Randy Johnston | An Expansive Vision - feature film about American potter | GOLDMARK

there's a spirituality in clay and it has a memory if I simply would take my fingerprint and print it in that clay that fingerprint will be on that piece of clay for 10,000 years and so there's a story to be told because the clay has remembered them the mark my dad is scientist the PhD in nuclear physics and early on was developing the feeding systems for nuclear reactors [Music] there were huge terrible pollution problems in Los Angeles and in in Tokyo and he somehow figured out that by passing hot polluted gases through a honeycomb structure of ceramics that was coated with platinum that you could decrease the pollutant gases that are emitted from automobiles I remember distinctly in my childhood him being invited to Congress in the United States a number of times and and trying to convince the fuel industry imagine going up against you know ExxonMobil and and all these people but I remember there was a lot of resistance a lot of frustration so he invented a catalytic converter for cars [Music] we had six kids in our family we all ended up going to college but my parents expectation was that I was supposed to be a doctor my dad he said that it's very difficult to make a living as an artist but I met one you can see and being changed my life are you I was not going to be a doctor I was stepping away from that but I didn't tell my parents so I continued on with my pre-med requirements so I actually have a degree in biology minor in chemistry and a BFA and I took the ceramics class Warren Mackenzie he's teaching with the University of Minnesota warned of course studied with Bernard leach Byrd was a very significant participant in the Ming gay group the art of the people of artists that came out of the 1920's 1930's in 1953 Warren's wife Alex invited bleech Yanagi and Hamada to come to to st. Paul they arranged the tour through the United States is quite famous during that tour they they really changed the face of American ceramics [Music] well if it yeah do you want to sit around here and chitchat or do you want to go down to the studio I remember as a young person in the studio struggling to be able to make pots like Warren and have him have that beautiful appearance like right off the wheel and I could never do it and I I said I tried so hard to be like Warren Mackenzie Michael Simon might have met one of my classmates said to me once he said I thought I was Warren Mackenzie I have to say that Warren Mackenzie changed my life and my way of thinking about life and things and I knew from the first moment that I touched clay and began to make pots that I wanted to be a Potter and work in ceramics for about three years after graduated from the University as I sort of matured and worked in and ceramics I started to realize how much I didn't know in ceramics trying to figure out how to wood fire as far as I knew there was nobody else in the United States working in with wood kilns at the time more professors not to know much about wood firing or how the kilns are fired but he always talked about potters and leborgne having to chop up their furniture at some point in time to get the kiln up to temperature and it's like I don't have enough furniture in my house so I talked to Michael Carter I wrote Michael Carter though a number of times and he suggested I either go to France or go to Japan to learn Woodburn naively enough I was writing letters to Japanese people in English and I'm sure they opened them up and went what the heck is this you know the end no translation and it wasn't until 1975 when Schumacher was coming through in the Epis in st. Paul and he was stopping in Minneapolis to visit Eiko and shin Tanaka in taiko Tanaka is a Potter and she called me up and invited me to come to a dinner Wishon mocha I remember hanging up the phone and I said of course I'll come about thirty seconds later I picked up the phone and I said taiko I said you know I've been wanting to go to Japan can I pick out some pots and come early to the dinner and show them to Shimoga and ask him if I can apprentice with them and she said oh I think that'll be okay so he imagined my angst picking out the pots that I was gonna represent myself to Shimoga I remember I knocked on our door and she opened two that I put down my box of pasta and she gave me a big hug and she said it's all arranged you can go and I said well he hasn't even seen my pots and she said don't worry it's all arranged so you can go [Music] you know that experience forever changed my life as a young Potter was 25 years old at the time I had the enviable house of living between Shimoga and hamid up about 200 yards in each direction you know jamocha was just a wonderful human being he had 12 people working for him at the pottery I met Ken ma Sasaki there he was Schumacher's apprentice and can I have had a lifelong friendship since that time I had great trepidation about meeting Hamada and I'd say yeah his son came over to my home and he said my father needs to speak with you immediately and I said I'd say Oh of what what does Hamid need to talk to me about you know and he said you must come you must come immediately with me he needs to speak with you let's see I said well he's been invited to an audience with the Queen of England and he needs you to teach him the Queen's English I said well I'm an American I see I don't know the Queen's English and you know like I can't help him he must come so I went and it was it was funny a very humbling experience but Mohammed uh looked at me and he wanted to know what kind of gift he should give the Queen of England and they said well I don't know the Queen of England cinsay but he said I think you should give her one of