Garry Williams

CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN CERAMICS

Beginnings
My career as a potter began in the late nineteen forties. I was born and brought up in India, where my parents were educational missionaries. I came to America to go to college, but without any preconceived professional intent. In time I began to search for a meaningful career, and found myself recalling the impressions of Indian folk art I had seen as a boy everywhere in India, as well as the impact on me of the social and ethical teachings of Mahatma Gandhi. These led me to consider the desirability of a life as a potter, with a commitment to artistic creativity based on a social conscience.
After World War II the ceramics movement in America was gathering momentum. The crafts where fairly well established, based on regional cultures and traditional forms, and shops and studios where training new craftsmen and providing economic support for professionals. At the same time, universities and colleges began to expand their arts curricula, leading to new experimentation in materials, technologies and aesthetics. Galleries and museums thus began to include the work of crafts people in their exhibitions of fine arts. Collectors began gathering the works of prominent clay artists, works which often ended up being willed to art museums.
Furthermore, the 1950s produced significant influences on American ceramics that had far-reaching results. The first was the impact of Bernard Leach’s   writings on our field, principally his A Potter’s Book, which motivated anti-industrial rationalities among potters, and was exemplified by the English potter Michael Cardew and the American potter Warren McKenzie. At the same time, Japanese aesthetics identified by mingei philosophies espoused by Shoji Hamada and Soetsu Yanagi brought new interest in the Far East to American potters. Leach, Hamada and Yanagi toured American colleges and art centers teaching young American potters, eager to learn the piety of function and tradition from the masters.
In America, however, a more dissonant influence based on home-grown aesthetics was Abstract Expressionism, as practiced on the West Coast and exemplified by the ceramic artist Peter Voulkos. Voulkos began teaching in southern California, and until his death in 2000 was the pre-eminent American ceramic artist, widely admired for his vigorous and lusty clay forms. Out of this counter-culturalism grew adjacent movements, including those of Funk, pop Art, Dadaism, and Post Modernism. Funk involved a healthy irreverence toward societal values and was rooted in an anti-establishment mentality. Funk was the art of the absurd, the ridiculous, the exaggerated. It was practiced by Robert arneson, Michael Frimkess, and Jim Melchert, among others. Post Modernism stressed traditional forms but transformed by humor and incongruity, as exampled by the work of Ron Nagle. A more recent development rooted in this irreverence is work dealing with confrontational   ceramics and political dissent, motivated by opposition to war, to conservative politics and laws, and to destruction of the environment.
Nevertheless the traditional potter is the mainstream of art. The varieties of aesthetic adventurism we are now experiencing are its branches. This deep stream has always been present, never absent, always catholic, never exclusive, always creative, never destructive. The energy of this great source sustains our work today and leads us into the future.
Tradition
Traditional potters Helen Cordero and Juanita Arquero live in northern New Mexico, in the Unite states. The road o Cochiti leads up the dry desert valley of the Rio Grande, past the Sandia Mountains, and not quite to Santa Fe. A sudden rise in the road reveals the village of Cochiti, an ancient habitation of low brown houses. Several hundred Pueblo Indians live in the village. They are mostly farmers and raise cattle. The old people always have known Cochiti by its Tewa name, but they seldom speak it. There are many things the old people known and are reluctant to speak of.
Helen Cordero is in the yard making pottery beside her house. She is using sandpaper to smooth down the surface of a half-completed effigy called “The Story Teller”, a seated figure, fourteen inches high, with a swarm of little clay children on her legs and shoulders. The figure represents her re-creation of the role that her grandfather, Santiago Quintana, played as the oral historian of his tribe.
As Helen works on the effigy she tells me: ”Our old people, the Na’wa’ya’thitse, used these traditional methods when they were here. I’m pretty sure they would like us to do what they did. People will treasure it more because it came from our old people.”
Her “Story Teller” effigy is now in a museum, and many other Indian potters have made their own copies.
Juanita Arquero, Helen’s friend and neighbor, has brought over a large bowl she has made to show me. I admire its elegant shape and generous enclosure of space. She tells me it is a bread bowl, and explains how it is made in the old Indian manner with coils of clay shaped by a little piece of curved gourd, and decorated in the Cochiti style with the black liquor of the bee weed.
Juanita tells me whyshe makes pottery. It’s just a happy feeling, she says. “ We don’t judge our potteries with others, just ourselves. We just want to do it and be alone.” She then talks about the ceremonial bowls she has made for the kiva, and some of the Indian customs concerning their use. Afterwards, she tells me she regrets having spoken of these secrets to me. When I return home I find that this passage is inexplicably missing on the tape recorder.
This is the age of transition, says Michael Cardew, the ancient ”marinator”. We move on because we must. Yet in the midst of negative sins and fears, in the midst of concern for the worldwide shortage of firewood, and concerns for the bad writing in the craft field, there are hopeful signals. One of these is the rise of the professional craftsman in America. Their grace, energy, and versatility is astonishing. Their alignment with the traditional mainstream is one of the most hopeful of all signs, and an affirmation of the continuity in crafts that will persist across boundaries and space and time.

