, 2016 Apply at juriedartservices.com

Kevin CroweExhibit: September 24 - October 23, 2016

Workshop: October 21-23, 2016

Richard NotkinExhibit: March 11 - May 7, 2017

Workshop: May 5-7, 2017

Mid-range Glaze Workshopwith Diana Faris, April 8, 2016

AMACO Professional Development Workshop

for K-12 Educatorswith Diana Faris, April 9, 2016

9518 Workhouse Way, Lorton, VA 22079WorkhouseArts.org | [email protected]

LA MERIDIANA

www.lameridiana.fi.it

Inspiring potters since 1981

In TuscanyWorkshops & Residencies

FIND US AT NCECATable T4


James BrunelleRon Dean Tyler Gulden Robbie HeidingerSarah Hiemann Rebecca Hutchinson Michael Kline Washington Ledesma Judy Motzkin Hannah Niswonger Jeremy Randall Charlie & Linda RiggsBrian Taylor Guy Wolff

Faculty Include:

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SANTA FE CLAYSUMMER WORKSHOPS 2016

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international exhibitions

March 31, 2016 entry deadlineNevada, Las Vegas “Sweet and

Slippery Slope: The Art of Sex and Sexuality” (May 5–31) Ceramic work that explores sex and sexuality as part of the human experience. Fee: $35 for first two works, $10 per additional work. Juror: Laura Henkle. Contact Thomas Bumblauskas, Clay Arts Vegas, 1511 S. Main St., Las Vegas, NV 89104; [email protected]; http://clayartsvegas.com/html/prospectus.html; 702-375-4147.

April 12, 2016 entry deadlineNevada, Las Vegas “Miniatures

and Jewelry” (June 2–28) ceramic jewelry and sculptural works. All work must fit within or on a 8-inch square cube. Juried from digital. Fee: $35 for first two works, $10 per additional-work. Juror: CJ Jikel. Contact Thomas Bumblauskas, Clay Arts Vegas, 1511 S. Main St., Las Vegas, NV 89104; [email protected]; http://clayartsvegas.com/html/prospectus.html; 702-375-4147.

May 23, 2016 entry deadlineNevada, Las Vegas “Serve it Up

2016” (June 30–August 28) functional and sculptural ceramic tableware, from cups and bowls to casseroles and spoons. Juried from digital. Fee: $30 (2 images per piece, 2 pieces max). Juror: Lielani Trinka. Contact Thomas Bumblauskas, Clay Arts Vegas, 1511 S. Main St., Las Vegas, NV 89104; [email protected]; http://clayartsvegas.com/html/prospectus.html; 702-375-4147.

June 1, 2016 entry deadlineCalifornia, Auburn “North Ameri-

can Clay Challenge” (September 1– October 1). Open to sculptural, func-tional, non-functional, conceptual and contemporary ceramics. Work must have been completed in the past 3 years. Juried from digital. Fee: $100 for 3 entries. Juror: Susannah Israel. Con-tact: General Gomez Arts and Events, 808 Lincoln Way, Auburn, CA 95603; 530-745-4230.

August 26, 2016 entry deadlineNevada, Las Vegas “What Goes

Bump in the Night 2016” (October 6–November 11) open to ceramic work focused on the scary, bizarre, creepy, eerie, dark, unexplained, and frightening. Work can be sculptural or functional. Juried from actual work. Fee: $35 each entry (2 images per piece). Juror: Robert Lawaree III. Contact Thomas Bumblauskas, Clay Arts Vegas, 1511 S. Main St., Las Vegas, NV 89104; [email protected]; http://clayartsvegas.com/html/pro-spectus.html; 702-375-4147.

united states exhibitions

March 1, 2016 entry deadlineIowa, Cedar Rapids “Divided Attrac-

tion” (April 8–May 28) All emerging and professional artists 18 and over living in the US, may apply. Open to any 3D func-tional/sculptural work. Juried from digital. Fee: $30 for 3 entries, one detail image per entry. Juror: Gregory Blair. Contact Lauren Tucci, Gilded Pear Gallery, 808 Third Ave. SE, Cedar Rapids, IA 52403; [email protected]; www.gildedpeargallery.com/call-for-entries.html; 319-366-0205.

