MN Potter's: Sharing The Fire - Final Cut

that's really neat well that's hot has too hot it's too hot Minnesota has a unique story in that morning McKenzie started something here that has grown and grown and grown and it can absolutely be traced back to his dedicated educational efforts to the public to create an understanding of what pottery wasn't there for to create a market for pottery so that one could make pottery and make a living so he and his first wife his late wife they set up their studio so that people could come and buy pots in the showroom and at the same time see them working and making the pottery I bought this pugmill about 1970 because my shoulders were wearing out from wedging clay and at that time I was still using about 12 tons of clay a year and without that pugmill I wouldn't be making pots today I just couldn't do it I thought I was going to be a painter and so I sought position at the Chicago Art Institute it was the best painting school around where I lived I worked there as a painting major for about a year and a half and then got drafted into the Army when I count out of the Army in 1946 I came back thinking I'm going to pick up on my painting classes but every returning GI who wanted to go to school was in school and the Art Institute was full Kimmo the first there are multiple ways to get this information today of course centuries ago pottery was handed down from father to son or it was taught by an apprenticeship okay I tell you more about something about that later today in Minnesota and in this group of people that we're looking at we're seeing several different kinds of learning situations or sharing situations you could call it which we have one example in here of an educational apprenticeship and that's Richard Bresnahan who who himself had a traditional kind of apprenticeship in Japan pull out like this and he goes so when he came back he set up an apprenticeship situation here at st. John's University so that he could teach in that same way through the practice and then it takes half of this on he understand that's it that's it yep good to me that's one of the fascinating things about this concept of pulling these eight people together because they show us a lot of ways that knowledge is transmitted and values I'd say pottery often involves a kind of lifestyle so it's not that you go to work from 8 to 5 and then go home and have a real life pottery is your real life the first memory I have of playing with anything that was plastic was playing with worm casts in a school when I was a kid and there would be an assembly and we'd be out on this amphitheater on the grass and there were worm casts and I you know I'd spend the time controlling coils and stuff like that I was kind of impressed with the fact that you could actually do that with this material which turned out to be you know clay I bought a ceramic canning jar I think when I was in junior high seventh grade or something for 25 bucks at a at a church auction and that was sort of my introduction to pottery it was an old stoneware Redwing canning jar with a zinc lid I was getting a degree in art education so I was doing you know everything and then you had a focus on one thing and I think um what happened to me is there was a teacher that was high in demand who I would have loved to have studied with but I could never get into his class and then the other pottery teacher was kind of out of his mind I was just kind of a regular college student in both art and music and had to take a requirement of either printmaking or ceramics and I was terrified of the printmaking teacher so I took ceramics all the painting classes were filled so I said well what's open and they said well as a room in a ceramics class if I'd been smart that might have told me something but it didn't I said I'll take I'll take ceramics and start back in school and that I'll get into painting later on I was first exposed to handmade pottery in 1966 I was taking an art appreciation class and the teacher brought in people from the cans to the artists to students to demonstrate their various art form a Potter came in and I was floored I was interested in art in high school mainly because I wasn't interested in anything else I was so divorced from doing anything like this myself I mean conceptually I didn't immediately think I want to do that I thought about it I want to I want to have some of this to have in my life and so I started looking for it in at craft fairs and I met this guy who I bought a couple pots from Jim Vandergrift and after I don't know the second or third pot I bought from him he said you know you should come out to my studio sometime and give it a try by the end of that summer I had completely taken the mantle on in my own mind that I was going to be a Potter for the rest of my life I was kind of at a loss I didn't know what to do it was the 60s I was just getting out of a high school and in Massachusetts and my dad was involved in the dairy industry and he wanted me to take over the business so he's anxious for me to learn English and to go and study in the Midwest so I went to college in Iowa I had to take a course in ceramics humanities requirement and I just flipped about ceramics I was in the studio all the time but it didn't work out for me in terms of my funding for college so I was out of school for a couple years so then you know I was doing print McKee and I had a wonderful teacher and I just didn't stay with that I got into st. John's because I've been drafted and one of the monks felt that there was enough young people dying over there he was going to make sure I got into this University okay so I took a clay class my freshman year and to kind of balance out that I might have a grade point average to stay in class his stay in the college I was sort of turned on to clay when I was taking a sculpture class previously I'd be working in wax or plaster or like paper sculptures