One of my favorite JK Rowling contrivances in her Harry Potter series is the pensieve, which is of course a play on the word pensive, but she has changed it from an adjective to a noun, and by spelling it “sieve,” there is the implication of an active sifting of thoughts.  In the books, the pensieve is described as a stone basin which wizards use by pouring strands of thought and memory into it for closer and more conscientious scrutiny.  I imagine that the idea for this device revealed itself to JK as a metaphor for writing itself at some point in the development of her skill.  At times I have felt a startling clarity as I sit and write about any number of subjects which have baffled me in ordinary time (even if later that clarity evaporates).  

But I think my true pensieve may be the spinning wheel where my hands mold plastic rock particles into vessels which are destined to become stone in the kiln.  As I sit in the workshop listening to the music which has become my own over the course of a lifetime of listening, thoughts begin to flow and accumulate energy.  On some occasions my mind will start from a blank or distant state then slowly transform through an alert phase into a thorough animation, then I will be captivated by beautiful strands of abstract thought until I may approach something nearing rapture.  But just as surely my thoughts will gradually shift all the way back down to boredom and then up and back down the scale again.  I sometimes discover that if I jot a few thoughts down, my mind will return later when I space out and begin some unconscious editing, and I find myself almost startled as a more mature formation of my initial thoughts come surging through my head.  It doesn’t happen every day (or even every week), and frequently the thoughts don’t ever amount to much, but just the same, I feel a certain affirmation that the hypnotic rotation of the wheel is doing me some good.

So it has been some time sense I have tried to write anything in the blog, and this has corresponded with the time it has taken me to get caught up on my chores. But now the wood is stacked for the next two firings, my kilns and kiln furniture have been cleaned and the clay has been mixed, half of it pugged, the rest frozen solid under the shed roof behind the workshop.  The Christmas holiday distractions have passed and the children have gone back to school.  I have slaughtered and put up my first batch of chickens (haven’t yet decided if it will also be my last batch).  So this week I began a new throwing cycle, and I must say I am having big fun in the workshop!  I enjoyed doing the chores even without an apprentice to help or spell me so that I could make more pots, but I relish the return to the wheel after a long absence.

Acknowledgements

I am planning to begin a new blog to take up Garth Clark’s “g-spot” challenge of articulating why I make pottery in the 21^st century and exploring the ups and downs of this somewhat anachronistic profession I have chosen for myself.  But before I begin that job, I’d like to thank all of you have read this one and given me feedback.

Thanks in particular to Alex Matisse, my former apprentice and good friend of many years who led me to search for Garth Clark’s “Envy” lecture and then helped me to strike a less hostile tone in my first post.

Thanks to Jordan Taylor, who has inhabited a universe parallel to my own and was very generous with his perspective on Garth as a person and his own insights on the intersection of pottery and ceramic art.

Thanks to Mark Hewitt for lots of advice and feedback during the writing of this blog and for being an exemplary model for aspiring potters in our state and to me in particular.  His passion for making pots and articulate public advocacy for NC pottery have been a great boon to us all, and his nearly superhuman work ethic continues to humble me.

Thanks to the following people for feedback and encouragement: Mark “I’m not dead yet!” Skudlarek, Todd Piker, Michael Kline, Andrew Stephenson, Ben Carter, Andrew Glascow, Eleanor Owen, Moni Hill, John and Jill Ware, Susan Myers, Terry Zug, Charlotte Brown Wainwright, Barbara Perry, Elsya Stockin, Jane Brown, Brian Gallagher, Alex Haworth, Joe Joseph, John Cram, Naomi and Todd Johnson, David Trophia, brother David, brother Michael, sister Harriet, my wife Christine and many others.  

And I would be lacking all manners if I did not include the man himself, Garth Clark.   Thank you Garth.  I have enjoyed corresponding with you throughout this blog and discovering a “gentleman on the field of combat.”  Thank you for taking my critique of your opinions in stride and for your willingness to both listen and put me in check when appropriate.  I am looking forward to meeting you.