March 19, 2016 entry deadlineNew Mexico, Farmington “Gateway

to Imagination” (May 7–July 9) open to artists 18 years or older residing in the US, artwork must have been completed after January 1, 2015. All media ac-cepted. Juried from digital. $45 for 3 entries. Juror: BettyAnn Mocek. Contact: Farmington Museum, [email protected]; 3041 E. Main, Farmington, NM 87402; 505-566-2292.

March 30, 2016 entry deadlineNew York, Rochester “College Col-

lective” (June 17–16) open to students currently enrolled in a college program or who graduated within two years. Open to ceramics, photography, and book arts. Juried from digital. Fee: $30 for three images/entries, each additional image is $5. Jurors: Peter Pincus, Myra Greene, and Laura Wilder. Contact Kathryn Whorton, Genesee Center for the Arts & Education, 713 Monroe Ave., Rochester, NY 14607; [email protected]; http://www.rochesterarts.org; 585-271-5183.

April 1, 2016 entry deadlinePennsylvania, Philadelphia “The Clay

Studio National” (May 6–June 19) juried ceramic exhibition showcases functional work, sculpture, and installations. Both emerging and established artists are invited to apply. Jurors: Elisabeth Agro and Jennifer Zwilling. Contact The Clay Studio, 137-139 N. 2nd St., Philadelphia, PA 19106; www.theclaystudio.org; 215-925-3453.

April 1, 2016 entry deadlineVirginia, Lynchburg “Emerging Ce-

ramic Artists” (June 1–25) open to work primarily of clay made by artists 18 to 30 years old. Juried from digital. Fee: $30 for 3 entries. Juror: Mike Jabbur. Contact John Jessiman, Cub Creek Foundation, 4871 Wheeler Spring Rd., Appomattox, VA 24522-9505; [email protected]; www.cubcreek.org; 434-248-5074.

May 6, 2016 entry deadlineMissouri, Kansas City “KC Clay Guild

Teabowl National” (August 26–Septem-ber 16) US residents at least 18 years of age. Artists are allowed 3 teabowl entries. Traditional and non-traditional,

no more than 9 inches in any direction. Juried from digital. Fee: $30. Juror: Jack Troy. Contact Susan Speck, KC Clay Guild, 200 West 74th St, Kansas City, MO 64114; [email protected]; http://teabowlnational.weebly.com; 816-363-1373.

May 27, 2016 entry deadlineColorado, Carbondale “2016 Clay

National XI: The Intimacy of Scale“ (August 5–26) exterior installations welcome. Smaller works must be 8 inches or less in the largest dimension. Larger three-dimensional works must not exceed 24 inches in the largest dimension. Juried from digital. Fee: $30 for 3 entries. Juror: Chris Gustin. Contact Matthew Eames, Carbondale Clay Center, 135 Main St., Carbondale, CO 81623; [email protected]; 970-963-2529.

regional exhibitionsApril 1, 2016 entry deadline

Oklahoma, Tulsa “VisionMakers 2016” (October 7–November 19) open to individuals 18 years and older who reside in AR, CO, KS, MO, NM, OK, and TX and are not degree-seeking art students. Installation work is encour-aged. Work must be completed in the last 2 years and not produced while an art student. Juried from digital. Juror: Namita Wiggers. Contact Krystle Brewer, 108 Contemporary, 108 E. Brady, Tulsa, OK 74103; [email protected] h t t p : / / 1 0 8 c o n t e m p o r a r y . o r g / 2016visionmakers; 918-895-6302.

April 15, 2016 entry deadlineIndiana, Indianapolis “Art from the

Heartland” (June 10–August 6) open to all media. Artists 18 years or older living in the Midwest are eligible. Cash awards total $4000. Director’s Choice Awards will be a solo show each at the Indianapolis Art Center. Fee: $25 for 2 entries. Juror: Mindy Taylor Ross. Contact: The Indianapolis Art Center; www.indlsartcenter.org.

May 4, 2016 entry deadlineVirginia, Lorton “Workhouse Clay

International 2016” (August 13–Octo-ber 16) open to functional and sculp-tural ceramic artwork being created by US and Canadian ceramic artists. Juried from digital. Fee: $30. Juror: Jack Troy. Contact Dale Marhanka, Work-house Arts Center-Ceramics Program, 9504 Workhouse Way, Lorton, VA 22079; [email protected]; www.workhouseceramics.org; 703-584-2982.

