This is a wood ash glaze that has been used historically by Japanese and Korean potters. These artists traditionally used rice hull ashes and fired pottery to temperatures upwards of 2500 degrees F. I have spent years adapting my Nuka glaze recipe to melt at a lower firing temperature, and to utilize local wood ashes. My goal is to achieve a fluid, rustic surface while maintaining whiteness.
After 3 hours of driving in the dark, I arrived safely at WDIO TV studio in Duluth just before 6:00am. Follow the link below for the feature story and video:
Special thanks to Executive Director Deborah and her assiatant Liz for arranging this awesome publicity! Next, Liz and I zipped over to 95 KQDS for 2 more quick blurbs on the radio.
If you’re in the Duluth area swoop by Art in Bayfront Park tomorrow 10-6pm or Sunday 10-4pm and see my new body of work! I’ll also be performing pottery demonstrations in front of a gorgeous Lake Superior backdrop. Here is a photo from when I attended in 2012. Hope to see you there!
Today kicks off a series of Web Exclusive blog posts that tell my story through the American Craft Council website. This opportunity to captivate a new audience each month makes me feel incredibly thankful. I encourage all art lovers to become American Craft Council members and join us in the conversation. Follow the link below for more:
In many ways, the work of the modern potter mirrors the work of the ancient alchemist. Potters blend earthly materials like clay, stone, and ash, into complicated glaze mixtures. Then through fire, these base substances transform into precious works of art. With glaze chemistry, and one part modern alchemy, potters turn the natural elements we once took for granted into the treasured artifacts we display in our homes and galleries.
It’s interesting to see how much the glazing, alchemy, and human life relate to each other. Bernard Leach, author of A Potter’s Book, helps us understand glazes by relating them to the body. He says most glazes have 3 main parts -the blood, bone, and flesh. Here’s how they work:
1.) Fluxing agent or “life blood of the glaze” – causes the glaze materials to melt and flow together in the kiln firing.
2.) Refractory or “bone of the glaze”– resists heat and melting, providing structure and strength to the glaze body.
3.)Glass Former or “flesh of the glaze”– creates complexity, depth and unique qualities.
(page 133-134)
Similar to Bernard Leach, the early alchemists fused their chemical efforts with the body. Calling their experiments the Magnum Opus, or “Great Work,” these men searched tirelessly for the right chemical concoctions that would enrich life or prevent death. In some ways, full-time potters do the same through glaze chemistry. They are constantly searching for that perfect potion that will immortalize a clay body and turn sand, water, and ash into gold.
These 2 books, by potters John Britt and Phil Rogers, gave Joel the necessary skills to develop that perfect glaze surface, but like the early alchemists, he’s still searching.
Like alchemy, glazing is often a fiery, messy, and sometimes toxic process. The kiln releases CO2, the powdered glaze materials are dangerous inhalants, and the heavy metal colorants cause skin irritation. Joel mixes all his glazing in an old boat shed. This dirty, dark laboratory gives him 24 hour access to glaze experimentation, providing the perfect amount of chaos to create beautiful works.
Joel’s pottery has to be strong enough to be used in a coffee shop everyday. The Local Blend Baristas say they wash a mug up to 5 times per day, 7 days per week! With this in mind, Joel adapted the Nuka glaze to suit the stress. Traditionally a simple 3-ingredient mixture, Joel added more chemicals to strengthen the glaze surface, reducing flaws like pinholes and crazing while increasing durability and gloss. Here’s the recipe for all the curious potters out there:
Some potters spend their careers trying to find the right glaze mixtures. In next Friday’s post, we’ll delve into some of these mixtures more and explore the lure of pretty blue pottery.
Cobalt-based glazes, or what some potters call “cash-flow” blue glazes, have been mystifying both potters and customers for decades.
“At my St. Ives workshop each summer we are asked by three visitors out of four for colour and yet more colour, blue and the more intense the better, is easily the favourite.”
Guest Blog posting from Alex Forster: “Marketing Intern” and senior English major at the College of St. Benedict/St. John’s University. View his Linkedin Page here.
Recently, Joel pulled a mug off the counter of the Local Blend. Its lip had chipped, and he didn’t want people drinking from it anymore. The mug was one of the earliest pieces Joel had offered the Blend three years ago. And over the course of a thousand washings, handlings, and refills, the mug had started to wear the scars of a wounded soldier. Its chapped foot was tattooed with the number sixteen marking ounces, its curves were scratched from being passed across countertops, and its insides were browned with coffee stains. Almost no part except its speckled yellow skin was in the original condition. But instead of throwing the mug away, Joel discovered beauty in its scars. Now it sits like a trophy on a shelf in his office -a proud token to the life of pottery.