and those sorts of materials I wasn't really getting a reaction from I wasn't really too able to make some sort of communication with but with clay you know of course it does reflect the hands of the user in a different way Oh the woman who taught it she knew the subject but she was not a part and she didn't teach us about being Potter's in fact I realized after I had finished my schooling but in two and a half years in the ceramic class we have never once discussed as we used to do in painting classes why this painting worked and this one didn't you know why does this pot work and that one doesn't I went to Bemidji State and I took I started taking art classes drawing and painting and and and eventually I wound up taking a ceramics class a hand-building class and that was okay but you know wasn't that great and I took a then I took a wheel class and I started to really get you know interested in it you know when you try on a really nice pair of gloves that fit the first time you pull them on it that's what that felt like and just it was perfect the first experience with doing it making a pot spinning a pot I thought I could I could do this it as a complete person you know work with your hands with your heart with your head so I changed my major and started taking art classes and well I didn't really get into pots until after college really in a big way I have a printmaking degree and undergraduate work and travel abroad taught in Sydney Australia for almost four years and when I was teaching at this particular school one of my colleagues was really into clay so I started working with her because I hadn't had much experience or exposure loved it and then started doing workshops became a member of you know there's ceramics community like doing workshops and that kind of thing and then rented a studio space there and just got hooked on it and never stopped while in Chicago Art Institute one of the students had come in one day and she said you know I've just found this book and it's a wonderful book and it tells us much more about being Potter's than what we're learning here in classes so we all rushed out bought it was a Potter's book by Bernhard leach which had just been published in America we read that book and bird told the how head started his pottery and how the skills that one needed to have to run a pottery he said any Potter should be able to make at least 50 pots a day any Potter's should be able to throw a cylinder 14 inches tall we couldn't do any of those things with the training we were getting but what we did was to say that's the right idea and we snuck into the classroom when the teacher wasn't there and we tried to do what leach told us to do which of course we couldn't do we made a lot of mess we made a lot of bad pots but it gave us a clue about what we needed after a while I ran into the Potters book and I fell in love with those old pots that that leach described these are actually pieces that belong to Warren that I finally was able to see in person at his house many years later I decided what I wanted to do was get an apprenticeship and it turns out that there was a Potter in the vicinity Clary alien who had been an apprentice of leach governor leach and I went talked to her but at the time she was focused on nurturing women clay artists and so that didn't work out well I guess it was interesting in college in art school I never had any female teachers ever I was in my second semester of class and I started throwing with the material and the my teacher bill Smith is that there's going to be an international conference in Banff Canada where that's the first time on the North American continent that Potter's an artist from clay artists from all over the world would come to Banff Canada how about if we go with my old travel law and some tents and a group of us drive all the way up to Banff Canada and go to the ceramics International sponsored by the Canadian government I said sure I'm in so they picked me up in Bismarck North Dakota and we drove all the way up to Canada and we were some of the only students there there are four hundred and sixty artists from all over the world and then you realize they're not talking about what we were talking about in college they are talking about how to get clay into people's lives environmentalism social issues that made a difference in people's lives they were talking about communities of people not the individual artist in many cases and then the exhibitions were just absolutely fantastic because you saw these great works from Taiwan Korea Japan that you'd never seen before so it was right then and there I said this is my family that's it going to become a ceramic artist I don't think I ever made a conscious choice that pottery would be my life I think my choice was more how can I keep doing this I just kept finding a way to keep working you not an ideal morning you know it might throw out with some tea I guess it'd be the equivalent of having like a morning meeting water cooler style and after that we kind of try to get to work so maybe some clay wedging or working with those things checking on the damn firm to see if there are some pieces that need flipping right this really great damp room that allows us to move around in one thing and also you know pieces do that and really control how slowly they dry out try gaining to kind of be able to take each day as it comes and say that okay well today I was able to accomplish some pottery okay and then maybe the next day oh I was able to work on maybe a small personal sculpture and then the next day is saying that oh I was able to work on you know some small management for the national tour to be able to find some fulfillment and to be able to have the time to stretch that out to see those different goals to some progress apprenticeship is a personal self-discovery where that the young person learns about himself in creating in a creative process