your pieces and his concern was was that gift good enough for her in the audience I remember being one of the younger people there and I wanted something important to do but jamilka said well I want you to sit next to me and you will stir my iron glaze and I thought this is a crappy job you know I want to do something important but I came to realize that that was like probably one of the best spots they'd ever been placed in in my life because as the pots came down the line through the workers glazed and claimed he would decorate each one as I was finishing up my six months there he offered me a portion of a chamber to make confirm my homework and he remember he said to me he said I know you've been making my pots for four months or five months now you should put your experiences to work and you know demonstrate what you've learned [Music] [Music] so when I came back to the United States and you know I tore down my Killen immediately rebuilt the nebari Gama based on his kill design says it's the same shape and proportion it's just not quite as why this is killing so this is a this is the nebari gamma this is a first chamber in the second chamber and then there's another small gas kiln up behind it they kill that Tomoka had that was really the first wood kiln that I had ever seen was this style of kiln and it's an old be Zen style no boring gamma you can fire this kiln start to finish in about 26 hours if you wanted to but we fire for about 70 hours it's an old friend and we we call our on a gamma the raging adolescent because it's a you know can be a pain in the butt it's just really temperamental and hard to control in kind of raging [Music] people began to come here to experience wood fire and we would always have people from all over the United States and other countries in the world would come here too because they'd heard about this kiln to learn how to put fire in a way was the beginning of my teaching I met Jan oh I should say this because Jan's mom once said well you should meet with professors but it's 26 and I met Jan at a summer workshop that I was teaching for the University of Minnesota and she fell in love with the idea of my love of Japan my love of wood fire him and you know came out and that's how we ended up being together [Music] it's amazing how one tool is a tool did you steal it did you show this yeah she often does usually when I can't find it Jenny calls a male blindness Jim I have a wonderful relationship I consider to be my soul mate I mean it's not that there aren't difficult days or times in the studio but generally we would get along fairly well we have a policy of we don't collaborate on each other's work so we just decided a long time ago we're not we're not gonna be in that position everywhere we have to collaborate on each other's work and in our new studio one of the first days in the studio we were walking in and jam points down and she said do you see this crack in the floor don't cross this line I mean I think a lot of products probably a very solitary life you know working in the studio and mixin glazes by themself and loading kilns by themself and Jay and I share that we work well together so it's good so you know I carried on here and making pots and everybody that came said all your pots are so Japanese they have such a Japanese influence I'd I began to sort of look at that as almost a criticism rather than the compliment and I decided at that time to try to step away as much as I could in my aesthetic and my thinking process from Japanese part Hamid I once said to me don't just make my posture don't just look at my Posse's to look at my sources and you know that's been a huge lesson for me and I go back to the beginning you know look at what those artists were looking at what was this I'm looking at what was Matisse you know looking at I'm personally attracted to probably more primitive art so I went to to England the first time when I was 18 years old and managed to make it just don't hinge no offences at the time you could walk up and touch the stones and you know very curious about that you know studying primitivism in art I think led me into African art eventually and I can pretty much jump from very primitive art and skip over lots of things like the Renaissance and I love Impressionism of course and paintings of Cezanne and I'm very curious kind of how primitive art influenced modern modernism and that it influenced a number of artists I have great admiration for and Henry Moore and Giacometti and Picasso and Matisse and all those artists began to look at art from Africa you know coming through Paris and coming into London and I it set the stage for the jump to abstraction and very curious you know that moment in time minge group comes kind of in the 1920s so not too far away from that group and you know that the tenants that are established in in that you know in my work especially I think comes from from those early influences Brancusi and Modigliani are two big heroes of mine and I like the simplification those were my influences [Music] in 1978 nine it was a recession in the United States and our second son was born and there was some difficulty and he was in the hospital for a while and I had some insurmountable medical bills so I needed to make some money and I wasn't going to be able to do that just working in the pottery so I started to do large stone and brick fireplaces for the architect that his design elements of our house and elements of Warren's house Mike McGuire and I ended up having three employees and maid got my way out of debt I made money and I was being booked out almost a year and a half in advance for jobs still working in the pottery but probably more treading water that's descriptive term as needed and then