Canadian Clay Symposium Diversity in Clay

The following is the complete text of Clary Ulian’s talk

The text for my talk is a quotation found at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto from the writings of Gao Lian, a sixteenth century collector. He said,"“Whenever | look at a specimen of stoneware, my heart beats faster and my imagination soars. I am transported and nownshmem becomes useless. It is scarcely credible that such a simple pleasure as a pot can be the reason.” The first part of my remarks will be limited to stoneware and porcelain utiliturian pots thrown on the wheel.

1 argue that at the junction of clay, wheel, and hand there is a revealed order that can be perceived and taught. I cume to this belief through a pair of experiences that are really two sides of the same coin. The first experience was touched on by the Gao Lian quote; we feel deeply stirred by cer- tain pottery forms. Obversely, we wince, or perhaps, I'd better speak for myself only, | wince when [ see pots that violate that sense of order.

Am I stirred or do I wince because of my training (some might say indoctrination) as an apprentice at the Leach Pottery? In recent years as Leach has been deconstructed, he has been criticized for ignoring some areas of ceramic history and the work of certain of his peers, thereby placing a chokehold on the modern studio clay movement. For this act of violence it takes a choker and a chokes, but pots and words were his only weapons. Oddly, for deconsiructive analysis, thiscriticism uses the” great man” theory of history, glossing over the cultural comtext of the twentieth century which contnbuted to the reception of his concepts and images while empha- sizing the nineteenth century culture thit formed him. During the admittedly short time that knew Leach, | neverunderstood

him te be proselytizing for any cause other than that of making good wtilitarian pots,

Leach did suggest that people could agree upon the most successful pot in a limited group ef similar shapes. The why of such an agreement is the stuff of aesthetics: that is, the study of beauty and our psychologi- cal responses toit. Beauty isa work, which has lost currency in ant parlance, so for the moment, bers substiqte the term “qual- ity”, defined as “degree of excellence.”

Language tends to become both diffuse and effusive when quality is the subject. A pot is said to sing, to have life, harmony, energy, or spirit. Metaphors ebound, Un- demeath these misty attributions, is the fact that the curve of a pot wall tightens at # particular point along its trapectory, or a foot of particular height, width, and angle compliments a bowl,

Lam convinced that an underlying geom- etry governs the silhouettes, masses and volumes, of thrown form. It is a geometry that does not need to be memorized, thea- rem by theorem. but to which we all have intuitive access. Our intuitive responses are probably a combination of the nature of our brain and the nature of the stuff out there in the world that our brains feed upon, | cite as evidence for my belief in this governing order writings on such di- werse matters as music, the pattems of growth in animals and plants, and the mathematical underpinnings of both natu- ral and manmade objects.

My metaphors for explaining the geom- etry of thrown form are borrowed from these readings and are only slightly more complex than the vague descriptions of life and spint referred to earlier, The un- derlying order that produces a degree of excellence is not a collection of templates against which individual pots can be judged, but rather, a kind of process slide ruler. It works something like this: The potter chooses a type or class of shape; let's say, this classic storage jar, He or she becomes interested in tweaking or featur- ing certain aspects of that shape amd finds that altering a shoulder’s pitch, for exam- ple, seems to require a responsive change in the height or width of the nim, or a

differemt angle at the base of the pot, as it moves into the fullness of the belly. Once this dance of improvisation begins, it is clear that there is.no ideal form, but rather an opportunity to relate the parts of the shapes to each other in varying ways,

Recently | heard an interview with pianist Murray Parriah on National Public Radio, He revealed that when he is playing he thinks about the “line” of music. He said, to my potterly delight, that in music you have to fight gravity and it is line that keeps a piece up. Line might be created by rhythm, dynamic inflection, or arc.

I began by saying that the governing order of ceramic shape can be taught. A teacher can set up assignments for the student which are designed to develop perceptions about the interacting relationships of the parts of a pot, but this teaching window is fairly narrow, and should be located so as to overiook the beginning of the student's education. Also of primary importance in the early education of a potter, is the intro- duction of pottery vocabulary —plenty of images of food pots from past and present.

Curiously, once a student can distribute the clay’s weight throughout the walls of a pot, has acquired some flexibility of re- sponse to the variables of clay in motion, and can see relationships, the whole issue of comect form seems to melt away. The task of individuation begins and a less prescnptive order of teaching is called for.

My specialty as a teacher has been within this teaching window of the geometry of shape, but shape is only one of 2 pot's formal elements, Materials, textures, col- our, and surface design must be added to the mix, How can one begin te address the topic of “Form and Aesthetics” in this larger sense? How is it possible to bring the tremendous variety of contemporary clay practices underone umbrella of stand- ards? It feels like being asked to formulate a unifying theory of the universe.

A return to the concept of relationships might help. Walter Ostrem talks about the layers of information a pot can carry, and by inference, the layers of relationships to one another, | recently came acrass James

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