This holiday season, I’m excited to share a new style of pottery with you. My electric fired “Cosmic Mugs” are inspired by images of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope from www.hubblesite.org. Real images of deep space galaxy cloud and nebula inspire my abstract glaze paintings over an “Oil Spot Black” base glaze, meant to reference the night sky. My stoneware coffee mugs are 100% functional, microwaveable and dishwasher safe, and available in my online store:
The online store is also filled with a variety of pottery in my Nuka glaze, made with ashes from the St. John’s Arboretum in Collegeville, MN. I’m selling pots as low as $10 each, and these pieces are colored with cobalt blue, copper green and gold iron drips:
This is the fifth post in a series entitled, “A Potter’s Journey” for American Craft Council’s website. This post tells the story of launching my pottery business venture immediately after college graduation, as well as the trials and tribulations that I overcame during the first 3 years of business:
Thirty-four years ago, astronomer and Cosmos host Carl Sagan made his famous claim:
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.” – Carl Sagan. “The Lives of the Stars.” Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. PBS. 1980.
Sagan could have been talking about making anything from scratch. His goal was to convey that everything on earth, everything in the universe, is made up of precise combinations of the most basic elements, and those elements were created in stars’ nuclear cores. We could also say, “If you wish to make a pot from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
These star-forged elements combine to form all the components of ceramics: the different strains of clay (silicon and iron), the water used in throwing (oxygen and hydrogen), the arboreal ingredients of glazes (calcium), and even the potter himself (carbon). Entire books could be written focusing solely on one of these ceramic elements.
Copper, for example. Copper red glazes have been meticulously pursued and produced since the fifteenth century in China. The new host of Cosmos, Neil deGrasse Tyson, often analyzes the concept of a “Goldilocks planet” – a planet which has the precise conditions for possibly sustaining life. A successful copper red glaze is a “Goldilocks glaze.” Everything in both the recipe and the firing must be perfect.
Caution: No room for error.
As Sagan and Tyson have taught us, science is found in everything we do. Baking an apple pie from scratch, developing a new drug, and mixing and firing glazes all rely on experimentation, creativity, and chemical reactions. A potter doesn’t need a degree in chemistry, but he uses some pretty cool science to produce copper red glazes.
Nowadays, gas-fired kilns produce the best conditions for copper red glazes, but ancient Chinese potters created their beautiful pieces using only wood-fired kilns. Many potters do not have regular access to gas- or wood-fired kilns, and use electric ones instead. Electric kilns eliminate the need for constant temperature monitoring, but they are unable to create the atmosphere copper red glazes require.
Hello in there!
Copper red glazes need to be fired to a temperature called “cone 10.” This photo shows three cones (small pieces of clay), set up inside a gas-fired kiln. Each of these pieces is made from a different factory-produced type of clay formulated to melt at a certain temperature. A device called a pyrometer can be used to measure the temperature of the air inside the kiln, but what really matters is the temperature of the clay, hence the use of cones. When cone 10 melts, the potter knows the clay is roughly 2345 °F.
Even inside the same kiln, the atmosphere unavoidably varies. The pots below all had the same glaze and firing, but were placed in different areas of the kiln.
The green color on the right also occurs when firing a copper glaze in an electric kiln.
Color, just like copper, depends on the stars. Light from our sun strikes objects on earth, and those objects absorb some wavelengths of light and reflect others. The wavelengths they reflect are the colors we see. As Tyson puts it:
“Color is the way our eyes perceive how energetic light waves are.” – Neil Degrasse Tyson. “Hiding in the Light.” Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. Fox. 2014.
Thankfully, potters did not have to create the universe to make pots from scratch. Their ingredients are already present in the cosmos, swirling in the air and lurking in the earth, waiting for them.
Chuquicamata Copper Mine in Chile. (Image: Property of Till Niermann, located in the Wikimedia Commons.)
As the Amtrack roars across the plains of North Dakota, Joel watches the fields outside his window fade back into the landscapes of Central Minnesota. He reads a Snowboarder magazine to pass the time, and his mind instantly returns to skiing fresh powder at Big Sky three days earlier. Before the moment fades, he snaps a picture. Perhaps it’ll give him inspiration when he returns to the wheel. Since he was 3 years old, Joel has taken yearly trips like this one out to the Rockies. They are his second home, and as a result, they appear on his pottery. Drawing inspiration from his former professor and mentor Sam Johnson, who signs many of his pots with a simple-line landscape drawing, Joel signs each piece with an image of the mountains.
Pottery signatures offer us an intimate look at where an artist’s inspiration hides. Sam says his signature represents the flat landscape where he grew up, in western Minnesota. In Joel’s case, the mountains are a symbol of moving forward. They not only show the foundation from which he builds his art, but they show an image of where he wants to go.
“I want you to feel like you’ve got a mountain of clay to work with.” – Sam Johnson
For Joel, the mountains symbolize where he’s going. They find a home on every pot he makes.
In practically every creative writing workshop, beginning writers hear the motto, “Write what you know.” With pottery it’s no different. Potters pull inspiration from the world around them and try to bring these inspirations to life in their work. Perhaps the most revealing aspects of a potter’s art then, are the elements he/she leaves constant. The inspirations that continually find a home in their work.
With this in mind, let’s return to the mountains on Joel’s mugs. As new life circumstances reshape his pottery, Joel still draws mountains on every pot. While he calls them, “a symbol to where he’s going,” I read them as a testament to where he’s been. They stay constant while nearly everything else changes around him, offering a link between the past, present, and future. Look at his glazing for instance. The mountains come to life in the way the dark blues meet the pale Nuka glaze like the sky meets a snowy mountaintop. In everything from his abstract expressionist glazing to his simple-line signature, the mountains are present.