May 31, 2016 entry deadlineCanada, British Columbia, Salt Spring

Island “The Salt Spring Island Ceramics Awards” (October 6–16) open to emerg-ing and established ceramic artists and potters from Vancouver Island and The Gulf Islands, British Columbia. Juried from digital. Fee: $15. Contact , Salt Spring

Island Potters Guild, 114 Rainbow Rd., Salt Spring Island, BC V8K 2V5 Cana-da; [email protected]; https://saltspringpottersguild.com/ce-ramics-awards; 250-538-1864.

fairs and festivalsMarch 1, 2016 entry deadline

Illinois, Naperville “Naperville Wom-an’s Club 57th Juried Fine Art Fair” (July 9–10) open to hand-crafted original art-work. Juried from digital. Fee: $30. Con-tact Marie Gnesda, Naperville Woman’s Club, 14 S. Washington St., Naperville, IL 60540; [email protected]; www.napervillewomansclub.org/; 630-803-9171.

March 11, 2016 entry deadlineNew York, Syracuse “Syracuse Arts &

Crafts Festival” (July 29–31) both 2 and 3-dimensional works will be featured. Exhibitors participate from over 30 states and Canada. Juried from digital. Fee: $25. Contact Bethany Holbrook, Downtown Committee of Syracuse, 572 S. Salina St., Syracuse, NY 13202; [email protected]; www.syracuseartsandcraftsfestival.com; 315-470-1962.

April 11, 2016 entry deadlineNew Jersey, Augusta “Peters Valley

Fine Craft Fair” (September 24–25). Juried from digital. Fee: $40 (online app by April 1) / $55 (online app April 2–11)/ $60 (paper app). Jurors: Judith Neuge-bauer, Tom Neugebauer, Margie Cohen. Contact Lindsay Ketterer Gates, Peters Valley Craft Center, 19 Kuhn Rd., Layton, NJ 07851; [email protected]; www.petersvalley.org; 973-948-5200.

August 1, 2016 entry deadlineMaryland, Gaithersburg “Sugarloaf

Crafts Festival in Gaithersburg, MD” (October 14–16, November 18–20), Maryland, Timonium “Sugarloaf Crafts Festival in Timonium, MD” (October 7–9), Pennsylvania, Oaks “Sugarloaf Crafts Fes-tival in Oaks, PA” (November 4–6), New Jersey, Somerset, “Sugarloaf Crafts Fes-tival in Somerset, NJ” (October 21–23), and Virginia, Chantilly “Sugarloaf Crafts Festival in Chantilly, VA” (December 9–11). All Sugarloaf Craft festival entries: Open to all craft media. Artists must be present to show their work. All work must be original and completely finished. Juried from digital. Fee: $20. Contact Molly Dressel, Sugarloaf Mountain Works, 19807 Executive Park Cir., Germantown, MD 20874; [email protected]; www.sugarloafcrafts.com/becomeex.html; 800-210-9900.

call for entriesdeadlines for exhibitions, fairs, and festivals


Ceramics Monthly welcomes classifieds in the following categories: Buy/Sell, Employment, Events, Opportunities, Personals, Products, Publications/Videos, Real Estate, Rentals, Services, Travel. Accepted advertisements will be inserted into the first available print issue, and posted on our website for 30 days at no additional charge! See www.ceramicsmonthly.org for details.

buy/sellFOR SALE 1152 sq. ft. house, 2000 sq. ft. shop on 8 acres located way back in the woods but just 3 miles from Saluda, NC. $345,000. [email protected].

Lightly Used: Pacifica GT 400 wheel with seat $375; Skutt KM-1018-3 automatic kiln with furniture $750; custom designed/built raku kiln, you assemble $500; Omaha, NE, pictures available by request at [email protected], 402-690-4055.

Two Gas Kilns For Sale. Bailey Shuttle 34/B, Geil DL-12F. Shelves, stilts, and complete hood systems. Kilns located in Greenville, Tennessee. Good deal for somebody. Contact [email protected].

employmentPotter’s Fire, a production studio seeks an experienced production pot-ter for throwing and assembling a com-plete line of wares. Full-time, salaried with production incentives, bonuses, and profit sharing. Herndon, Virginia. Learn more at: http://www.pottersfire.com/#!opportunities/c1jit. Contact Elizabeth at [email protected].

