I was just pointed to a thread on Reddit of a pottery students work and it reminded me to update my blog. They have a very good start on their work, very interesting and creative. Creativity is something that I lack a lot of. I am creative when it comes to making renaissance cloths, jewelry, etc. But ceramics... I am more focused on traditional form and more of a contemporary glaze treatment.
This is a problem for me when it comes to developing a body of work for my senior thesis. My idea was to do large regional jugs scaled around 3 feet tall. These jugs were to be modeled after different traditional forms that all helped contribute to the expansion and development of pottery in America. French, German, English, American. All of these countries, plus others, have unique preferences when it comes to pottery, specifically jugs. American pottery is a conglomeration of these different preferences and an evolution of the style as settlers moved west across the continent.
Now, producing 8, large scale (roughly 5 gallon), jugs would be a hard undertaking for me, but it is nothing I feel I cannot handle. I am more secure with my throwing and assemblage. But my committee chair has other thoughts. He feels that what I am doing is not artistic and that it does not reflect upon what I have learned in art school. He wants me to reinvent the jug. Now, when asked about ideas on how to do this, I mentioned Paul Soldner ( an example of his work is to the left) and how he would take boards with different textures and use them to compress his wheel thrown forms. This idea was struck down saying "why does it have to be texture?" and the ideas that Butch brought up involved drawing cartoushes of greek allegories.... how the hell is that reinventing something that has been done so much that it is now cliche? And his other idea... make an "NFL" jug. Yes... NFL. I told him that was rediculous and that I have a strong distaste for sports and I will not go against my judgement and do something so stupid. His responce... "Well jugs look like footballs." Whatever. I still want to do my idea because I feel it would be better than 3/4 of what has come out of my school in the past 5 years and that I can confidently accomplish this. Anything else... who knows. I got stuck doing something I didn't want to do last time... this time I am trying my damndest not to do that.And for an update on my jug and drum.... well the jug is in our gas kiln cooling down right now, cone 10 firing. My drum on the other hand cracked and split in two. The bowl and the base are now separated but I will be glazing them back together and hoping that it works out for the best. Always learning... I feel that the weight of the bowl sitting on the stem put pressure on the joint and caused the break. I'll have to figure out another design that can work without leaving weak points.
I have a paper to write today and I really don't know who I want to write it about. Pretty bad eh? My paper is meant to be over anyone whom I have previously written about in a journal entry but my journal is with my professor... Meh.
I'll leave you with a video for a documentary about Paul Soldner. If anyone wants to buy this for me, I'll love you :)
"New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become."
-Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions
2 comments:
I'm finding your blog posts quite interesting, especially your feelings about what you really want to make vs. what "advisors" tell you you should make.
It's a hard decision to make, to go against art school 'experts' and follow your heart. I like your big jug idea, in some ways I see the jug as a fundamental potter's form, and as you say, different cultures have approached the form in different ways. Surely any art tutor should see an exploration of that form, and study of the historical influences that led to the evolution of truly American pottery, as a valid body of work.
I met Paul Soldner, was his volunteer assistant at an international potter's camp in britain in the late eighties. He'd have been in his mid sixties then but.... Wow, what energy, enthusiasm, if America treated its artists as Japan does, then Paul, by then would have been, as Shoji Hamada was in Japan, a "Living National Treasure".
It was a joy to spend that time in his company, to sit with him in the sunshine, to listen to him talk, to learn from him, to see his exuberant disregard for convention.
No discussion of that new wave of potters would be complete without Peter Voulkos, he and Soldner were the 'Beat Poets' of clay.
Hey, thank you for the comment. I am glad you've stuck around to interested. :) I hope you decide to check back and keep up. I really love talking about ceramics.
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