Country Funk Reactions

Thanks also to all of you who have expressed interest in my recent work.  There was quite a range, but I appreciate the opinions.  Some asked to be taken off the mailing list, others politely ignored our different political feelings on a couple of the pots, and many were amused and delighted with the new energy and  direction in general.  I have a lot more ideas beginning to develop, but I will continue to work on purely decorative pots as well.  I think the two strands of work can coexist in balance and accomplish the task of keeping me interested in making pottery for many years.

--Matt Jones

I must continue to circle back around to the point that my arguments against Garth’s Address: How Envy Killed The Crafts Movement: An Autopsy in Two Parts, is in some ways an argument against the painful feelings I was met with when I listened to the address.  I think in truth, Garth may not have even intended for me or any other traditional craftsmen to be listening.  That is to say we were not his intended audience there at the Modern Museum of Craft (actually the venue was an Art college [PNCA] and the Craft Museum was the sponsor) in Portland.  However, though I wasn’t there, and intellectually I can grasp that perhaps Garth was speaking of some “Modern” or “Contemporary” Craft Movement and wasn’t talking about the traditional crafts and its “movement,” he must face the criticisms of those of us who feel wronged by his words.  The address entered into the wider public arena on the Internet, where I was able to access it.  Even overlooking us by referring to the Craft Movement as something inherently “modernist” seems to be a rhetorical failure on his part.  Or at the very least it seems “intellectually specious” to borrow one of Garth’s own favorite terms.  (Specious means technically accurate but lacking integrity; I had to look it up in the dictionary.) Traditional craft existed before the Arts and Crafts Movement began and this is where a portion of the movement still lives.  If Garth Clark regrets implying that traditional craft was ignored in his address, he should say so.  Or if he thinks traditional craft is part of the craft movement that he has pronounced dead, he needs to reevaluate his stance.  I see here in my home state that traditional craft and its movement are very much alive.

So as I listened to Garth’s words, thinking he meant them for me as well as any other practitioner of craft, I felt really depressed.  Many of the points Garth has raised already exist in my mind as doubts about my profession, and I have essentially been fighting a strand of my own thinking as I have combated Garth’s “Envy” address.  In fact, his words set off an unintentional existential crisis for me as a craftsman, and it is from this crisis of faith that I drew anger and inspiration to refute his claims.  It is for my love of craft (as I know it) and its attendant “movement” (which has nourished and supported me) that I argue.  But I don’t stop there.  I also argue for Garth Clark’s own sake.  Just as he put a mirror in my face and forced me to see how the art world might view craft and its movement, so must I now ask him to look into the mirror of my gaze; to examine more deeply my words and opinions to see what a “crafter” might see in him.  I think it was Michael Jackson who sang about coming to terms with the “Man in the Mirror” in order to “make the world a better place.”  (Note: I think Michael Jackson did through his music and dance make the world a better place, but I can’t imagine what he was struggling to find in his own mirror.)  

Part 2: Numbers and Pig Farmers

Let me turn my attention to this blurb from Post #6: Garth’s Response:

“Craft shops may proliferate in North Carolina but you know there are another 49 other states and in those the field is shrinking.  And in claiming the greatness for NC crafts (I partly agree with) you should know that a recent study showed that the average earnings of a crafter in NC was just above $25,000.  The poverty level is $22,350.  Booming it is not.”  -Garth Clark

There is a lot of info here, so let me break it down.  First, thank you Garth for partly agreeing with me on the greatness of NC craft.  I do wonder what you know about our state and its rich craft heritage.  I understand that you have visited Asheville and by some reports were impressed by the craft scene here.  But have you ever studied it enough to share what you have glimpsed with a wider audience?  Do you include us in the “Craft Movement?”  It may be our foolish pride, but we certainly include ourselves.

Now lets go to the money, which is something Garth seems very knowledgeable about.  Let me suggest a few ways his statistic may or may not be flawed.   Craft is of course practiced on many different levels.  I know dozens of potters who rightly consider themselves craftsmen but hold down part time or full time jobs on the side.  These jobs help them feel more secure or provide them with the benefits (health insurance and retirement plans) that many of us struggle to pay for.  Are these folks who are part-time crafters making part-time pay included in the average?  If so they weigh down the number for those of us who are full-time craftsmen and make two or three times the figure sighted.