and I had known Steven from college because I had him as a student in my environmental architecture and design class so I knew about his focus ability his high technical skills and what we look for then is how does that young person he or she work with others in community because this is a community environment and then what we do is then we have them participate with wood firing and that participation with wood firing they get a chance to be in a very intensive environment and then I put them on the all night shift with a former apprentice who's been coming for the last 11 firings that's how then he began his apprenticeship was he came into the studio in preparation for that firing and then came in also to help with editing the book organizing the exhibition being the lead person to do the national touring exhibition so he came in under two patterns of work then how good are their note-taking and are they doing drawings if they're doodling at the margins that means they're thinking about process can they take direction because that we need you right here so that when I'm stoking the piece is coming right into my hand because I'm trying not to hit any work going into the narrow part of the stoking chamber you know the wood firing I found to be this really amazing experience that um you know meant that all sudden we had all this help you know it was really wonderful to have all these people that although I maybe had not met them before because of their history with the studio were willing to share that information with me number of people in my generation were very happy to be on that night crew so that was fun to experience the wood firing at nighttime because then you can really focus on having those conversations about you know what are the processes that are going on at that moment I wanted to be a Potter I just I totally wanted to be a Potter I wanted I didn't want to just be a Potter I wanted to make a living as a Potter even though in 1967 there were none I mean even the guy I was apprentice England was high school art teacher so I went on a quest to find a professional Potter who was out making a life I can't say that I you know did this Coast Co search but we didn't have the Internet in and so I did it by car I heard rumors about Colorado and I went out to Colorado Springs somebody said there's this couple up in black forests that have a pottery and they might talk to you so I flew and I'll win and called them and made an appointment and came up and told him what my my quest was he said there's just no way but he said well while you're here you know let's make some pots so I sat down and made pots and uh all day long until his wife came home and they said well you know since you're here why don't you stay for dinner and so it over dinner they looked at each other and said we'd like to offer you a spacer so I went home got all my junk and came back and I slept on the floor of the studio for a couple weeks until I found an apartment in and I was there for a year and a half I learned a ton even though I when I left there I was still a horrible Potter but I knew a lot how old were you I was 20 I think maybe had never taken the tracks and college one semester of it yeah and then I I left school I met Linda coming out here to buy her pots for our house that's kind of very beginning what did you asked if I would design you a new oven many all right then I was on a sabbatical from my teaching position and I was switching gears and I had done a little bit with wood firing and I asked Linda if I could fire with her maybe once just not twice no you should then you know that's not what I remember asked if I would design you a woman right that was part of the credit food that was the first part the equation equation yeah that's right and I remember taking well it's such a lot of work and commitment and I thought well maybe you should just fire with me for a few times and see if you like it it's true and then filled your kiln and I never built my kiln I just stayed with Linda yeah but you you actually built your foundation and I did wood got some bricks and I got wood I got all that stuff and then we never got beyond the foundation because you just felt good we just work together salt when it vaporizes gives you a sheen on your work and then we're going to make them wet it makes it pop and vaporize quick I'm set to go Joe yeah on the salt yeah I'll just choke yourself and then we can do okay ready yeah here goes I worked on the storage bin by 63 1516 years that's right and then having Kirk here as well all these years has just been tremendous for me at some point they're like maybe my second class in in ceramics it was it was all you know that was going to be it and I just took every class available and and I was a teaching associate in the studio tech and and I spent all my time down there and you know it wasn't totally about pottery at that time it was just about working with clay whether it was sculptures or pots I didn't really know a lot about the tradition of pottery in Minnesota other than the city crow Valley pottery tour poster that we had on our wall and and then we made some trips down to the northern Clay Center to the American pottery festival and so I was becoming aware of this and you know I I was really into moving clay around and I saw Bob working you know taking pots that were round and pushing them you know into new shapes and just you know being really what appeared to be casual with the material I was really intrigued by that and then while he was doing this you were talking about the spring pottery tour so he was saying you know I'm a host for this sale in in my back yard we put all the pots out on boards in he you know he has guest artists and it's like a show a sale and a party and a festival all in one thing and I was sort blown away from my limited exposure to in Bob's work really didn't seem like the other pottery that I was seeing