An early mug Joel brought to the Local Blend 3 years ago. Besides the chipped lip, the mug has a vertical hairline crack, chipped edges on the foot, and permanent coffee stains inside.16 marks the mug ounce size, drawn with permanent marker 3 years ago so a Local Blend employee knew what drink size to make.
Every pot tells a story. And like people, we can learn a lot about our pottery by looking at its history. One of Joel’s friends, a fellow potter named Matthew Mejia, recently shared these words of wisdom on Joel’s Facebook page. They come from the Pennsylvania potter Jack Troy. He writes, “My feeling is that we potters finish our work, but only others can complete it, through use. Pottery, therefore, is only finished once, but can be completed endlessly, by a succession of users, keeping it active in a variety of settings. When we say we are ‘moved’ by a pot, it may be the animating force of its creator refusing to be still.”
Joel tries to emulate this mindset in his pottery installations at places like the Local Blend. In one of our earliest conversations, he said to me, “Surround yourself with pottery.” When we bring pottery into our lives, we ourselves become artists. Like the mug at the Local Blend, our lives scar little memories into the artwork. A chip in the lip may remind us of a time when we tried to balance too many things at once. Coffee stains may remind us of long conversations with close friends, or perhaps, long nights and early mornings. Whatever the scars are, our pottery shares the story.
Even the best potters cannot create two completely identical pieces. Sure, a potter may make 100 or even 200 pieces of the same style, but each one has its own personality. Each pot reflects the mindset of the potter at one particular moment on the wheel. On the same shelf in Joel’s office, next to the mug from the Local Blend, sits a porcelain cup by the potter Steven Hill. Joel got this piece after Hill came to the Paramount Arts Center for a 2 day pottery workshop. What’s interesting about the cup is its imperfection. A little s-shaped scar on the inside of the cup shows that Hill speed dried it. A crack in the glaze near the foot says that Hill had to reattach the part after it fell off during glazing. Even marks in the glaze itself show that Hill may have been rushing to get the piece finished before the end of the conference. Every part of the cup feels hurried.
The rough surface happened because Hill skipped the bisque firing, raw glazed the pot, then speed dried it.
Hill would probably regard this cup as “flawed,” and unlike Joel, I doubt he would exhibit it on his shelf of inspiring pieces. Many potters would never exhibit or sell a flawed pot, and most usually smash them. Joel, on the other hand, appreciates these flawed pieces for the stories they tell. For him, they hold life and personality -characteristics you can’t find in a machine made, or even a beautifully glazed, flawless pot.
When Hill glazed this cup, he accidentally ripped off the foot, then dipped it in glaze and stuck it back on. The hairline crack reminds Joel of this event.
Many of us, myself included, may feel like we need an art degree to understand a Salvador Dali painting or a Clase Oldenburg sculpture. But with pottery I feel it’s different. With pottery, our lives become the galleries. We not only bring the beauty of the art into our lives, but our lives make the art more beautiful. Potter Dick Lehman sums it up perfectly. When it comes to appreciating our pottery he writes, “Fine dinnerware has the potential for helping us to find, even though in a small way, affection for life and beauty in living.” So, the next time life requires pottery, take a moment to study its living history.
Every little scar in our pottery shares a story. Some are pleasant, some are unpleasant, but they are all important. Joel appreciates the flaws in his pottery for the important lessons they teach him. Below are some examples of these lessons.
This crack comes from “dunting” – a stress crack that happens when making pottery, but opens during the firing. The pot probably got bumped in travel, since Joel often drives to and from Minneapolis to get Paige Dansinger’s paintings on his pots and exhibit them in Gallery Paige.
Joel uses a wood ash glaze called Nuka, which gives his pots interesting and irregular qualities like surface pinholes. Nuka stains with coffee over time, allowing the pot’s character to evolve with the user. After getting banged around for 6 months in the Local Blend, this mug cracked and leaked. Employees wash the mugs up to 5 times per day, everyday, and sometimes a mug will hold up for over 2 years. Joel pulled this one from the Blend and quickly snapped a photo of the bleeding soldier.
This is an “S” crack that sometimes happens with hump throwing. Joel filled it with epoxy and metal leaf. Look at the amazing color the “S” crack has next to the Copper Red glaze.
Hannah Anderson worked as a “Pottery Marketing Intern” this semester. She is a senior Art major at the College of St. Benedict/St. John’s University. In this post, she describes our semester long task of trying to define the role of pottery in the contemporary art world.
Throughout my internship with Joel, we had many discussions of “high art” vs. “low art” and where his pottery fit into the mix. High art, one could argue, is not functional for the consumer. Traditionally, the function for this type of art is to sit in a museum as a masterpiece, observed through this elevated status. Low art is generally mass-produced, inexpensive, and far more available to the public. In my critical theory class, we discussed how museums have opinions on high and low art as well, and can influence how people view artwork by either appearing intimidating or more approachable.