Potter’s Fire, LLC, seeks an ener-getic full time Illustrator/relief sculptor to create new designs and sculpt prototypes. Experience with the hu-man form and realism a must. Full description at http://www.pottersfire.com/#!opportunities/c1jit. Contact Elizabeth at [email protected]. Salaried with production incentives, bonuses, and profit sharing.

eventsCeramic Arts workshops sponsored by Ghost Ranch, New Mexico with Barbara Campbell: “Raku, Thinking Small,” July 10–16. Thinking Celtic in Clay,” July 17–23. “Clay is Infinite, We Can Do Anything,”July 24–30. www.ghostranch.org/clay. Info: 505-685-1001.

CONNECTICUT—Canton Clay Works, LLC, a premier ceramic studio in northwest CT, offers a wide array of spectacular firing workshops includ-ing wood firing in our Naboragama wood and soda, raku, saggar, saw-dust and painting with smoke and several fuming techniques. Workshop results are terrific and reliable. Check

out our 2016 offerings by visiting www.cantonclayworks.com. Ques-tions, call 860-693-1000.

CLAY 2016: Silver City, NM, July 25–31. Not just another clay festival—CLAY 2016: From Oaxaca to Santa Fe; an expansive experience aspiring to redefine your ideas of what clay is. Workshops by Diego Valles, Barb Campbell, and Javier Cervantes. Two juried exhibitions: The Art of Drinking 2016—with juror Heidi Preuss Grew, and Interwoven—Explorations in Neo-Mimbreño Clay and Fiber juried by Jaune Quick-to-See Smith. Enjoy lectures, demonstrations, CLAY fest market, social events, and more. www.clayfestival.com.

Eva Kwong Evocative Color and Form Workshop Columbus, Ohio. June 27–July 1, 2016, Cultural Arts Center. Learn distinctive approaches to clay forming and surface de-sign. Limited to 17 people. $375. www.CulturalArtsCenterOnline.org; 614-645-7047.

WORKSHOP at Baltimore Clay-works: MARTHA GROVER, Porce-lain: On and Off the Wheel, Sat–Sun April 16–17, 10am–4pm. Please visit www.baltimoreclayworks.org or call 410-578 1919 x10.

Immerse yourself in the beauty of Ghost Ranch, New Mexico. Ceram-ics Workshops in 2016 sponsored by the New Mexico Potters and Clay Artists (NMPCA): Joe Bova “After the Flood, Animal Ranch” August 14–19. Sheryl Zacharia “Bump up the Scale, Expand Your Ideas” August 22–27. Monika Kaden “Expressive Figure Sculpture: Movement and Form” October 20–23. NMPCA “Ceramic Surfaces: Get on Top Of It” September 9–11. Information and registration at www.nmpotters.org. Judy Nelson-Moore, 505-466-3070.

Instructors of international repu-tation, great learning experience, genuine food and wines. Your clay experience in Tuscany! Programme at www.lameridiana.fi.it.

“Electric Dirt: A New Ceramic Land-scape” with Garth Johnson, David Hicks and Cheyenne Rudolph—demo symposium sponsored by Glassell School of Art and ClayHouston in Houston, TX focusing on electric firing and digital/video applications.

April 30–May 1, 2016, 10 am–5:30 pm, free and open to the public. For more information contact Jeff Forster at [email protected] or Michelle Mat-thews at [email protected].

Take a workshop at gorgeous SNC TAHOE this summer! Clayton Keyes, Matt Hoogland, Glenn Grishkoff, Randy Brodnax and Don Ellis, Adam Field, John Toki and Nancy Servis, Ben Carter, and Ronan Peterson. www.sierranevada.edu/workshops; 775-881-7588.

opportunities1 Year Post-Bac Special Student Pro-gram at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, AZ. Develop a portfolio for graduate school or residencies. Deadline: May 1st, 2016. Contact [email protected] for more details.

Apprentice/Internship. Small pro-duction pottery in northwest Mon-tana seeks motivated individual for one-year position starting end of August. 40 hours/week in exchange for studio space (includes materials and firing), room and board, monthly stipend, and gallery sales. Check www.whitefishpottery.com for more details about applying.