Another question that should be raised with regard to this figure is this: does the 25k figure take into account that most crafters (or any small potatoes self-employed business for that matter) all over the country hide some sales from their banks so they won’t have to report income that will be taxed at the ridiculously high rate of 30% (incl. soc. security, state and federal income taxes) no matter how low your tax bracket.  If your number is low enough, you will get most of it back as a refund.  This seems a powerful incentive to report a low number.

But what if the statistic is correct, and there are a lot of potters and other craftsmen living at or near the poverty line.  In rural areas, where land was bought cheap or handed down through families, folks own their homes and land and are able to live on the cheap.  Lots of us grow gardens and raise animals to cut down on groceries or just because we like to be involved with our food.  Many go without insurance and forego travel and luxuries that urbanites view as necessities, but who can cast blame?  Craftsmen have lived without luxury for many thousands of years. 

I guess my point here is that this state has an enormous rural culture of folks who live within their means and don’t think they lack much, even though they aren’t making much money by urban standards.  In fact we are a state of pig farmers, but we aren’t ashamed of that, we love barbeque!

Part 3: Different Numbers and a Question about Facts

But let me throw down some numbers from a different study called: Economic Impact of the Professional Craft Industry In Western North Carolina.  (Thank you Lisa Bucki for pointing me to this study)  This report shows that in the 25 counties of WNC, craft’s economic impact grew from $122 million in 1995 (curiously, this is the year Garth claims the craft movement committed suicide) to $206.5 million annually in 2008 (the year Garth gave his address in Portland).  This survey cites the median income for craft artists as $48,000.  This report was commissioned by what might be described as Pro-craft organizations and may have some bias because of that, but that is a problem with statistics and numbers.  Science prides itself on running triple blind studies, but the very studies that are run indicate hypotheses with inherent perspectives. 

As David Byrne noted in the song Cross-Eyed and Painless from the Talking Heads’ 1980 album Remain in Light:

“Facts all come with points of view;

Facts don’t do what I want them to.

Facts just twist the truth around;

Facts are an integer inside out”

I love this silly little rhyme, because it shows how slippery information is.  All information is tainted with bias, and if we ignore that “fact,” we do so at our peril.  If Garth Clark makes an argument about the “Craft Movement” being dead and assumes that all listeners will infer that he only means the modernist wing of the craft movement, his bias can be interpreted as deluded.  Those of us who are less interested in the modernists, and hear Clark referring to the roots of the Craft Movement going back to the 19^th century Arts and Crafts movement in England and its importation to various parts of this country through the 1930s may not even see how the Modernists connect with the craft movement.  

I would even go so far as to say that though many of these modernists had craft backgrounds, they became ceramic artists, (or glass artists or whatever media you might want to put here) not really craftsmen at all.  I know Garth will bristle at this assertion, but it is not a value judgment.  I don’t dislike ceramic artists.  I just see them as an independent development that emerged from craft that became its own separate and unique conundrum.  In my biased observation it is ironic that these are the very folks Garth was most interested in promoting because they were the ones who most envied the prestige and financial rewards of the art world.  But I do not deny that these ceramic artists did make art, and perhaps their envy led them inexorably to open the art world’s door and try walking through.  Was there anything wrong with that?  I don’t think so.  Is it possible that envy has played a positive role in ceramic art?  I’d be very interested to hear Garth address that specific point. 

Part 4: Conceit

One of the central conceits of Garth Clark’s Envy argument is that craft and its movement exist independently of one another.  His closing statement is “The Craft Movement is Dead; Long live Craft!”  It has a nice ring to it, but I wonder can craft be so easily separated from its movement?  