The Nuka and Cobalt glazes on this bowl remind me of a snowy mountaintop as it meets the dark blue glaze near the lip.
It’s strange to think that an annual ski trip could have such a large influence on somebody’s pottery. But that’s the joy of art; inspiration hits often when the artist least expects it. He may be on a train barreling across North Dakota, and BAM, there it is. Steven Hill, a potter who I mentioned in my last post, describes finding inspiration like climbing a mountain. In Tales of the Red Clay Ramblerpodcast Steven Hill is interviewed by fellow potter Ben Carter. Hill says:
This pot shows a realistic representation of a midwestern landscape. Notice how the porcelain slip represents clouds, cobalt blue looks like birds, and raw clay near the bottom resembles a horizon line. The creamy, gray glaze feels like a winter sky.
“I feel like we all need to have something that we’re searching for that’s out of our grasp. It’s kind of like you’re climbing a mountain. Once you get to the peak there’s no where to go except down. And the search for a better resolution, a better curve, a better surface…a better something that’s always been elusive of my grasp, but it’s always been right out in front of me and I’ve never attained it.”
Successful full-time artists rarely separate themselves from their work. They always look for inspiration, even in the strangest places. If you follow Joel on Instagram, you’ll see how his obsession with rock music, rock culture, and skiing all influence his pottery. True to this culture, he even has a large tattoo of his pottery signature on his arm. Many historically famous potters spoke about synthesis of life and art. In short, the two fuel each other, providing moments of inspiration when we least expect them.
“…it is obvious that Shoji [Hamada] approached his life and work in a holistic manner, and that his workshop, house, clothes, and lifestyle were all related to his greater motivation for working in clay.”
Jar by Peter Swanson, from Phil Rogers, “Ash Glazes.” Joel’s Nuka glaze recipe came out of this book, and he’s conducted over 300 tests to experiment with the glaze at varying temperatures, between cone 6 and 13. The drips of iron on this stunning pot exemplify an abstract depiction of a mountainous landscape.
When Joel went to see Bill Gossman at a small pottery workshop in New London, the time-tested artist wedged, centered, and threw 25-50lb. blocks of clay at a time. These blocks, impressive in themselves, soon became massive 3-4ft. jugs that Gossman needed to finish in multiple sections. If you have ever thrown pottery or seen somebody throw pottery, then you’ll understand the effort Gossman needed just to raise that amount of clay once. He did it three times per jug.
Click the image to view Joel’s Facebook album of the “Gossman and Morris Workshop”
As someone who’s only thrown about ten functional mugs in his life, potters like Gossman amaze me. They possess an unparalleled dedication to their craft. And like any professional athlete, these guys will often spend years practicing and perfecting their work before they receive any recognition.
Reitz working long hours at a 2009 pottery conference in Flagstaff, AZ.
Consider someone like Don Reitz for example. When Joel went to see the 84 year old potter at a 2009 workshop in Flagstaff, AZ, Reitz started working before anyone else in the morning and stayed well over an hour late each night. In only 2 days, Reitz went through 2 wheelbarrows full of clay! These pictures show only a small sample of Reitz’s work, but listen to him discuss it here for the full story.
Warning -it gets emotional.
Years after the conference, Joel contacted Reitz. This workshop directly led to Joel’s creation of Mindscape, and Joel wanted to connect with Reitz by sending him a cup or two as a thanks. Still humble after years at the wheel, Reitz wrote back saying, “A cup is not necessary, I’m just happy to know that my work is appreciated. Also, watch the movie The World’s Fastest Indian. Rent it or whatever. It’s about TOTAL COMMITMENT.”
As spectators to art, we only see the final product. We never see the hours of studio-time behind the world’s fastest motorcycle or even a massive clay sculpture. We see the game, but we don’t see the practice. What I’ve learned from hearing the stories of people like Gossman, Reitz, and Joel is that to make beautiful pieces of art, a potter needs to balance inspiration with dedication. Like Reitz says, he needs TOTAL COMMITMENT by immersing himself in the clay.
Michael Cardew was a historically famous potter that lived a tough life partly by choice and also by circumstance. While in Africa, he made pottery in places where water was so scarce, he had to use caustic wood ashes to make clay more plastic. Joel often looks at Cardew’s biography when he needs motivation, especially in the more difficult times of his career. Here’s a quote from the book that I feel speaks well to Joel’s pottery. Joel first heard it from his friend and author Ken Ferber. It says:
“…a good design in pottery is the product of a tension or ‘dialect’ between the demands of pure utility and those of pure beauty, and only a long experience and continual struggle enables you to achieve a successful fusion of the two.”
-Michael Cardew
The biography goes on to describe Cardew as a potter with “athleticism” and his work with clay as, “direct, physical and urgent.” I think you could prescribe the same qualities to almost any professional potter, especially guys like Gossman and Reitz who continue to make massive ceramic pieces throughout the second half of their career. These guys are making a statement through their effort. And in many ways, their art then becomes the direct expression of this effort.
8ft. tall Wheel-thrown clay sculpture by Peter Voulkos, converted to bronze, Minneapolis Institute of Art, photo by Joel Cherrico, 2009
A lot of this philosophy parallels the Abstract Expressionistschool of thought which was made popular by artists like Jackson Pollack and Peter Voulkos. Joel himself draws heavily from the abstract expressionists. He feels abstract expressionism has the potential to foster a healthy lifestyle through clay. Mindscape was Joel’s first experiment with abstract expressionism, but even with his functional pottery or hump throwing demonstrations, he likes the almost unconscious movement of working through 50lbs. of clay spinning on the wheel. For him, clay becomes an expression that’s at every moment “direct, physical, and urgent.”
2,000lbs Stoneware + 3 flights of stairs = afternoon workout
