Teacher Appreciation
Hi Everyone,
I found a few of my college professors online the other day, and watching them took me back to being 19 and in their classes. Seeing them again brought to mind this quote from Philip Guston: “Studio Ghosts: When you’re in the studio painting, there are a lot of people in there with you — your teachers, friends, painters from history, critics ... and one by one if you’re really painting, they walk out. And if you’re really painting YOU walk out.”
Sikora: Wheel Throwing 101
Linda Sikora taught all levels of ceramics at Alfred University, though she herself was a master. In Wheel Throwing 101, she demonstrated how to
pull a vessel using deft motions. I swear her clay-body had something extra in it. More elasticity perhaps. My dumpy pots were bottom-heavy and sad. Hers leapt from the wheel head, extending upward. I remember her gathering us together and throwing a vessel I can only describe as a jug, though that word is so dull and boring that it feels wholly inaccurate. This was a gesture drawing in clay, part Brancusi but also utilitarian. If she pulled wire across its base, it wouldn’t need trimming. Just bisque it without glaze and call it a day.
But she didn’t do that.
She pulled it up in front of us, three quick pulls, and then gutted us all whole when she slid the wire not horizontally along its bottom but vertically down its center. The class let out a gasp, a knife slipping between ribs, a stabbing, a quick motion. Though she meant to educate not horrify, horrified we were.
But then: the form was exactly as thick in the base wall as in the top edge—3/8” thin. This was a magician performing a double trick: making the form appear, showing us how it was done, and then letting us understand that we had no idea how she’d done it. Pure magic.
As a teacher now, I better understand and appreciate this transformative moment. She wanted us to understand that the form is not precious. It cannot be. She wanted us to know that if we walked this path, we too would pull thousands of pots and each one is a part of a larger process. When focused, you lose yourself in the process. It becomes a form of meditation. The vessel is the artifact, the process is the art.
Currier: Ceramics
Anne Currier also taught Ceramics, but she was a different type of wizard. She was funny in the way people
with little time for bullshit could be. Her greatest compliment came in one word: “Nice.” It was the Paul Hollywood handshake of Studio B ceramics. I’ve tried adopting it in my teaching, but it falls flat every time. She could make a “Nice” feel like a congressional medal of honor.
I would show her ideas hoping for that approval ... occasionally I got one, but mostly I received a squinty eyed, “Nah” — a blow made softer by her Louisville accent — and a detailed explanation of what hadn’t yet clicked into place. She showed me that articulating what wasn’t working was the first step to figuring out what was working and how it worked. I wanted the “Nice,” but received something so much greater: genuine critique.
She put books in my hands, one after another: math books, pop ups, Süskind’s Perfume, Annie Dillard’s For the Time Being. She taught me that art does not happen in a vacuum and that there is a continuum of artists reaching far back in history sharing knowledge and secrets.
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Hair Model (Amidst Adoring Fans), c. 1999
I keep these professors with me in the studio, two of my ghosts. I talk with them and ask them questions. They cracked open a world that I am thankful I get to live in every day. In the studio these voices live in my head: teachers, critics, friends. And when the work is good, they all fade away. When the work is great, I go away too.
Hope you are all hanging in there.
Best wishes,
Matt
P.S. If you’re interested in looking at some artwork I have for sale, or if you just feel disappointed when you get to the end of an email and there were no links to click, for your consideration: large-scale pieces and smaller pieces of mine currently available for purchase, including everything you see below.