I am a potter but also a grass-roots organizer and educator in the “movement.”  Whenever I go do retail shows or have a kiln-opening sale, I am there to sell pots, but I am also raising awareness about what craft has been and continues to be here in North Carolina.  At my kiln openings people come see the kiln and watch videos of it being fired; they see the dump-truck loads of clay that were hauled from a field eight miles away.  They see the ware-racks and the fired pots and unfired pots that didn’t make it into the kiln, the piles of pine and poplar slabs waiting to be sawed for the next firing, and they ask questions about the decorative work (Do you use stencils?) and leave with a greater appreciation for what they have just purchased and become a part of.  Indeed the customers must be counted as part of the movement, because without them, craft would wither quickly.

But I also haul my wheel to Church basements and schools and have scout groups, school groups, retirees and other groups schedule visits so that they can see what it means to make pottery for a living in the twenty-first century.  But this work is just my small contribution.  Here in WNC, we have many organizations actively promoting an awareness of craft: the Southern Highlands Graft Guild, Handmade in America, the Asheville Arts Council, the Penland School of Crafts, Haywood Community College Professional Crafts Program, UNC-Asheville, Highwater Clays and its subsidiary: Odyssey Center and many others.  These organizations actively promote an understanding of craft in the area.  Then there are the fifty plus galleries around our small town and dozens more in the other counties of WNC that carry and sell art and craft made throughout our region.  Asheville is very like Garth’s new hometown Santa Fe, NM in that it is an “Art Destination.”  Art and Craft tourism has become a big part of WNC’s economy.

Not to flog a dead horse, but what about Garth’s own books and thousands of others that raise craft awareness?  What about the various magazines that cover craft?  Every reader may not love every one of them, but they are certainly part of the living craft movement.  What about Carol Sauvion’s wonderful PBS documentary series Craft in America?  Craft and its movement are Siamese twins joined at the heart.  They cannot be separated.

Part 5: An Ominous Metaphor

The other conceit of Garth’s Envy argument that troubles me is that the craft movement is not just ailing but “dead.”  I know that this assertion is meant to be provocative and perhaps not necessarily an accurate assessment of the situation, but he does pronounce the movement dead and states that the cause of death was suicide.  

His “autopsy” claims that envy was the primary weapon of self-destruction, but that traces of diabetes and incest were contributing factors.  Diabetes refers to craft “overdosing” on the sickening sweetness of nostalgia and whimsy, and for my part I must plead guilty here.  I am somewhat prone to fits of nostalgia, and I don’t even mind the odd bit of whimsy either (but I barely get a buzz off of them, so I know I haven’t overdosed).  And the incest refers to the fact that too many crafters were writing favorable reviews for their friends and colleagues.  Again, without anger, I must note that this assertion appears a bit ironic, because it seems that this comes perilously close to writing favorable criticism for people whose work you intend to sell and profit from.  It certainly makes for fun writing and perhaps good reading too, (I did giggle a bit the second time I listened to the address), but I think he has gone a little too far.  

Using death as a metaphor gets people’s attention and holds it well, but it also invites criticism.  

**NOTE TO GARTH**   Yes, I know your tongue was firmly planted in your cheek almost as frequently as you were making serious observations about craft, and I hope you can feel my own dark sense of humor as I write my opinions for my audience.

In an earlier post, I indicated that Garth has played the role of Judas Iscariot, betraying the movement so that it can be reborn, but let me turn now to a darker metaphor from Greek Mythology:

In Homer’s Odyssey, the cunning hero Odysseus is (for his sin of hubris) kept wandering the Mediterranean ten years after the other Greek heroes have returned from the Trojan War.  His son Telemachus and wife Penelope want to believe he still lives and will return, but a host of greedy suitors has descended on their household eating and drinking their way through Odysseus’s vast estate, and many want Penelope to declare Odysseus dead and choose a suitor to marry who will inherit what is left of Odysseus’s wealth.   When Odysseus does finally return, Athena disguises him as a beggar, so that he might learn who of his servants remain faithful and who have sided with the suitors.  What he learns is that Telemachus aches for vengeance but has no allies, Penelope is caught in a terribly precarious situation, and that only one pig keeper remains faithful to him.  In a masterfully wrought plot, after suffering many rebukes and abuses as the disguised vagabond, Odysseus reveals himself to the suitors who have pronounced him dead, and together with Telemachus and the faithful swineherd slaughter them all without mercy.