I was invited to teach at Emily Carr School bargaining Coover and I went out there to teach and on the way back J and said you know you're wasting your life doing sorry get emotional here but she said you're wasting your life doing this brickwork and stone work she said you need to get back into your art work full-time but I realized we had two children and Janssen artists and I thought you know I need to maintain an income so I decided to try to get a job teaching at the University I taught for 26 years I love being able to talk about what I love to do and that's the joy of teaching and had some incredible students over the years and managed to build a very significant program at the University of Wisconsin in River Falls students love to come and fire or whip counts with us and we have the two large wood counts and the the on igano we typically fight over 26 people this is the on agama the bori Gamow we usually have 10 to 15 people involved in it and this is a much sort of longer more detailed we use probably between 1,500 and 3,000 dollars with the wood depending on when I buy it and how I buy had to you know we load it as as a group and then everybody signs up for shifts and we typically have four to six people on a shift for six hours each we run for yesterday it's kind of like firing with a village and but it killed that size you can't possibly do the physical labor by yourself so you have to have people come and help dan said my filler I was gonna build this she's goes are you nuts ain't crazy my teaching that's been a very positive thing and it's also very rewarding to see kind of the number of people who have chosen to do this and in their lives and have been successful at it and you know it's kind of like passing the torch if we don't try to make a change in other people's lives or be inclusive in the philosophy of teaching or sharing them you know it's not gonna move forward I don't think our will ever die in humanity but I I think often of what Shimoga did for me what homina did for me and just being generous as a person what warren has done for me it's my opportunity to give back to the people that I come in contact with them you know want to share a ton of my studio and I'd love for art with them you know I really believe that the artistic experience of humanity sort of carries the history of humanity forward in time you know and in school we kind of jump from Napoleon to you know Hitler to Afghanistan or whatever and that's what's taught in history classes but the real history of humanity is through their their art and I think there's a lot to be learned from that I have some quite old pots that are very meaningful to me that I've collected along the way and one of them I got in Chicago as an old Korean Bowl it's probably 17th 18th century and when it was one of those pieces when I walked into the antique shop caught my eye right away it's like I always say that pot grabbed me and you wanted to come and live in my house I picked it out and looked at it and I began to talk to the shopkeeper and found out that the ball had come from a colonel or a general in the army they had been in the Korean War and they had brought this back and then the family didn't want it anymore so they put it up for sale on this antique shop I started to look at the rim of the piece and I noticed that there were there were finger marks on the rim of the piece like this and their finger marks here and they're quite subtle and then the Potter dipped it in the glaze did that and dripped it out and so that night I would put my fingers on the pot you know I sort of felt this chill go down my arms they get a little bit of a chill talking about it now but a long time ago a woman criticized me for leaving finger marks in the glaze you poor craftsmanship but I always think about that ball and they very deliberately leave figure marks in the glaze know as a that fingerprint will be on that piece of clay for ten thousand years and so there's a story to be told because the clay has remembered the mark [Music] best decisions I ever made my life was to become an artist and it's exciting to me everyday I can't wait to get back in the studio and be kind of making and drawing and doing new things a lot of fallin on my face there too but it's a good thing they're very proud of my dad it's very inventive yeah so he's still alive he's 95 and at age 92 he received two more patents he did tell me not too many years ago that he had wanted to become an artist he never told me that before he has a number of grandchildren and great-grandchildren that have chosen to become artists and they become fairly you know renowned photographers and writers and so there's a very strong artistic element that goes through the family but he said that in his time which it's very difficult to make a living as an artist it's a long difficult Road and I've always felt my students if he can do something else because it's one of the most difficult things you will ever choose to do in your life but I think if you're compelled to work in art you have to do [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Goldmark Gallery

Views: 145,283

Rating: 4.938169 out of 5

Keywords: Pottery, ceramics, pottery films, pottery documentaries, ceramics films, ceramics documentaries, Goldmark gallery, goldmark films, goldmark, goldmark pots, Shōji Hamada, Randy Johnston, Warren MacKenzie, Tatsuzo Shimaoka, Svend Bayer, Clive Bowen, Nic Collins, Jean-Nicolas Gérard, Yoshinori Hagiwara, Shinsaku Hamada, Tomoo Hamada, Lisa Hammond, Anne Mette Hjortshøj, Ken Matsuzaki, what artists do all day?, michael cardew, studio potter, ceramic pro, we love clay

Id: Z6alc204ugM

Length: 26min 13sec (1573 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 09 2018