¶¶ Warm house, cold hands. ¶¶ ¶¶ I was standing outside trying to find your door. ¶¶ (Warren Mackenzie) I had a potter friend who used to horrify his beginning students by saying the first 10,000 pots are difficult, and then it gets a little bit easier! (laughs) But that's literally true. You just have to make a lot of pots, and then it becomes kind of second nature. My name is Warren Mackenzie, and I'm a potter. ¶¶ ¶¶ I make a variety of pots, but all of my pots are designed to be used in people's homes. This is the making room of the studio. All the wet clay work is done here. I went to school at the Chicago Art Institute in 1946. I thought I was going to be a painter then, but found out that all the painting classes were filled. So I said well, what has room in it? And they said there's room in ceramics class. So it turned out that ceramics was rather fascinating. We'll start off with some bowls of some sort here. (sharp slapping) This is a wheel, a treadle wheel. It was developed at the Leach Pottery, and it came from England in 1968. Bernard Leach, we lived with him for 2-1/2 years in England discussing the ideas and problems and so on. We learned more about why we were making pots and the philosophy of making pots. I was hired to teach ceramics at the University of Minnesota from 1953 to 1989. When I used to teach the young women in my class, their first question is-- is my left leg going to get larger than my right? (laughs) It's very relaxing to start off with what I call small serving bowls. I like the fact that when you make a pot for use in people's homes, it will be used every day. It will be picked up and handled and be looked at often. It will be washed and eaten from or drunk from. And so there's a constant contact with the person who's purchased your work. I think people are more likely here to buy pots to use in their home. On the East and West coast, they're more likely to buy to add to a collection. I feel that people understand my work better here in the Midwest. (thud!) Being a fast potter doesn't mean you're a good potter. (chuckles) Some potters throw very slowly and make a completely different kind of pot than I make. I make a rather casual pot, and so I can throw faster, and it's not that critical. Two parallel circles running around a pot are not very interesting. But if you interrupt them... by bringing them together periodically, first of all, it becomes triangular, which adds another contrast to the circle, but also you bring the 2 parts together. I don't think I have a "style." Although, it's strongly influenced by a Japanese and Korean potter. The Koreans have an offhand approach to art, which I admire a great deal. I try to emulate that attitude. Well, now they'll go to the racks, and in ordinary drying conditions, it'll take a day or so until they're ready to be turned on the bottom. (sharp slapping) This will be the body of the teapot, and that smaller piece will make a lid, and this will make a spout. Having been made on the wheel, they have to then dry until they're half dry, and you then glue them together with liquid clay. ¶¶ ¶¶ Teapots are one form which I never cut a foot on because I wanted my pots to be as inexpensive as possible so people can buy them in quantity. Clay is not expensive. Glaze materials are not expensive when you figure how little goes on the pot. The only thing that your expense is, is your time. And so if you can control your time, you can sell a pot for not too much money. Unfortunately now, I only sell through galleries, and so the work is more expensive because the gallery has to pay their expenses also. But even so, I think that the average person can afford a pot for not too much money. And if you break one, it's not a major loss, you know. Okay, it's a $10 pot-- that's affordable. ¶¶ ¶¶ This is the glazing room. I'm going to take these mixers and stir these buckets of glaze. Now I have a board of pots that I'll bring in here, and I'll glaze them. This is going to be a gray matte surface glaze, and by putting that brown glaze over it, I produce a strong yellow. This one we'll make yellow all over. These dry very quickly. The water is absorbed into the porous pot, then I use a suede shoe brush to clean the glaze off the bottoms of the pots because there must be no glaze on the bottom of the pot, or it would stick to the kiln shelf. (soft scraping) (quick blow) And then we take these into the kiln room. ¶¶ ¶¶ This electric kiln is where all my bisque firing is done, and it's got a computer on it, so it's really nice. I can set it to fire at any speed I want, to any temperature. I load this and close it up and fire it, and then I go back to work. So the bisque firing doesn't take me any time. All right, this is the big kiln; this is the gas-fired kiln. It's got 3 burners here. Go in one side, the air, the flame is circulating through the kiln over the pots and out the flues there. The whole setting pulls out on tracks here, and the shelving is added according to the size pots you're firing. And then we fire the kiln, about 24 to 30 hours in this, then it takes 2 to 3 days to cool the kiln down before it can be unloaded. ¶¶ ¶¶ This used to be our showroom. It's where I sold all my pots. We showed the work of about 7 other potters here also because I couldn't keep the showroom filled. We only closed the showroom when a group of people began to not go by our rules and to buy for resale instead of for their own use. That was why we closed it. People in this area have been exposed to ceramics for a long time, and they've been exposed to some very nice ceramics. We've got a wonderful group of potters working in this immediate area. These are pots which I've put aside to be considered for an exhibition which we are going to have in New York in the fall of this year. They want a very large number of pots, and also I want to show a variety of the things I make and the different glazes I use and techniques. I just love to make pots. I'd be quite happy working with someone who would be glazing my pots and packing the kiln and firing the kiln and all I had to do would be make pots. That would be marvelous, but it doesn't work that way. I had an apprentice, and I realized I don't like working with other people. So I have to do it all myself. (laughs) But I like to make pots. That's what I like to do. ¶¶ ¶¶
