Our Story
So I started in ceramics in high school. It looked like an easy art class and I had already done drawing and photography.
I will always remember the first class. It was super boring. The teacher talked about the history and importance of pottery in early human development.
Then she displayed pinch pots and coil work. End of class.
Perhaps I had made a mistake. At least with home ec I occasionally got to make food.
Second class; a little more lecturing and then she grabs a ball of clay, slams it onto the wheel head of a kick wheel, we only had three kick wheels at the time, and started to work.
Within seconds that unassuming ball of clay became a bowl. I felt like I had watched some magic trick and looked away at the wrong moment.
Needless to say, I had one of those rare moments in life.
I did a whole lot of failing for a long time, but that magic moment never left my head, and I kept at it. Every ball of clay was potential for me to bring out. Eventually I got pretty good,
learned glaze formulation, got some of my work in a couple of shows, then I graduated. I had to make a living and it turned out that I was not making enough at the car wash to pay for an apartment and food,
let alone a car. So things happened and it was another 20 years before I touched clay again.
However...
That magic moment never left my mind. I finally bought a modest house, then a modest potters wheel with money I didn’t have. I was a seasonal potter, as my back patio was my studio.
Thankfully, I lived in Oregon and got 9ish months out of the year to be on the wheel on my outside patio.
Life things happened again and I finally got in a position where I could dust off the wheel and hit the clay again. However, in the meantime I had met my best friend, Snitter.
Snitter is the best person I have ever met, and each day is a challenge trying to be as good of a person as he was. Snitter also liked to hang out in the studio with me. He was content laying within
a foot of me, watching and listening as I played in the clay and occassionally cursed. He's my soulmate and my clay dog. Crazy how lucky I got.
Ceramics is a funny thing. Art wise, we are bottom of the barrel in the art community. I think this comes from our work also being something practical if we choose. Art can't be practical.
It's an unwritten rule. Ask any art critic who never had the courage to make something meaningful and then put it out under the harsh eye of the public. I will say that ceramics brings its own satisfaction.
I've never met a painter that served dinner on one of their paintings, had a hot cup of coffee or ramen in a mural. The other funny thing about ceramics is that our work is forever.
Potters and stone carvers work last forever. It's a big obligation when you think about it. You don't know how many times I have cringed, thinking back on all the "good work" from my early days that is floating out
there with my mark on it.
My pottery and my love of dogs are permanents in my life. So what do you do with an art that will long outlive and possibly embarrass you? You make things that are meaningful.
I know the incredible joy of a friend who adores you and you adore. Who is your personal confessor, who never judges and always forgives you for working late, again.
That special person is a bit of yourself and you carry a bit of them inside you. The pain watching them age and then pass is something that only those who have lived through it understand.
We cope in different ways. We hurt, or pretend it doesn't hurt. We get a replacement that can never be a replacement, and never should be. Or we hang onto them.
It took me a long time, but I found that I didn’t want to forget. Remembering was hard, but the best people in our lives damn well deserve to be remembered.
And then there's ever lasting pottery. Once it clicked in my brain I couldn't let it go. Just like I could never let go of Snitter, and I never will.
So I make things for people that are hurting; wanting to always remember their special person. What I make are for those people. People like us.
