Clay

A love letter

It’s a big month for the resurgence of pottery in Canada. This is my little story of how I molded the clay and the clay helped mold me.

I believe we are all drawn at some point in our lives to where we feel a strong desire to make something with our hands, handmade. For some of us it may be as simple as building a birdhouse, knitting a scarf or baking some bread.  For others, it may move beyond craft into art and maybe into a piece for the ages.  For most of us however, it is quite enough for the pure joy and satisfaction in the making.  We become makers.

I may have tried my hand at making things as a young boy (soap box derby cars) but my first real moment of experiencing craft came on a beach near Gimli Manitoba in 1972.  Linda suggested that we take my staff of twenty-nine people down there for a weekend of arts-based training.  We could have done some Myers-Briggs team building thing, but Linda convinced me that an injection of art and craft might have more interesting results for the children in our care, than the standard professional development fare.

Linda was right.

So, a bus load of us landed on a beach, where we were offered a full menu of painting, macrame, kite making, drawing, weaving and pottery.  All of the staff responded to whatever called out to them.  I often wonder if any were as lifetime touched as I was.

I gravitated to clay.

Now, I had grown up in a community and school system where clay was a simple lesson in earth science, a nuisance in the garden, country road slippage and the scourge of a farmer uncle where it often grabbed and buried the wheels of that old Massey 44 tractor. 

Clay was a nuisance.

I had no idea that this nuisance material was a source for some of the most beautiful ancient and modern objects around the world. 

I was given a gift that weekend, finding this world of clay in my early years and it still has a welcome home under my fingernails to this day.

I gravitated to the pottery course, clay, wheel and kiln.  I met an amazing, well-respected potter named Steve Repa.  Steve was a force in Manitoba painting and pottery.  He became a force in my life. He introduced me to clay, the wheel and fire.  I took to it.

He had the spirit of clay.  We worked outdoors, on the beach.  We built a kiln on that beach and fired it at night under the stars.  Clay was destined to be no fling, but a full tilt love affair.

A young student from the session went back to his farm and started building kick wheels with tractor seats.  I bought one. I built a wedging table, shelving and bought a used electric kiln.  I took out a subscription to Ceramics Monthly.

I looked around and found potters in my territory like Randy Woolsey, Vic Cicansky, Anita Rocomora, Mel Bolen and Charley Ferraro.  The bar was high, I never got close.

Then I got a little crazy and built a catenary arch wood fired kiln out of hard firebrick salvaged from a bakery in Manitoba.  Just about killed the old Dodge truck with that haul.  Note: at no time have I mentioned getting help, advice or any real counsel in these efforts.  Youthful arrogance and just dumb, I guess.

Anyway, Linda and I fired that beast a few times for at least 18 hours.  The twenty-foot flames shooting out of the chimney were spectacular but unfortunately not really bending the proper cones.  I still have a couple of these pots. 

The unrequited love of clay lasted a decade or so but real life and unconventional career decision making took us from the rural hippy life in Saskatchewan to Queen Street Toronto. Kilns and wheels were not great road companions and my craft became non-fungible, as they now say.  The pottery stayed lost for the next two decades but it dropped in for a visit when we moved to Calgary twenty years ago.  Turns out there was a full tilt city owned pottery studio in the northwest part of the city. I wandered in one day and met Bob Reimer, who, as it turned out, was another former Manitoban, who, like Steve, had that same creative, warm spirit… nature and nurture.

We bonded…two Bobs in a bubble.  I was able to get back into a clay studio with great equipment while living in a condo.  They had wheels without tractor seats and kilns that reach temperature including a wood fired kiln.  I took advantage of them all.  My hands and heart thanked me.

Bob passed away in 2011 and with his passing, I missed his collective spirit.  The wood kiln was another gift of Bob’s legacy.  This was a kiln that required a communal effort not a switch. There is just something ancient and true about a craft process that requires one to find, cut, chop and split dry wood and then feed it into an opening that punches you back with heat up to 2,000 degrees.  The magic of a wood fired pot is in the kiss of the ash on the pieces.  There is a certain sketchy character we all have known, but the best ash kisser I ever met was the wood fired kiln.

Last year, a young woman opened a studio in my neighbourhood and I am now the old guy throwing pots in the basement.  Pottery has always been a gift.  It was a gift from those two men and from the countless crafts people I met over the years.  This practice was never an economic opportunity (I have yet to sell a pot) but more an opportunity for me to have something to give to people.

Speaking of gifts, the Japanese culture and their spirit gift of Tea Ceremony pottery must be acknowledged.  They grew the tea and made the vessels for the drinking of tea and that gift has gone around the world.  The classic chawan or tea bowl has no handle. When I chopped wood in the country, it warmed twice, both with the chopping and the burning.  When I drank tea from a tea bowl, it again warmed twice, with the hands and the tummy.  For Canada’s 150 birthday I made 150 tea bowls to give away.

A few years ago, I wrote a song celebrating the tea bowl. From you potters, I would appreciate any feedback on the song.

One last thought about pottery.  We all have been thinking about media these days. Legacy media is on life support.  Entertainment media is perhaps not on life support but perhaps more on a drunken bender. However, I found a small opening on my television list of hopeless channels, that gives me hope on the entertainment front of media.  I found the Makeful channel that features The Repair Shop with real old-time crafts people.  It has painting, baking, glass blowing, woodworking and to my delight, The Great Pottery Throw Down.

It all seems to be coming from Britain, not America.

I have always felt that Canadian television may have been led astray by trying to be American clones as noted by our recent bad copies of their inane game shows.

So, it was very exciting to find out that CBC was stepping into the real maker world with a new show called The Great Canadian Pottery Throw Down.  It’s coming this week on February 8th and if I can figure out how to get a new password from Gem I will be watching.

Perhaps there is hope that folks might get their whole hands busy, not just their thumbs.

Watch the tv show and enjoy!