a tribute to Eva, elephants and serendipity

this week check out my post on the KCAI's main blog page at
http://thethoughtbank.blogspot.com/2010/04/serendipity-tea-with-eva-and-running.html

here is me with Eva Zeisel

and

that's me on that elephant (age 4?)!

go figure...

Kicki Masthem

Kate MacDowell

Roxanne Jackson

I thought it's high time I mention these three amazing figure sculptors. I was exposed to all three while learning ceramics at Portland Community College in Portland, OR. Back then I was dedicated to function and the work these ladies were making (though admired) belonged to a different planet. Kicki taught me my first clay and the figure class with a lot of grueling anatomy studies and working from live models. Roxanne showed up and taught classes by the time I was heading out but still made an impression. It was clear that she inspired her students to make conceptual sculptural work and dazzled everyone with what she could make low-fire glazes do. Kate was a fellow student who worked long late hours in the lab with me. Her imaginative and elaborate narratives woke me up to how much one can say through sculpture. Her work from the get go was magical and exciting. Since then Kate's work has only grown and she has gone on to have a very successful career in clay as a figure sculptor. At the time I met these ladies I had no idea that I would attempt to follow in their footsteps. Now I am thankful to have been exposed to such great role models. They have been an inspiration not only in the quality and creativity of the work they create but also in the way they have established themselves in the ceramics art world. Being exposed to the work and lives of Kicki, Roxanne, and Kate planted a seed of the great expanse of possibilities...which still helps to encourage me now.

our hands embracing technology

Someone (!?!?) hates Bernard Leach

Garth Johnson-computer graphics on tradish euro porc forms

Janet Deboos-factory made "hand thrown" ceramic pots


Hooray!! Harmony has finally re-emerged from her inner retreat back to eastern European medieval village life and has reentered the modern world of which she inhabits. So I have just returned from NCECA in Philadelphia and thought I would write about the people/work that I met there and found inspiring. I enjoyed these three artists because they were all playing around within the philosophical battle (that I have also been waging inside my own head) about the notions and traditions of the handmade within ceramics vs technology. All of these people seemed to have a deep love for tradition but a hip open mindedness towards technology, embracing the now and using these advances to do new creative projects that put a challenge towards the old guard. Garth gave a great lecture about the D.I.Y. punk craftivism movement. Many people view making things by hand a political act itself in these days of the mass consumption of the factories over-production of soulless junk. In his own work Garth uses technology to create computer graphic collages with political undertones that he slaps onto historical porcelain forms made of the finest porcelain, luster and decals. Reality at this point is so contradictory so why not just throw it all into the mix...we are free to do and say whatever we want...so what if it hardly makes any sense! Janet Deboos is working first hand with factories in China to mass produce her hand thrown ceramics. This isn't just about creating a product...it's a highly conceptual experiment. Does it matter if her work was made by hand if it looks like it was? Can one tell the difference?Are our preferences ruled by something deep within or is it totally due to whats fashionably in taste, norms and expectations that are created within a particular cultural bias? Janet is out there questioning all of this and putting it into visible tangible experiments. She also pointed out that things made in a Chinese factory ARE made by hand...many hardworking hands with names and faces we tend to forget about over here with all the shelves of finished products. The third artist I was inspired by is actually a mystery. I spotted their cup at the NCECA annual cup sale show. I didn't have my camera with me and when I returned later the cup had sold. It was clever though. I nice chunky shino glazed tea bowl with a slick decal that said "I hate Leach" with a decal bar code below. Hand made or mass produced these times are inspiring ceramic artists to crank out lots of cynical,clever, beautiful work. It's at once exciting and almost too heavy at times. I managed to catch bits and pieces of a number of NCECA lectures and one lecture addressing the challenges that Ceramics is facing today finished the lecture with the statement "some of the most beautiful art throughout history has been tombstones". ouch. Are we all just celebrating the end of clay?
"If this is the end I want to go out dancing"...says the mass produced leach teabowl sitting on a boutique shelf in soho.