The ancient Greek notion of vengeance is obviously too powerful to apply to Garth Clark’s Envy argument, but there is some part of me that wants him to hear the power of the metaphor.  One should be careful when making pronouncements of death that cannot be defended with certainty.  

The metaphor doesn’t fit in some important ways.  I think of Odysseus as craft and its movement, whose life seems to be held by some as in question.  Garth seems to be playing the part of the suitors by declaring the movement dead.  But unlike the suitors, I don’t think he does so in order to gain some advantage or possible wealth  that rightfully belongs to craft and its movement (indeed, Garth’s insistence that there is little wealth associated with craft is quite accurate).  Rather he does so to force Craft to reevaluate itself in a time when he is concerned for its future. To me, this is the saving grace of his argument and why I can forgive him for his conceits.  The swineherd in my interpretation represents traditional craft (which I feel Garth has underestimated), and in my specific community that is NC pottery.  As I mentioned earlier, North Carolina is a state of pig farmers, and there are many potters here humbly keeping to the faith of practicing a traditional craft for near “poverty” wages without envying art.  

These craftsmen have been my heroes, and when Garth said in his “Envy” address that craft “has sacrificed one of its most sterling qualities: authenticity,” I just about had to choke.  I later realized that he was talking about academic crafters and crafters in large urban areas who scheme to invade the prestigious and wealthy domain of the art world.  But what does that have to do with the craft world and movement I am a part of?  And I must repeat here without any of the anger that Garth might want to project on to me, that I believe that NC pottery is as valid a part of the craft movement as the part he is castigating, and that “my” part of the craft movement never really engaged in the “envy” or “incest” he charges the movement with.  So I am back to my opinion that the argument was poorly constructed and flawed from takeoff, because it all but ignores traditional or (as Garth prefers to call it) “classical” craft.  

Part 6:  Telemachus or Hamlet?

Let me return to the mirror for some personal introspection.  I must concede that I am not really a humble or loyal pig farmer.  I did not grow up in clay; I was educated at a private liberal arts college, and pottery was a choice for me.  And I practice it with great pride in the visual language I have assembled and constructed for myself.  Perhaps most significantly, I have listened to and become upset by Garth Clark’s Envy address.  If I am feeling terribly honest I must concede that I occasionally long for wider acceptance and understanding.  That may be a type of envy, but I don’t think I really want to be considered an Artist.  I make pots and want to be understood as a fine craftsman, not an unknown craftsman.  Indeed I stamp all of my work and have been signing most of the slip-trailed pots of any size right on their sides for several years.  Is there vanity or pride in that?  Pride I will claim.

All of this points to an interpretation in my Odyssey metaphor of me as Telemachus.  He is proud, angry, vengeful and uncertain of how to proceed.  Fortunately for him, his father returns and he is able to fight the injustice he sees with one of the strongest and most intelligent heroes in all of Literature.

I wonder if Garth Clark might see people like me as more closely resembling Shakespeare’s Hamlet?  There are some wonderful though superficial similarities in the characters’ stories.  They both are struggling to come up with a decisive plan to deal with the injustice surrounding their fathers’ deaths (or perceived death in the case of Telemachus) and the usurped inheritance of their fathers’ wealth and legacy by men who marry (or seek to marry) their mothers.  But Telemachus is not an orphan; Hamlet is.  Unfortunately for Hamlet, his father only ever speaks as a ghost, and his mother at times seems complicit in his father’s betrayal.  This sets Hamlet in a much more confusing situation, and the untidy plot leads to a tragic resolution: all of the central actors are slain including Hamlet and many others who don’t seem to “deserve” that fate.