at the time being made you know which was mostly glossy things that were round I thought this makes sense like I think I could do this like eventually I wrote him a letter just kind of a shot like I just tried this you know right at the sky letter for the last 32 years we have looked at young people coming to the studio and semi application process with it they're interested in apprenticeship they come for an interview the particular challenge with an apprenticeship program is its foundation is to go into a cycle and an immersion of nature that the rhythms and timeframes of reaction periods are based around the seasons and the material and the firing cycles it's a whole new place of discovery so that kind of framework of rhythm and pattern is a little bit easier to develop in the sense of the studio activity so that they know that then in the evening times when they when the studio is quiet and they want to have this immersion of throwing and relationship with a form and development that this is their time in this space just for themselves it was it changed our whole life really this this book because it that part is the most beautiful Korean but I think I've ever seen that was so exciting to me when I saw it first in this book because it looks like it's still spinning on the wheel if you can disregard the decoration on it it's it's so full of life you know leeches book was very important to me it was really the only source of information how to do things aesthetics towards a standard I mean it's very you know rigid in some in many ways but that was the only book we really had and a lot of the photographs in that book were very important to me in fact one of my very favorite pots in the whole world is in that book and I had the opportunity to visit that pot in London at the V&A and I was so disappointed when I saw it I thought what is wrong with it and I realized it wasn't black and white you know it was so I had known this photograph and this beautiful path all these years as a black and white pitcher medieval pitcher and here it was Green because of reading that book when Alex and I moved to st. Paul and very quickly found out we did not have the skills we decided to approach leach and see if he would take us as apprentices and so we saved enough money to take a trip to Europe and from Europe we went to England and down to Cornwall which was where leech had his pottery right near the tip of coral lands and we had written a head told him we wanted to come and discuss apprenticeship and he looked at our work and his face kind of fell and he said well you know I'm sorry were full up which was his way of saying no we had a reservation for two weeks in the bed-and-breakfast place where we were staying so we said well least we could could we hang around the pottery and learn as much as we can in two weeks and her and said yes that was fine and so every day we'd come up the pottery and ask questions and watch the people who were working there and we did learn a lot at the end of that two weeks they were firing their large oil-fired kill and at that time this was a would have been about 19 1949 leach was still sitting a kill watch that is you have to have people there all the time watching the kill adjusting the burners so that the temperature goes up and the right degree of smoke or not smoke is achieved so bird said would you like to come up and talk he didn't tell us his kill watch was from one o'clock in the morning until 4:00 in the morning so we said certainly would this is our last couple of days in England and we went down and caught a quick couple hours of sleep and then we trudged up this long hill from the town up to the pottery and we talked with Bernhard from one o'clock till 8:00 in the morning he asked us about what we felt about you know the social situation that existed in the world he answered about what our experiences had been and things of that sort but we never discussed the critical thing the quality of what makes a good bond but at the end of eight hours bernhard said as we went off to bed he said well I've changed my mind and you can come back and be apprentices if you wish Bob called me back right away it almost scared me because he's like you know you must have found somebody else and I was like whoa whoa whoa no um you know he invited me to come down and Bob explained to me you know what he had in mind and mainly emphasized that he didn't need anybody to make his pots he was going to be making his own pots and what he would give me is a place in here in his studio to make my own work and get feedback as well as watch him go through the process of being a working Potter and that was perfect for me I teach them painting disciplines and then I'll give them a painting style to work on because they have to know the perfect fluidity of the iron that we're grinding our own iron here from the clay deposit so that a couple extra drops of water will allow the brush to give a flow if it's too stiff and the brush pulls and chatters across the brush they don't have enough water so those are all the learning disciplines they learn to get to a point and so once they get to a point a really good high-quality then they start putting the studio seal which is a separate seal and then their signature so then as that person evolves and they get comfortable making work then they always will get the income from that work then they can say I can see myself as a longer-term apprentice being being part of this because this structure is well set up for me to be able to make a living so that I can save enough money to make a transition to another studio or having a family I can see this so the long-term goal is is that every apprentice the senior apprentice now gets a salary and he gets health care we've been working on this for 30 years Stanback my art history teacher sister Johanna Becker who is the considered the greatest Asian art historian of America