The Blue Dome Gallery Downtown in Silver City, New Mexico is sponsor-ing a Juried International Ceramic Exhibition titled “Beakers, Cups, and Mugs: The Art of Drinking 2016” in partnership with Silver City Clay Fes-tival, CLAY 2016. The prospectus is available on either www.clayfestival.com or www.bluedomegallery.com. Please submit entries online and we are going to have a wonderful exhibit. I hope you can join us in this celebra-tion of clay.

CONNECTICUT: Exciting intern-ships are available at Canton Clay Works, LLC. Applicants should have comprehensive education and experi-ence in throwing and hand building techniques. Opportunities for teaching and firing numerous varieties of kilns are available (wood/soda/gas reduc-tion/raku/saggar and other alternative firings). Arts management applicants are welcome. Interns may participate in numerous group shows in our gallery. Visit our website to learn more about us at www.cantonclayworks.com. Send artist statement, resume, writ-ten references and e-portfolio to

classified advertising

[email protected]. Ques-tions, call 860-693-1000.

Learn what galleries want! Step by step guidance for design, de-velopment, pricing and pre-show logistics. New to Market Grants $700 Apply: AmericanMadeShow.com. [email protected].

RESIDENCY—3-month summer and 9-month starting in Sept. Large fully equipped studio spaces, housing, wood, salt, gas, and electric kilns. Application deadline April 1, 2016 Information at www.cubcreek.org or [email protected].

productsCustom Extruder and Pugmill Dies from $39.99. Custom dies for North Star, Brent, Bailey, or Scott Creek Extruders and any pugmill. Any material. Download order form at www.northstarequipment.com or email: [email protected]. Phone: 1-800-231-7896.

GREAT HANDBUILDING TEM-PLATES! Developed by Sandi Pier-antozzi. A set of 24 durable, flexible, templates to create a variety of circular/conical Forms. DVD also available. Perfect for teachers and potters. www.CircleMatic.com.

Rule the Roll! Get Roll-N-Rule an artsy ruled canvas perfect for all your slab and hand building work. Available at www.northstarequipment.com or call 1-800-231-7896. Buy two—get free freight.

real estateAttention professional ceramic artists—Waterfront double lot home South Florida! 3/2 new roof, a/c, water heater, impact windows, renovated kitchen. Detached studio with extra-large, bisque, electric kiln, shelving, and work rack. 2-chambered atmo-spheric gas/wood/soda kiln with front chamber of 160 cubic feet and back chamber 38 cubic feet. The kiln is high alumina, fire brick and k26, k23 insula-tion brick for second course. Arches covered with 3000 degree 2-inch refractory wool blanket encased in steel mesh. Kiln supported by heavy industrial steel and covered by 18 ft. by 30 ft. steel bldg. Includes 3 large 300-gallon propane tanks, 6,250,000 BTU burners, and silicon carbide shelves. Create outside all year for