Literary critics have been a little harsh at times concerning Hamlet’s dilemma.  Many have promulgated the opinion that Hamlet is to blame for the awful and tragic bloodbath.  These critics say that Hamlet is morose (or self-hating), vengeful (angry), possibly insane but above all uncertain, and that these “flaws” drive or force the tragedy.  My feeling is that these critics are trying to force the play to fit into an ancient Greek tragedy formula, and that doesn’t quite work.  This is a more subtle and complex psychological study that builds upon the legacy of Greek drama but achieves something less definitive but perhaps more powerfully realistic, something that presages an existential and dare I say “modern” understanding of reality.  I think that Hamlet’s problem is that the “truth” is murky.  A ghost’s testimony is not enough to induce him to murder his uncle.  He must struggle to find more proof before he can take that course of action.  

---{Hamlet plot digression}--- 

The plot thickens as Hamlet becomes more certain that Claudius (his uncle) is his father’s murderer and usurper.  Hamlet blows a golden opportunity to kill Claudius while he is praying because he wants to be certain Claudius goes to hell for his crime.  Hamlet then mistakenly kills Polonius, which along with his increasingly erratic behavior, sadly leads to his love Ophelia’s (Polonius was her father?) suicide, and this event sets up an alliance between Ophelia’s brother Laertes (a warrior) and the villain Claudius who conspire to kill Hamlet by treachery with a poisoned blade or poisoned cup of wine.  Hamlet’s mother drinks the poisoned wine, and Hamlet, Laertes and Claudius are all mortally wounded with the poisoned blade.

I have loved and struggled with this play over the years, and though I can see that Hamlet’s behavior ultimately does lead to the colossal tragedy, it also wipes the Danish royal slate clean for a new beginning.  And perhaps most importantly, I don’t think Hamlet is crazy or irrational any more than I think I would be if I were thrust into that ugly and complex situation.  I don’t see uncertainty in a confusing situation as a sin or a flaw.  Rather I see it as an emotionally honest way forward to a state of greater clarity.

Part 7: Conclusion

But Hamlet and Telemachus are both characters in stories with lives in the balance.  I am just a potter who yearns for recognition and a few precious ducats to ease my existential tension.  I am neither Hamlet nor Telemachus.  I would pick Telemachus as a more appropriate match for me, because though I write alone, I have a warm community of readers and craftspeople who nurture and support me like a father, and if they deem it necessary, they will come to my defense in a heartbeat.  That is a great comfort to me and something I would like Garth to witness if he can make the trip to North Carolina in January or any other time that might be convenient.

Peace.

Matt Jones

Yes Matt, the accent is worth my weight in gold. I spoke to a combined Super-Mud and NCECA audience of 5,000 at Penn State University in 1979. When I finished Ken Ferguson was waiting for me at the foot of the stage. We had struck a good friendship earlier, once he realized he could not bully me. (My relationship with Cardew, another bully, though often fractious, was based on the same understanding.) 

Ken said, “Good work Clark, your accent never slipped once” then he pushed a gift into my hands, a large blue and grey salt glazed charger that read “Adam and Eve and the First Pot according to Garth Clark.” I love that plate. It was one of a group of works I could not part with when our collection went to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

My partner Mark once asked me to change the voice on a GPS because the computer generated “speaker” had a plummy English accent that sounded patronizing. So the problem might be that you listened to my paper and did not read it, and my pompous sounding accent annoyed you. Try reading the paper. Written words are all equal on paper regardless of the writer’s height, gender, weight, and, I was going to say, education too, but that is not true. A good education, whether institutional or self-made, does come with a word sharpener.  

Ivory tower speakers bore me and do not write for that audience. Donald Kuspit is the perfect example of what I abhor; he talks like a rusty, malfunctioning, footnote machine (yes, even conversationally). We had a major spat at the Ceramics Conference in Santa Fe last year and he publically denounced me as “anti-intellectual”. He was correct insofar as his brand of masturbatory Academese is concerned. He grumbled loudly throughout the conference and walked out on Roberta Smith’s talk, which was excellent, intoning, “Vagaries, vagaries.” 

I am sorry you are upset at being lumped in with other voices in functional pottery. Perhaps the nuances of your position slipped by me but the evident chip on your shoulder, the dénouement of “ceramics” and worse the demon “ceramic art” all are familiar. I am waiting for a 21^st century raison d’être for studio pottery and have still not yet heard it from anyone. 

