The two pieces shown above are seminal designs which marked my break with the student work that I had been producing when I studied at Pewabic Pottery in Detroit, Michigan in the early 1970's. I first made these about 1983. They allowed me to strike out in a new and personal direction which resulted in the body of work I produce today.
I had been trained as a potter at Pewabic Pottery between 1972 and 74. Jim Powell, my teacher, had in turn been a student of Maija Grotell at Cranbrook. Grotell's work emphasized "functional" or vessel based design and so did Jim along with a certain whimsicality that was his alone. I admired the philosophy of the Bauhaus designers and the "form follows function"aesthetic. At the same time, I was very much attracted to the pure form of sculptural work in clay and in other media. Particularly influential was the work of Ruth Duckworth, Lucy Rie Hans Coper and the Pomodoro brothers in Italy. In the years at Pewabic, I learned to build skill in throwing on the wheel , experimented with glazes,salt firing and had my first "taste" of working in porcelain.
Once I realized that my natural strength as an artist lay in my sensitivity to form, I strove to blend the demands of function with the forms that came into my imagination. This proved to be a challenge and sometimes impossible to accomplish.
After leaving Pewabic with the birth of my second child, I had only a small electric kiln available to me. I basically started over. Since I knew I could not duplicate the rich glazes of the reduction firing at Pewabic, I chose porcelain as my clay, and began extensive glaze testing in oxidation that still continues.
The NESTING BOWL SET, shown on this page above, was my first successful attempt to produce a functional piece from very simple forms. The bowls are made so that the foot is not visible, making the full form of each bowl seem to float, one within the other. The rhythmic interplay of the lines of altered edges lend energy to what might otherwise be a static form.
The concept first explored in the nesting bowl set is pushed even farther in the design of the ROCKING BOWL that followed. Again, in shaping the piece I tried to achieve a perfection of form that spoke of fullness and balance. I did not want to interupt the line of the profile by having it end abruptly in a conventional foot and I wanted to re-inforce the idea of balance by creating the possibility of movement. As I looked at this piece balancing itself at a slight angle on a table in my studio I began to wonder what would happen if the form, which was still soft, received a blow. Would this subtle shifting of weight upset the balance? Carefully, I tapped the soft wall again and again to create the depression in the side.
The piece continued to balance itself. Of all of my the designs, this is the one I love the best. There is something magical and primal in it which I cannot really articulate. One client offered her view that it seemed like someone who had sustained an injury but had maintained integrity and balance.
This design is in the permanent collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts. I have plans to create a series of these bowls which will be much larger, taking them out of the scale associated with function.
Rocking porcelain bowl
Planters at right, use shape and texture to suggest the vigorous growth of plants.
"The first responsability of the artist is to love an object for it's own sake...simply because it is an object of form and substance revealed by the wonder of light." N.C. Wyeth
In any work of art, the many elements that characterize that artist's work are are present in a unified whole. For me, one form or method of embellishment slowly gives rise in the studio to another and another in a constant flow as I work.
In the links below,however, I focus on three individual elements in an attempt to help the viewer understand more fully how my work has developed over the last 35 years.
The tiny olive oil server,below, fits in the palm of one's hand.This design was in a show called"Sensuous".
The Pumpkin Teapot and the Hosta Vase make use of abstract natural forms.
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Inspiration is found everywhere. I grew up on a small Michigan farm and spent my free time wandering the fields and woods in all seasons of the year. The shapes of leaves,the lines created by the erosion of a snowbank by wind or a creekbank by water,the scattering of pine needles on pavement and many other phenomena observed in nature are an enduring part of my conciousness.
"In pottery, form is the content."
Gertrude Natzler
Small covered container below
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