The temperature is incrementally rising and dropping. Spring is figuring itself out. I observe this seasonal shift in my own practice as a potter, too; a change in seasons is typically a time of stripping processes down and meeting forms where they are, and meeting limits and breakthroughs where they are.
In this spirit, I present to you the work of ceramist MacDonald Potter:
“Utility was the thing that excited me the most about working in pottery, the fact that I could make things that people could use,” he says. Potter goes on to say, “….to share with [people] the idea this object has never existed in the history of mankind…” charges his thinking and doing.
The fact that there are relatively few African-American potters in contemporary American life is a source of contemplation for Potter. For him, the opportunity to delve deeply into his cultural inheritances for inspiration has both rooted his work and given it traction in the private and public spheres of his artistic career.Embellishing familiar forms, especially plates, with African patterns and geometries urges his work in bilateral directions: back through the past, and into the present/future. Utility, familiarity, historicity: reference points that constellate Potter’s praxis, and offer us a glimpse of the sublime in the repetition of practiced forms and narratives.