The terms “high” and “low” art should be reevaluated and adapted to today’s contemporary art world. Words that correlate with high art seem far too Renaissance or Baroque in feel, such as “master of art,” prestige, traditional, western, still-life, landscapes, portraits, and, my favorite, original. This particular word poses the question: can high art even exist anymore? I would argue that it certainly still exists, but not in the same light in which it was originally established. High art and low art should be adaptable terms for each new generation of artists. Low art has synonyms such as: consumerism, production, affordable, advertised, ordinary, etc. This is a challenge many artists face today, and it creates a huge imbalance in the art world.
Joel poses the question, “why are we making and selling pots?” He gathers a lot of insight from potter Warren Mackenzie, whom also has a lot to say about art as a functional vessel vs. sitting in a gallery space. Warren is an 89 year old, world-renowned artist. He is most at ease with his work when he knows it is being used, handled everyday and looked at often. Pottery has the potential to be the most intimate of artwork, because it’s users have constant contact with it. Clay is not expensive and is made from the earth, so when does it make the transition from low to high art?
Price plays a factor into what is high and low art. Warren says “A 10 dollar pot, now that’s affordable.” He says that if it breaks, then it is not a huge loss. This is interesting coming from a renowned artist, because his philosophy conflicts with his position in the art world; his pots resell on Ebay.com for hundreds of dollars everyday. Mackenzie says, “Unfortunately, now I only sell through galleries.” His philosophy seems more focused on low art, but his standing is high.
Bernard Leach, “A Potter’s Book” 1940 – Pottery mentor to Warren Mackenzie
I like to think that many artists in today’s art world present a mix of high and low art, and it is perhaps just difficult to find the balance. Right now, an imbalance is evident in Joel’s artwork. His pottery is functional, consumer-friendly, priced lower than most professional potters, and is meant to bring a comfortable aesthetic to anyone’s home. His online store is in contrast with this idea, because we take a high art approach by using professional photography equipment to shoot pots in front of a gradated background. We then use these photos to try and join the contemporary art world.
I wonder, is the Local Blend pottery high or low art? At the Local Blend coffee shop, they use Joel’s pottery in mass, so anyone can eat and drink from his pottery everyday. This seems much closer to low art to me. We take the same pots and put them in front of a gradated background, making them high art in a different atmosphere. Without a little low art, high art wouldn’t be possible, since the Blend is where most of Joel’s income is generated. Writing about this venue has also brought him some of his biggest successes in the art world, including 2 major magazine publications. Perhaps these everyday pots will someday be elevated to a high art status?
Low art is what’s paying the bills, yet in the future, Joel wants to support his livelihood with a balance between low and high art. This means more of his income needs to be generated from our work on the online store. One way we accomplished this was by branding his artwork in a more focused way, using one glaze: the Nuka Glaze with iron. Nuka with iron had a great deal of success for Joel throughout my internship, enough for him to narrow his focus toward solely that glaze. Currently the online store has less Nuka with Iron than Joel would like, and his future plans are to recreate his online store geared toward pottery of only that glaze type. Over 50% of the online sales were Nuka with iron, and Joel sold pots with this glaze type to five different people both locally and nationally in one week. He has also completed 4 dinnerware sets in this glaze, 2 of which were sold through wedding registries. We see huge potential in this glaze combination.
This branding was influenced by Ayumi Horie, who certainly has a recognized, established, successful brand for herself. Her style is easily recognizable on every pot. Her artwork sells at high prices online and is always sold out in less than a day. Moreover, Horie has earned her place in the art world through years of consistent craftsmanship, a huge resume, and skillfully writing about her craft in major publications.
Our experience with high art continued through Paige Dansinger– an internationally renowned painter and art historian who is collaborating with Joel. She makes high art in the form of painting on canvas, digital paintings on IPads, projections, performance, and most recently, painting with glazes on Joel’s pottery. During my internship, she opened a gallery in the Minneapolis Skyway Mall called Gallery Paige. Everyday, she exhibits and sells her artwork as high art. The collaborative work made by herself and Joel has huge potential to take off in the high art world.
To conclude, perhaps in today’s world, the balance needs to be found in the middle of the spectrum between high art and low art. Are the best artists those who spend their time making both high and low art? One could argue that they can reach the most amount of people that way. Because that in fact is what art is all about: reaching the most amount of people with a particular message. The meaning of art and its purpose to be seen can easily get lost when identifying it as either high or low. As renowned potter Bernard Leach said, “To me the greatest thing is to live beauty in our daily life and to crowd every moment with things of beauty. It is then, and then only, that the art of the people as a whole is endowed with its richest significance.”
