Beyond the Process 1 2 - PRINTER VERSION
>> makes it important or significant, but how the writer makes use of words to illuminate the human condition. The unfamiliar and peculiar effects of fused ash, brightly colored scorch marks and distorted form (which can be thought of as part of the vocabulary of wood firing) should only be considered a means the ceramist uses to develop a personal language.
Philip Rawson, in the keynote address at the 1984 Canadian Clay Conference (Banff, Alberta), remarked that "unless we develop our language of ceramic signs, recognize what they are and how they work, we remain ceramically illiterate." He went on to say: "Clay is full of half formed thoughts, inconclusive shapes, rough manufacture and brushwork, casual fantasy. It can be very eye-catching from a distance, but it will only build into strong statements when the character in the variations in shape and placing also carries meaning—when a pot doesn't have to be a generalized ripple or texture, but a shaped ripple or texture; when each of the ceramic signs connects logically with all the others."
As long as wood firing is approached as a separate and unique activity within the ceramics field, our attempts to communicate feelings and ideas will be over shadowed and thwarted by the mystical and romantic notions about it so popular at the present. Wood firing must be seen merely for what it is—a technique, one option among many, no more important or valuable than any others existing in ceramic art. It is ultimately the responsibility of the artist, not the exotic and unpredictable effects of wood firing, to create work which has a style or language that points beyond material, function and historical and cultural references to a higher and more profound level of awareness and understanding.
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© 1980 - 2024 Rob Barnard . All Rights Reserved. Site design: eismontdesign
>> makes it important or significant, but how the writer makes use of words to illuminate the human condition. The unfamiliar and peculiar effects of fused ash, brightly colored scorch marks and distorted form (which can be thought of as part of the vocabulary of wood firing) should only be considered a means the ceramist uses to develop a personal language.
Philip Rawson, in the keynote address at the 1984 Canadian Clay Conference (Banff, Alberta), remarked that "unless we develop our language of ceramic signs, recognize what they are and how they work, we remain ceramically illiterate." He went on to say: "Clay is full of half formed thoughts, inconclusive shapes, rough manufacture and brushwork, casual fantasy. It can be very eye-catching from a distance, but it will only build into strong statements when the character in the variations in shape and placing also carries meaning—when a pot doesn't have to be a generalized ripple or texture, but a shaped ripple or texture; when each of the ceramic signs connects logically with all the others."
As long as wood firing is approached as a separate and unique activity within the ceramics field, our attempts to communicate feelings and ideas will be over shadowed and thwarted by the mystical and romantic notions about it so popular at the present. Wood firing must be seen merely for what it is—a technique, one option among many, no more important or valuable than any others existing in ceramic art. It is ultimately the responsibility of the artist, not the exotic and unpredictable effects of wood firing, to create work which has a style or language that points beyond material, function and historical and cultural references to a higher and more profound level of awareness and understanding.
<<
© 1980 - 2024 Rob Barnard . All Rights Reserved. Site design: eismontdesign