And as for my response not being entirely friendly, your friend is correct. Nor was your first broadside to me. But I was not offended. Spirited debate at its best is like wrestling partners who are fiercely competitive. Firstly, one must wrestle to win but graciously concede defeat if one does not. Secondly, one might get a little hurt in the process. That’s how one learns. But without the rough and tumble it’s just not fun nor is there any rigor in the argument if one is too timid to offend. 

To conclude: I have never understood why functional /workshop/traditional potters are always so angry, always seem so cheated by their culture. They have deliberately chosen to live and work in an arena that is marginal. There is no longer a need for handmade pots and there has not been one for the greater part of a century. Industrial potteries often have a smaller carbon footprint than studio potters and so studio pottery is not even green. 

Did you not know when you committed yourself to this calling that it would be tough and misunderstood road? Did you not realize that that there is a touch of anachronism in your calling and that would have consequences in how you are valued and defined? An overly defensive stance does not work, it makes one sound more like a crank, a muttering luddite. One needs a plausible contemporary explanation for why you make pots today if you want to enjoy a reasoned debate. 

I am going to leave you with a challenge. I have never discovered the workshop potters “g” spot. What makes them happy? Can you write a description of an idealized, perfect world for pottery? What do you want from the market, criticism, history, museums, galleries, and culture? How do you define respect? From where do you want it to come? From critics, museums, the general public? What is missing? What defines satisfaction with your place in society? 

And finally, I am honored that a working potter would feel strongly enough to take on my ideas and give his time to this debate. I am actively thinking about things we have discussed, both on and off the record, and will not walk away unmoved or unchanged. I  respect what you do and the overall genre to which you belong but my “job” is not to be a palliative but a goad. I will be back in a month or two. I have two books on the edge of deadline, four essays to write, five lectures coming up and an auction to sell. 

I might even be up for a real life debate in NC this January so long as firearms are checked at the door. 

I think if Jesus could be removed from the context of the christian Church, his story conforms to the stories of all martyrs.  He is like Socrates, Gandhi or MLK, a person who has come to powerfully understand that "God" or "the divine spirit" resides inside each human soul.  And when this divine presence is accessed, it empowers a person to share the wisdom, justice or truth of divine humanity with those who are less enlightened.  This sharing can point the way for others to get closer in touch with their own internal divinity, to open their hearts and move toward a greater acceptance of all humanity.  

Curiously, this courageous message so threatens the society built upon division that the messenger is usually executed.  Also curiously, the heinous crime of murder by the state in the case of Socrates or Jesus or some rogue actor in the case of Gandhi and MLK isolates and makes the message of these martyrs more powerful and resonant for humanity.  In the case of Jesus Christ, an entire religion grew up around the injustice of his crucifixion.  And sadly and ironically, this religion has been used to justify almost as many acts of evil as good thoughout history.

The greek myth of Prometheus is essentially the metaphorical archetype for all of these stories.  A deity (half-man, half-god) is forced to suffer eternal torment (He is bound to a rock, and eagles come each day to devour his liver) for his selfless act of bringing fire (the "light"), which had been an exclusive property of the gods, to benefit humanity.

The image on the front is based on an adolescent doodle that I used to repeat in my notebooks until I realized I was drawing some unconscious cross symbol, an abstraction of the crucified Christ and a representation of the "good-meets-evil" flashpoint that defines martyrdom.

"Jesus wept" is the shortest verse in the bible, and though the specific context is his weeping over the death of his friend Lazarus, the verse has a greater significance for me when removed from this context. 

The above and below images are statements where I think I diverge strongly from conventional church teachings.  The church's insistence on Jesus as the only "son of god" or only path to spiritual enlightenment have ultimately made me uncomfortable with the theology I absorbed as a child.  I believe in the power of the biblical stories and much of the ethical content in the bible, so it has been kind of a sad departure.  Jesus is more significant than Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairey, but these hollow myths paved the way for me to reject Jesus as I reached late adolescence.  I have struggled to return to the church a couple of times as an adult, but feel now that my best option for retaining some belief in Jesus is in embracing a secular understanding which links him to other martyrs.