so she was doing this ancient crowd to book in English and I was a junior in college and looking at the graduate programs I had this knowing sense that my window was only an undergraduate education I was not going to be able to have the money to go to graduate school and so I just kind of went to her in a panic my junior year in the end of junior year and I said sister Johanna I don't know what to do with my life I don't know how to build kilns I don't know how to find clay I don't know how to do anything to build a life for myself in ceramics well then she looked at me and she said well I hate to tell you this but you're going to have to leave your country the only place that's going to answer those requests is you have to go to Japan she says I've got one more summer where I'm doing kiln excavation work and doing one more final interview with the nagasato family and I will ask them on your behalf to take you in as a full apprentice so then she left as I'm sitting there you know working in North Dakota trying to get ready with the idea that I might be going to Japan and no language skills no passport no nothing yet and I get this little tiny postcard in the mail in August and says apprenticeship secured get passport arrived by out to August 25th johanna little tiny postcard they owed her a big favor had nothing to do about me or my talents the condition was here it takes sister Johanna student for 90 days as a test run in the first 90 days I didn't even get on the potter's wheel they wouldn't let me leave me touch the potter's wheel which is very different from the way we educate here we hadn't that taught for two years which we shouldn't have but we had we'd taught and we try to run our own pottery which we fails with but they said they must know how to make pots and they gave us a very small making list for the next firing which was three weeks away my making list was a hundred and fifty pots fifty beer mugs 50 small jugs and fifty soup bowls well I start out on the beer mugs I think I probably made 500 of those beer mugs before 50 of them were allowed to go through as coming up to the minimal standard that they wanted and that was good training that was where we really learned to be Potter's we worked seven days a week the the apprenticeship is it you're up at 6:00 in the morning and then you'd sweep and clean the studio and there was a dirt floor studios he always had there's always dirt to sweep and then you slid back the wood from the authority fire that was put back he started the charcoal fire wood fire to start tea in the morning getting kill noting going then I had a wedge all the clay from my teacher which was 300 pounds of clay in the morning so when he came down at 9:00 or 10:00 in the morning he could start instantly throwing and then you had tea at 9:00 when he came down and that was the dialogue for the day lunch at noon tea of three it was really a tsunami a wave of information that just carried you and it was all encompassing there's a very funny Japanese term for Potter's in Japan they say Kochi can die Kochi means lips they have no lips and I was running why is that and then I found out why is that Japanese potters don't say anything they're not going to take you out and so you got to do it exactly like this they're not going to do that you have to learn with your eyes and an occasional question or they're going to walk up to you and say you need to hold your hand in this position like this and then they'll walk away you have to really use all of your senses to pull the information into you so when you when you have that structure that means that when you get to a certain point then you're prepared to ask the next question I saw a poster and it said had a little lion outline of a mountain and it said ceramics and then it said scholarship and I thought AHA that could be me so I applied and I got a full scholarship to the Banff Center School of Fine Arts and it was just an amazing place at that time it was a two-year residency no instruction or teachers or anything just visiting artists and just work work work it was great I'm a skier I tried to not ski very much and I met John choc there it was a British fellow who lived lived in Calgary and was a great potter and an teacher at the Alberta College of Art he designed a wood-fired kiln that was my first experience with a wood-fired kiln and we had a silver impressed that the Peace Corps had used and we made our own bricks and I enjoyed his I don't know his love of life and hard work and kind of all the right qualities I just so admired and someone made beautiful pods and it came at just the right time for me ever he he probably could could have been sort of a mentor for me in it from a distance he and John Reeves they got me in touch with medieval English pottery and then I jumped to some other countries you know in my just looking at at pots but they were the two people that really pointed me probably pretty indirectly to some time periods and some pots that that I actually felt them and looked at them and and had a connection to them and it wasn't just all isn't this pretty it was wow this is really something Oh I could write a book about what it's like to work with Linda and how she sort of took me in well you just started out sort of like it kind of innocently where I I needed to explore or have some more information to see really truly I wanted to take the leap you know become engaged in doing more wood firing you know process with my work and Linda know was so gracious and so warm to have me and then we started working together we did one firing images second and that was kind of what I thought would would kind of be it and it just sort of never stopped and I think I always felt like even though Linda she could come out here and fire her and kill all by herself cut all the work would by yourself there's something really wonderful working together Wow - whose stunning I like it