Contemporary ceramics
One of the preeminent writers in the field of contemporary ceramics is the American Susan Peterson. She has written many books, both on traditional and contemporary potters of America, as well as cultural icons in Japan. In a recent review of ceramic work she identifies categories of technology and endeavor in the contemporary ceramic arts.
The natural materials of clay and glaze, she writes, are the elements from which ceramics are fabricated. These include earthenware, stoneware, and porcelain. Each carries its firing procedure, color, and final purpose. Colored clays or slips are today used by ceramic artists to produce textures and designs. For this see the work of jimmy Clark, Adrian Saxe and Neil Tetkowski.
Fire as a means of expression is widely used in the United States
by  woodfirers whose works depend largely on the technology of oxidation and reduction during the firing procedure. Firing is the last mysterious and to the ceramic process which never reveals its nature during the making process. It is ceramic vocabulary which requires experience and discipline to achieve. Examples are Jun Kaneko, Peter Callas, Don Reitz and Paul Soldner.
Architectural use of clays is an ancient ritual. Fired to the correct temperature clay will not deteriote or degrade, and will last for centuries, as seen by archeological revelations. In India and Africa houses are made of clay. In Europe during the Renaissance period clay medallions and wall plaques adorned many houses. In California recently dry-pressed clay tiles 36’’ wide were used on building facades. Today building structures and walled installations have become expressions of fine art. See the work of Nancy Jurs, John Mason, David Shaner and John Balistreri.
The vessel as object and non-object preoccupies ceramic artists today. Functional and ceremonial objects as well as sculptural object receive a wide and appropriate interest among ceramic artists. In Europe pottery has had a distinguished history, from ancient Greek and Roman times that include Egyptian effigies and figures. In the Far East, China and Japan still produce functional wares of incomparable beauty and utility, while potters in South America and Mexico actively make and sell urns and storage jars in the markets. See Val Cushing, Sam Chung, Harrison McIntosh, Robert Turner and Josh De Weese.
From the most ancient times, clay has been used to make animal  and  human figures that reflect religious and funerary artifacts. In China the hoard of clay soldiers burned and unearthed with clay horses have astonished the world with the skill and virtuosity of their makers. In Pakistan the Harappa culture of 3000 b. c. realistic and stylized animal sculptures have been dug up. Peterson says:” Ceramic artists seem obsessed with figurative sculpture, animal, human and fantastical.

A Unified Theory of Art

Some years ago I Attended an art symposium in New York City. During a lecture a man leaned over and said: “ Do you have a Unified Theory of Art ?”
I’m afraid I laughed out loud.
“Yes”, I replied, “I do.”
It so happened that I recently had read Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time. In it Hawking describes how Albert Einstein searched all his life for a Unified Theory of science (also known as “The Theory of Everything.”), but was unsuccessful in his search. The best he could do was The Theory of General Relativity, which he described by the elegantly simple formula E=mc 2.
Now even though I told my friend that I did have a Unified Theory of Art, I did not. Not wanting to be made out a liar, I decided I had better figure one our right away.
Some years ago I had written a brief document on some commandments to myself, and I found it in a musty archive. It seemed somewhat relevant to what I was searching for.
Mathematics, as we all know, underlies the entire universe. The formula I came up with was not as graceful as Einstein’s E=mc2, but it was a place to start.
My equation was: (AM+ES) = V
In this context, AM stands for Aesthetics plus Moral and Ethical Force.
ES stands for Earth plus Space/Volume.
V stands for Vision and Spirit.
This is a simple cause and effect equation.
When Functional Aesthetics are rooted in Moral and Ethical Force, and nurtured by a respect for Earth and a belief in the context of Space and Volume, there is a Visionary energy and Light that shines from the soul.
Here is my explanation of each element:

Aesthetics. A belief in functional aesthetics is essential to the arts. Whether real or metaphysical, aesthetics is the foundation of all  we do, and the social reality in which self-expression can thrive. Education is the discovery of self, and art is the practice of values through personal choice.
Moral Force. Art is essentially a moral force with two purposes: one, self-improvement, and the other improvement of society. All creative work chooses between right and wrong, and is essentially self-revealing , self-healing, self-developing. Ethics is service to others through humanitarian values. Positive morality supports commonality and peace among people, and opposes greed, exploitation, violence, and war.
Earth. Art is deeply aware of its symbiotic relationship with the earth through preservation of natural raw materials and every living creature upon it. It seeks to heal transgressions inflicted upon the planet by unwise global economies. It works sympathetically to preserve ancient cultural rites and dreamtime heroes.
Space. Our preoccupation with form cannot preclude a deep appreciation of what lies within that form, both as to the object we make as well as to the meaning of its content. It is the space where “nothing” really means “something” and is a description of the work of art as well as of the cosmos. “Something” contains the unknown, and intrigues and draws us onward. Existence can become more comprehensible, yes, but also more mysterious.
Vision.  Vision is sight and insight. Imagination is opening our minds to possibilities. Intuition is perceiving something beyond reason. Vision moves us through imagination and intuition toward the unknown, and reaffirms the reality that already spiritually exists.
Spirit. Spirit in art defies rational explanation, and is the rarest of intangibles. It transcends what it inhabits. Without it, art is dead. It is the soul of art. It avoids ostentation and deplores formalism. It decays with avarice and greet. Yet the commonest and meanest of materials can be transfigured into epiphany if graced with spirit.
Such is my Unified Theory of Art.
Life Force
The studio potter is a futurist. Decision concerning work values and aesthetics are made with a future time frame in mind. The potter stands in the present, uses the past, and synthesizes the future.
The potter deals with scenarios for the future in the concern with form, function, and meaning. A potter responds vigorously to the commonsense desirability of appropriate intermediate technology. The potter projects future alternatives and designs innovations for life and work.
The potter id deeply identified with Life Force. Known by many traditional cultures including the American Indian, Life Force is the universal soul that begins with the spirit of mankind and works up through the laws of the universe. Life Force exists in all forms of consciousness and is the medium through which the process of creating, sustaining, and recreating is carried out. Life Force is breath as well as spirit, and is, to the beholder of truth, the only mystery worth investigating. Truth through tradition is one important aspect of the continuum of the Life Force.
Identification with it, therefore, enables the potter to become a channel for the vitality and creativity that is the heart of the Universe.