index to advertisersAardvark .....................................61

Alligator Clay ..............................76

AMACO and Brent ............4, 10, 23

Anderson Ranch Arts Ctr ...........66

Archie Bray Fdn ..........................68

Arrowmont School ......................69

Bailey Pottery .........................1, 13

Belger Crane Yard Studios .........17

Carolina Clay ..............................76

CeramicArtsDaily Bookstore ......74

Ceramic Art London ...................19

Ceramic Arts Library ..................65

Chinese Clay Art.........................70

Clay Art Center/Scott Creek .......57

Clayscapes Pottery ....................69

Clay Studio, The .........................21

Continental Clay .........................63

Cornell Studio Supply .................76

Coyote Clay ................................57

Cress Mfg ...................................67

Cullowhee Mountain Arts............75

Dolan Tools .................................76

Euclid’s/PSH ...............................75

Geil Kilns ......................................3

Georgies .....................................66

Giffin Tec .....................................64

Great Lakes Clay ........................76

Highwater Clays ...........................7

Hollins University ........................71

Idyllwild Arts ...............................66

J. C. Campbell Folk School ........71

K-12 National Ceramic Fdn ........70

L & L Kiln Mfg .............................69

La Meridiana ...............................75

Larkin ..........................................73

Massachusetts College of Art ....68

Master Kiln Builders ...................57

Mayco ................................ Cover 2

Metchosin Int Schl of the Arts.....76

MKM ...........................................12

Mudtools .....................................63

NCECA .......................................29

North Star ...................................66

Northern Clay Center .................64

Northern Indiana Pottery Supply ..76

Olympic Kilns .............................65

Oneida ........................................67

Ox-Bow Summer Schl of Art .......63

Paducah Schl of Art ...................66

Paragon Industries .......................5

PCF Studios ................................76

Penland Schl of Crafts ................68

Peter Pugger Mfg. ............. Cover 3

Peters Valley Schl of Craft ..........73

PMA Craft Show .........................65

Potters Council .....................73, 74

Pottery Northwest .......................71

Randolph Arts Guild ...................70

Runyan Pottery Supply ...............75

Santa Fe Clay .............................76

Sculpture Space NYC ................70

Shakerag ....................................76

Shimpo .......................................25

Skutt ................................... Cover 4

SlabMat ......................................57

Smith-Sharpe ..............................61

Socwell .......................................76

SOFA ............................................2

Spectrum Glazes ........................27

Strictly Functional Pottery Natl....73

Taos Art School ..........................74

Truro............................................76

Tucker’s Pottery ............................6

Vent-A-Kiln ..................................75

Workhouse Arts Fdn ...................75

Xiem Tools USA ..........................61

$325,000! Call 561-251-3729 or email [email protected].

Looking for a new adventure? The former home and studio of Jerry Rothman is available for long-term lease. 3000 square-foot studio fully equipped for large-scale architec-tural or sculptural work including two large kilns and a test kiln, together with an additional 3000-square-foot, artist-built home on eight gorgeous acres, shared with former ceramic artist Mayer Shacter, in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. The house is two-bedroom, three bath, plus two offices and a huge plus room, possible third bedroom. In the quiet country, a gardener’s paradise, but near other artists and restaurants, only five miles from town. San Miguel is a magical town, a U.N. World Heritage Site that has long been a Mecca for artists. It is home to a lively, active expat com-munity of Americans and Canadians including many artists and writers. All this for $2500/month. People who move to San Miguel never look back! It’s the adventure of a lifetime. Contact Mayer Shacter: [email protected]; 510-295-4097.

Mid-Coastal Maine Potter’s Re-treat. Beautiful ceramics studio/living space on 110 acres. Woods trails, swimming pond, private les-sons, and critiques/group work-shops. Nearby ocean and sailboat. www.starflowerfarmstudios.com; 207-525-3593.

Thriving studio/gallery for sale! Lo-cated in beautiful northeast Connecti-cut, this is an established, 13-year-old teaching studio with attached gallery that boasts a dedicated community of students and a solid local repu-tation. Located in Putnam, a small arts-focused town which draws from the surrounding 50+ miles and has recently gone through a renaissance. Great energy, both in the studio and the larger community. Email for more details: [email protected].

Unique Mid-Century Modern home on 12.85 wooded acres in central Pennsylvania. Detached 1500 sq. workshop currently configured as ceramics studio, dedicated 200 amp service with 120V and 240V outlets, high efficiency propane furnace, full bath, and Fujitsu split air condi-tioner. Double plan sized 90 cu. ft. Phoenix fast fire wood kiln, shelving, posts and grates. Full home details at: http://www.stonearchrealestate.com/property/pa/reedsville/17084/- / 7 9 9 1 - b a c k - m o u n t a i n - r o a d -e/563afec930e08a131300000d/. Studio details at: http://www.lang-bonsai.com/Studio.html. Offered by Stone Arch Real Estate, Kim Rickert. Office: 717-248-6400 or cell: 717-994-1933.

serviceCeramics Consulting Services offers technical information and practical advice on clay/glaze/kiln faults and

corrections, slip casting, clay body/glaze formulas, salt glazing, and product design. Call or write for de-tails. Jeff Zamek, 6 Glendale Woods Dr., Southampton, MA 01073; 413-527-7337; e-mail [email protected]; or www.jeffzamek.com.

Custom Mold Design—For 25 years, Petro Mold Company has been creat-ing molds for renowned potters and ceramists all over the world. Our innovative molds can help with your productivity and profits. We set the bar for quality standards with sculpt-ing, mold design, and new ceramic casting services. Visit us today at www.custommolds.net or 814-796-6635 and let us help you.

travelJAPAN! Ceramics, sushi, and sight-seeing in Japan! Two-week trip, May 17th–June 1st. Visit potteries, art museums, castles, temples, shrines, and art studios. Hands-on workshops, an incredible experience. www.sierranevada.edu/workshops; 775-881.7588.