and then Linda she always puts you before her always and that's pretty cool I don't you that yeah I just and then the contrast with the yep where the salt cutter yep I think those are nice to see the truth together yeah I like the way that in the this way the I reverse you versed it not like that at a certain point in my direction I hit a wall and finally I just turned to my teacher in Japanese and I said what are you thinking when you're doing this I said are you thinking about the width and depth every every piece are you thinking about how I'm going to fold this you know are you going through a structure I do this this this and I just keep thinking about this structure and he looks at me and he says I'm trying to not think about anything I am turning this mind off to allow this spirit to speak and of course I didn't understand that we happen to arrive on the same boat that leech was on returning from America from a lecture tour and so we've gotten to be friends in the time of crossing and he said as we arrived in Southampton do you have a place to live and we said well we haven't got a place but we'll find a bed-and-breakfast and rent a room well he said do you want to live with me because he just separated from his second wife and Berner was a person who couldn't stand living alone he needed someone to bounce ideas off of constantly because he was thinking pots 24 hours a day so that was our great luck we had two years of living with this man and he thought about pots at breakfast time he'd finished his bowl of cereal he'd push it to one side and reach in his pocket and pull out a scrap of paper about that big and stub a pencil you know two inches long and with this pencil he'd make these lovely little drawings on this scrap of paper they were his ideas for pots and if they want if the drawing was right he to exit out and do another one long side of it and figure he would figure out what he wanted to make that day in the studio and he was very articulate in his thinking about forms of pots now his good friend Hamada worked exactly the other way Kumada Japanese Potter national treasure and Bernhard's best friend because he helped him start his pottery in England and lived with him for four years while they worked together to start this pottery how many never drew pots unless it was in a museum where he wanted to note some tiny detail on a pot but he never drew his own ideas for pots and bernhard said that the most Hamid would do would take water and dirty up his wheel head and make a little scribble that was a general idea of the potty wanted to make and then he'd throw down off of clay and he would make the pot but the pot was created on the wheel not in the drawing the local newspaper had these obituaries for three of the most important Potter's you know Hamada leech and cardoon and this was a tiny little you know english-language newspaper in in Venezuela and I was devastated because I would have wanted to become a part of that historical in a sweep of pottery making you know they I met Warren Mackenzie in Venezuela in 1981 Warren had been invited by the president of a local Potter's group called the Venezuelan Association of the Arts of fire you know as ten years later and I was at a point at which I had to make a choice and and go for it if I think I really meant to do that that was desperately looking for a source of practical information Warren just turned up in Venezuela at coincidentally at that exact moment in time and I knew who he was because he was a very well-known Potter even when I was in school then on a practical level I got involved in that in the course and when Warren on the wheel and started making pots I realized that I'd never seen anybody make pots who could express themselves so freely people in the class were raising their hands to ask why does our teacher tell us that we have to Center the clay when you you don't even bother to send of the clay you just just slap it on there and make a pot and so one would say well of course I Center the clay is centered enough and then and then make the pot and then he would take the pot off the wheel before it appeared to be finished in a sense he had been inspired by the same sources that I was inspired by or I was inspired by the same sources that he had previously been inspired by he was able to access those sources and go to the leach pottery and become an apprentice and meet all of the Potters of a previous generation which in a sense were carrying on continuing with traditional pots historically pots and Warren to me was a window an access this this flow this history of pottery making the elbow became my translator and that's how we became very close he I asked him at some point we were walking around in the studio and I said Warren will he teach me I don't know what words I used I don't remember exactly how I phrased it but he said I can only teach you to make a certain kind of hot and I said those are the pots I want to make not his pots the same kind of pots that had inspired him and had inspired me when I was in in school when I was first exposed and he didn't respond he didn't commit to anything but a few years later he invited us to come up to his studio when he came up here to visit his wife's family and eventually moved here I had no hesitation about asking to come here and work it was great I'm not sure exactly how it evolved to an invitation that repeated itself every summer probably about 25 years I came spent four or five weeks in the studio with Warren the first time that I came up here was when you invited all of us to come up make and make pots in 1984 well when you and I work together yeah we were yeah I just found a flyer that Claire Hylian made for that sale it said North meets south and she had two little pots that look kind of like arrows one upside down you know facing each other yeah that group sale experience was one of the most important experiences to me and