The list here is a bit of a jumble, including people who have perhaps brought light or wisdom in any number of disciplines for the benefit of humanity.  A few were martyrs, a few were spiritual or philosophical teachers, there are lawmakers, saints, scientists, civil rights activists, artists and potters (which tangentially connect this pot to the discussion in this blog) and poets.  There are also folks who seem not to belong, like Cleopatra and Ghengis Kahn. Both of these individuals may not have been beacons of light and understanding, but somehow in my mind stand as examples of archetypes in human history, a powerful seductress and an incredibly successful warrior.  And then there is Mikhail Gorbachev, who in my mind was much more courageous than Ronald Reagan in his desire to peacefully end the long failed policies of his predecessors, ending the Soviet occupation of eastern Europe and the failed Soviet experiment with marxist ideology.  Finally I included the flawed contemporary american archetypes Homer and Marge Simson as I believe that these pitiful but sincere cartoon characters have the potential to instruct our society about our values and point to our own failing ideology.

So perhaps the scope of this pot is ultimately too wide and unfocussed to really be called a success, but it is an attempt to communicate some truth about a deeply embedded part of my own psychology which shapes my identity, and as such (to me at least) is an interesting part of the thinking process of this group of pots that grew out of my blog.

I have a few more pictures to share before returning to the Garth Clark discussion.  Thanks to all of you who have endured this rather clumsy explanation for a fairly personal "Jesus Piece".

--Matt Jones

But many of my customers are probably thinking, "What is Matt doing with Shepard Fairey's Andre the Giant image?"  I must admit it has become a bit of an obsession for me.  I am fascinated by the contrast of his jowls and forehead which read to me as "Overlord" and the sadness present in his heavy sagging eyes.  

I have slightly altered Shepard's Giant to something more like the real and sad Andre trapped in the icon, and have been enjoying putting vertical stripes on him to reinforce the idea of his imprisonment.  

With these Andres, I am trying to present him as a mirror of all the good and evil we may project onto him.  People will call me a blasphemer, but in a real way the image taps into my "Jesus" psychological-architecture.  More about that in the next post.  Please hit me with comments.

Tres Andres!

My wife chuckled that I put Andre on a lamp vase, thinking no one will buy that.  But I think it is very funny.  Andre is the corporate slave and overlord again, but he is also a genie trapped in a lamp!

Thanks for checking it out!

Matt Jones

And here is a self-portrait of the Craftsman as a middle-aged man.  40 is still "Young" right?

--Thanks for lookin'

The Rooster a.k.a. Matt Jones

Thanks for looking and reading,

Matt Jones

"Country Funk" is a play on the California Ceramic "movement" known as "Funk" or "Funk Art" headed up by Robert Arneson at UC Davis.  It is also the name of a hilarious song by Southern Culture on the Skids about a country boy whose sexual initiation is conducted by a rather coarse woman whose number he finds on a bathroom wall.  The whole pot, while it asks some blunt questions, is meant to be taken for what it is: A joke.

Enjoy!

Thanks everybody,  

Matt Jones

Fast forward 20-25 years and Shepard is a very talented and well known printmaker whose work you may know, including the Obama Hope poster and the George Orwell book covers and many other fine prints.  

He had to reinterpret his Andre when the heirs of Andre's legacy challenged him, so he stylized the image giving it some malice and adding the word OBEY.  This of course (as any kid who has ever touched a skateboard knows) is a coded message telling us to resist with every ounce of strength we have.

On the fourth view of this pot which I somehow missed with the camera, I salute two great craftsmen, Michelangelo and Shepard Fairey.

Shepard's giant enjoys an almost cult-like following, but its is far from his best work.  It does resonate strongly for anyone (all of us) who has ever been oppressed or repressed.  But I think it is like a hit song that has allowed the artist (oops! I mean craftsman) to create a rich body of very beautiful work.  I haven't spoken with Shepard for about fifteen years, but when we were kids we built a half-pipe together and skated it until it was destroyed as a public nuisance.

--Matt Jones