Ceramics: Art and Perception

Paul Davis is a portrait of concentration as he swishes glaze from a wooden ladle onto a plate. ‘I really want it to have the look of melting snow,’ the potter says, as he watches the rivulet flow across the clay. In this moment, Davis knows he is pouring out not just the thick liquid, but also his heart and a faith in spontaneity. He has created this moment from the sum of his skills, his vast experience and imagination, but where this moment leads not even the master potter can be sure. Which excites him. ‘I’m trying to retain as much of the spontaneity of the application by letting these things happen,’ Davis explains. ‘I try and make an asset of that, rather than trying to just glaze the thing, where it’s…

Patterning ignited civilization. Imposing pattern is so fundamental it is essential to be not just human beings. Birds migrate. Bears hibernate. My dog walks in a spiral before lying down. Because, simply − for over 99% of our history, humans have been too busy chasing calories to do much civilization-building. Recognizing when beasts were going to be and when and what seeds can be planted and eaten allowed humans to stop running and start creating. On a basic level, civilizing has been an increasingly complex and intricate imposition of pattern on the chaos of the world. Planting seeds when the sun is at a certain point and using fractals to design a better microchip are the same intellectual endeavor. Existence is more than just layers of increasingly intricate patterns. It…

Lee Jong-Min’s works clearly demonstrate how closely correlated materials and tools used in crafts are to the senses, and attitudes of, the artists who use them. Lee’s use of tools are not the category of brushes1 and wood or metal carving knives that potters use to decorate their works. He uses a dental instrument, a diamond knife, a motored grinder, and an absorption booth. Lee aspires to achieve concise and precise depictions using unfamiliar tools that far surpass those made by wooden ceramic knives. He sits alone in a small space, grasping a foreign tool and wearing goggles and a dust mask like a diver about to enter into the deep sea. Grasping a solid vessel, shaped out of white clay, he averages 10 hours of work without rest, a…

The Victorian philosopher George Henry Lewes sternly warns us that: “We must never assume that which is incapable of proof”. I must admit when I was asked by the Goldmark (goldmarkart.com) gallery to write a piece on the use of seashells as wadding I had forgotten the philosopher’s admonition. I assumed it was an ancient Japanese technique and something to do with the tea ceremony. In Europe, where surface clays are predominantly earthenware, potters did not encounter the problem of pots becoming glued to kiln furniture, or one another, by wood ash combining with the clay body to form glaze1. In South China, Korea and Japan, kilns were fired higher to mature the more refractory surface clays2. The fly ash glazes produced some aesthetically stunning results but also the need to find…

Ceramics is the art of time and ceramics is above all, an archival material. This last theme, Death, is possibly the most important of all in ceramics as it encompasses all the others, interestingly enough. (Mathieu, 7) We do have a future and a past, but the future takes the form of a circle expanding in all directions, and the past is not surpassed but revisited, repeated, surrounded, protected, recombined, reinterpreted and reshuffled. Elements that appear remote if we follow the spiral may turn out to be quite near if we follow the loops. (Latour, Location 1544 of 3230) What people admired then was an art (whose mode was the classical one) that minimized the pain of pain. It showed people able to maintain decorum and composure, even in monumental suffering. (Sontag, The Volcano Lover,…

Empathy is our ability to put ourselves in another person’s place, seeing a situation from their point of view. According to Dr. Brene Brown, “The empathetic person will recognize the person’s struggle without minimizing it.” In contrast, sympathy moves us emotionally, but from a distance. The work of Raven Halfmoon and the story of the Caddo Nation move me to want to truly understand her struggle and that of her people, if that is even possible. That struggle has been minimized for so long and by so many, that we must want to know, to seek it out and recognize it, and to feel it, if we are to empathize. In my work, I explore themes of ‘the other,’ or cultural appropriation and history By the 17th century, the Caddo people [with…