the rest of my life as a Potter pretty much the waited for me to make a living has been in group sales one night when we went back to Venezuela I said let's do the same thing let's set up a group of potters and we had over the years we probably had 26 group sales we had many more because we only had one a year we get a bunch of students on the first group sales we had they weren't all Potter's there was maybe a printmaker or two and the painter and so on you know working all these years year after year after year I don't always want to go in the studio and I forced myself every day to make 4 cups right away and usually after I've made one I want to make another and then I want to make another I want to make another and then I can't wait to put the handles on after the first few experiences at Warren's when I began to pick up more or less the systems that he had set up to make the studio work and he felt confident enough that I wasn't going to have any problems weren't and Nancy would leave and I would remain in studio and take care of it and rarely had any interruptions that kind of focus of course is hard to achieve in in regular life and I I suspect though I haven't ever asked Warren directly this but I suspect that he feels the same way I think he enjoys working with other people around but I think he also really enjoys working on his own as I do I decide to rebuild the pottery larger than what I needed because I thought when I quit teaching maybe I'll want to have an apprentice but you know I have it one apprentice one time he was a wonderful apprentice he helped out around the pottery completely he didn't do my pots we had an agreement he wasn't to be like we were at the leach pottery but he did his work and then in a sense I traded critiques for the labor that he gave me and the space in the studio and all that he occupied and that worked well he did a really nice job and it was with us for two years but at the end of that time while I never had an argument with this fellow I was so happy when he was gone and I realized that for me personally and that's just a personal thing I really don't like another person who is in a sense expecting me to give in the studio at the same time I would like eventually at some point to have the possibility of sharing some of the the information that I've been able to together over time but I don't want to have you know formal arrangement where there is someone in my studio all the time teaching and being a Potter I love bulls and when I teach and share influences in my knowledge you know all that good stuff to my students I learned from them I think that's probably the richness and what keeps me there you were probably out on your own for about four years and you were you know talking about how broke you were and that just so much how it was just it wasn't going well and and then a couple years ago we were having a commode conversation you were talking about you know this is really working it's it's actually happening and because I when he was here I told him you know it's you know Jason is probably take ten years and it's like that doesn't register in a 24 you don't mind and ten years is like a lifetime so yeah I thought I could do in two years yeah and everybody does yeah but but at about seven years I think it really was kicking in at ten it's really it's fully working yeah yeah I mean it was really a privilege to be able to pick up the phone and call Bob and say hey you know what is going on you know what this is just I'm just going downhill and he would say you say you just said all I can say is more time it's just gonna take more time and you know we're paused it doesn't you know yeah in hindsight you just have to make a lot of pots you can't you can't do this right away pottery isn't something that like a young mind can master ten years in is sort of just scratching the surface when I left Japan after three and a half years four years of being there Shikha Toshi nock is out - who is the middle brother he said to me he says Richard you got to understand this right away one third is the material speaking one third is the firing speaking and one third is the artist speaking and the moment that you want to expect more that you want to control the clay or you want to control the firing over your 30% ratio get a different career if the learning curve keeps going the way it's gone you know I can only assume that there's going to a lot of things that I haven't discovered yet so I had three sections of classes I had nine classes so about 20 to 24 students every year and that you can't contact that number of people and get them excited about pottery and not have an effect on it yeah and many of them went on to become very good Potter's some of the stage around here and they've gone on to teach also and taught more people some of whom stay around that's the way a community grows one time Jason there was something we were doing and he said I feel weird that I'm not paying for this and I said I'm not doing it for you I said I'm doing this as a debt repayment to the guy that did it for me and so I think that's what I get out of it is I get a chance to pay back the community that made my life possible you you Oh you Oh you

Channel: AnokaRamseyCC

Views: 66,566

Rating: 4.8268399 out of 5

Keywords: Warren, MacKenize;, Guiller, Cuellar;, Bob, Briscoe;, Robert, Jason, Trebbs;, Linda, Christianson;, Jil, Franke;, Steven, Lemke;

Id: LKUPqVATlTU

Length: 57min 51sec (3471 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 17 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/LucidOndine]

Either pottery studios look similar from place to place, or there are a few shots at the Northern Clay Center in here!

[u/SimSandwich]

This is an awesome video. Thanks for posting it. I'm totally going to visit MN next spring for the pottery tour!

[u/cupajaffer]

oh my gosh i visited a bunch of these peoples studios im pretty sure