JAPAN, KYOTO—Ceramics of Ja-pan, October 12–22, 2016. Studio and kiln visits in Kyoto, Tamba, Shigaraki, and Bizen. Japanese ceramics exper t Rober t Yel l in and a small group explore ceram-ics art in Japanese history and contemporary interpretations of traditional forms and techniques. Contact Elaine Baran, Esprit Travel

and Tours. Japanese art and culture specialists. www.esprittravel.com; ebaran@espri t t ravel.com; 800-377-7481.

OVERSEAS CERAMIC WORKSHOPS and TOURS WITH DISCOVERY ART TRAVEL—Small, culturally sensitive groups using local interpreters and experts. Denys James, Canada 1-250-537-4906; www.denysjames.com; [email protected]. Mo-rocco, Sicily, Andalucia, Spain.

MOROCCO 2016, October 17–No-vember 7, The Full Circle—Fez, Chefchaouen, Essaouira, Volubilis, Marrakech, Zagora, Meknes, Rabat, Casablanca. Studio visits, adobe architecture, tile art, Roman mosa-ics, traditional and contemporary ceramics, fabrics, a camel ride in the desert, and much more. Denys James, www.discoveryarttravel.com.

SICILY, ITALY, 2017. April 22–May 10—Majolica, Mosaics, and Ar-chitectural Masterpieces. Explore this diverse Italian island, rich in its ceramics, architecture, his-tory, beauty, cuisine and wine. www.discoveryarttravel.com.

GREECE, THESSALONIKI—The Almond Grove: Workshops in Ce-ramics. Winter–Spring–Summer–Autumn 2016. Residential courses in ceramics. Details: +30 (2310) 450451. [email protected]; www.hectormavridis.com.


Spotlight lead text.

SPOTlighT

evaluate & appreciate

Ceramics Monthly: From your perspective as an artist and educator, how has the field of studio ceramics changed over time? Cynthia Bringle: More people are working with clay. There are many classes and suppliers for materials, ready-made clay and glazes, plus stamps and decals. Some students are not getting basic instruction: how to throw, pull a handle, understand glazes and firing, etc. After working a short amount of time they are setting up to sell. Often they would benefit from more study and constructive criticism.

CM: How do you approach inspiring others to both use and create handmade ceramics? CB: My teaching has been demonstrations and short sessions for clay groups and at craft schools. The longest classes have been eight-week concentrations at Penland School of Crafts, which I have taught five times. My aim is for students to improve their techniques along with evaluating their pieces. This includes learning how to look at and improve all parts as well as making work that speaks to the viewer and to form and function.

The buyers of my work are a broad spectrum. In my beginning years, I spoke to ladies’ garden clubs and book clubs; I told them I

was out to replace all the plastic in their kitchen. I am still working on that. People are now more aware of the fact that pottery can be used, but I still often open the dishwasher to show pots in use. The maker needs to pass on knowledge about clay objects to the customer. If at all possible, educate the third and fourth grade students as they are the appreciators of tomorrow. This year, I made dishes for the fourth generation of a family.

CM: What inspires you to keep working in clay both as an educator and as an artist? CB: Working in clay has been my full-time job for 50 years. Years ago, I interviewed the production potter Joe Owen (of the Owen family of North Carolina potters) in Seagrove for Studio Potter magazine and remember well what he said, “When I retire I think I will make a few pots.” I, too, plan to continue working in clay. It is certainly my passion, and trying to go to the next step with my work keeps me interested and challenged. Working with different clay bodies and firings and evaluating my own work keeps me thinking about how to hopefully put better work out there.Photo: Edwina Bringle.

www.skutt.com 503-774-6000

Steven Hill Demonstration

Student Throwing CompetitionWed - Thu - Fri 9:30 - 2:30Pre-register to compete at:

www.skutt.com

We help people make great things!

Student Throwing Competition

We are gettingdirty in KC!

2:30 - 4:00 Thursday and Friday

Join us in our booth at the 50th Anniversary NCECA Conference in

Kansas City. March 16th -18th

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