Ayumi Horie’s remark on her website about celebrating imperfection reminds me of Glen Murcutt’s tendency to celebrate the detail - especially details like scuppers that we architects sometimes would wish away.

That’s a trait that I appreciate - so in my work, try to see details as opportunities, to incorporate qualities like roundness rather than round - the little differences among handmade objects that makes them like without being identical, that makes them handmade rather than manufactured.

On a related note, I noted with some dismay that the latest CB2 catalog features a number of objects that are manufactured, but appear to be handmade. Some of them are pretty cool, but falter in the details. (Ceramicists, potters particularly, tend to treat the bottom of a piece with care, for example.) But every manufactured piece in a set is “imperfect” in the same way as the next. It’s just not the same. Celebrate the imperfection.

This will probably be only the beginning of the discussion. Please share your thoughts! This post was started mid-Aug 07 and finished and published on the date noted above.

I began making houses on the first day of a new job, my first in residential architecture. The home is more than shelter; it’s a safe haven. With this in mind, I made a few, marking various personal events.

This house is stamped with the words, “I hope everything is okay”, and appears to be on the verge of collapse. I built it around that phrase, out of too-thin clay; the edge ripped, the walls tried to collapse so I braced them with wet clay; one brace fell out and the other two stayed. Cobalt seemed the obvious choice for something so dramatic. Great results.

[I’ll add a photo of my mockups here.]
Within a couple of months I’d realized the limits of a typical 25′x125′ Chicago lot; in plan, every house begins to look the same.

The Future
After making a few groups with that in mind, I started wanting a horde of houses, enough to cover my living room floor, or more. I don’t know whether I’ll ever do a living room installation, but I would like to do one, someplace. The architect in me wants to see a room where they’re on the floor, where people walk on a raised path, where the field of houses is raised, to experiment with different viewing perspectives. Contact me if you’re interested in hosting such an installation!

The napkin holder house (first photo this post) made me a minor (very minor) celebrity at NSUC Art 2007, as it was featured on the show’s postcard. The groups were a hit, something I hadn’t anticipated. It’s nice that they’re so dear to others, even as sending houses to new homes moves me farther from realizing my installation. I enjoy making them, enjoy the attentiveness to an object so seemingly simple.

I’ve kept a few for myself; the two at work tend to house business cards, one at home is a napkin holder, others are purely decorative. Despite the sculptural intention, I can’t seem to stop stashing important little bits and pieces in them: the defining difference between condo/apartment and house seems to be the capacity for storage.

If you’ve wondered where I’ve been - it’s the studio. Lots of work going through; I spent hours glazing Monday night, much was loaded into the soda kiln yesterday, and I’ll be unloading on Saturday. There are some whiskey cups at home that are ready to be photographed, too. Spent all day Saturday at Lill Street learning about firing the soda kiln. Many thanks to my willing teacher for his Friday night invitation: there’s a lot to learn, and I’m grateful to understand more.

There were lots of people in the studio the last few days, and I had several good conversations, as well as making a bunch more pieces.

Conversation #1: It’s nice to find other artists who feel that true mastery isn’t confined to being able to make nice pots, learning comprehensively about the iterations of the ceramic process. Clay composition, glaze chemistry, firing techniques, all these things have an intense effect upon the final product. These are things that intensely interest me, but have to be pursued outside of class.

Conversation #2: Everybody’s work is precious, and equally so. Thus, all artists should treat others’ work with as much care as their own. I think so too. Not everyone is so thoughtful, and that can be frustrating.

Conversation #3: One of the ingredients for my glaze has run out, and the studio doesn’t usually order it. After I mixed a new batch using a substitute, I learned that nearly all the other published versions of the recipe call for the alternate material anyway. Because I had done a bunch of research before the substitution (that didn’t include looking for alternate recipes!) I was able to have a coherent conversation in which a more experienced glaze-maker confirmed my thoughts on how the results would vary. Not all artists or teachers act as though the dialog can go two ways; it’s great to draw on the ones who do.

Conversation #4: In another conversation, a fellow artist commented that a lot of Lill Street people are going to be at Bucktown. He mentioned several people, following their first name with a phrase to identify their work, if I didn’t know the name - “who has the frog motif”, “who makes the pinch pots”, “who makes the creatures”. I’m not sure my work can be reduced to a few words. I’m not sure that I want it to be.

Conversation #5: I learned that one of the artists who teaches at Lill Street will be doing a wood+salt firing up in Galena, WI, and immediately approached him about participating. He had lots of suggestions, as I glazed my work, that some of those pieces would do well in that firing, as well as mentioning other clays and additives I could use to get some neat results. I’ve got some ideas, and a few weeks to make work.

Posting photos of my work is an interesting exercise; there is the photo and its composition, the subject matter, the work itself. When I get behind a camera, I tend to consider the graphic quality of the shot as much as what I’m trying to capture. My staged photos, with lights and backdrop, tend especially to be art portraying art.

My approach varies from the purer, more objective views, by failing to provide the most complete photographic description of a piece. If anything, I hope that it reinforces that there’s no substitute for handling and experiencing a piece of work. At the same time, it makes for some really compelling viewing.

I call them rock blocks, for lack of a better name. Got a better idea? Let me know; if I like it, I’ll give you a set. Photo credit: Guy Nicol.

I’ve been somewhat obsessing over the river-rock form for a few years now. It began with the softly amorphous outline of my hedgehog curled in a ball, sketched in pencil. That evolved into pools of watercolor, two, three, four, all the way through seven to a page, finding balance in the forms and colors. Then I picked up a few rocks, real ones, bluish gray, cool to the touch. After that my river-rock work began in clay, too. From a visual standpoint, the dark-roundness appears frequently in my work; it began intentionally, but carries on with some intention as a theme.

About these pieces and this series: they are all easily held in the hand, beg to be played with, arranged and re-arranged. But I imagine them at larger scales, to be sat upon, played in, as an installation in a park. The form would transfer but the material would probably change, and so would the construction method. If you know some way or have a contact that might help my installation dream become a reality, please let me know.

Porcelain vase made over a few days (it’s been humid). Rolled slab and made body, added bottom. Since this is a larger piece than the tumblers, I used a different tool for carving, and the proportion of figure and ground is different. As I was carving the vase yesterday, I was thinking about a drawing assignment I once had - to fill some number of pages with beautiful marks.

More whiskey cups. The rocket ships have made a comeback (they’ve appeared on bigger cups) as have the dancing people. Also added the slash indentation; even on the small guys, it catches the thumb nicely. The gloss is a little bit of wax on the rim (it burns off) to help the clay dry evenly. I like how these are going.

Have a few pieces in the soda kiln right now; they’ll be unloaded Friday afternoon.

It happens, once an artist is around, that people will ask him to make something specific. This entry is meant to be a reference document, to describe what one should expect when requesting work. Everyone has a process: this is a bit about mine.

Obviously, requests are welcome. I enjoy solving design problems. First, please check out Philosophy, Part One to see some thoughts on where I’m coming from as an artist, as well as the about me and about work pages.

There is a limitation to my willingness to take requests - I only make the kinds of things that I make, in the way that I make them. (Since you like my work anyhow, this shouldn’t be an insurmountable hurdle.)

The timeframe in going from a suggestion to an object could range from a couple of months to several years. Usually at the shorter end, but one never knows.