Post #11: On the other Hand...

I could continue to pick apart post #6, Garth’s Response, but in some ways that seems to be an obsessive waste of time that will lead to further entrenchment of two polar extremes.  Let me pause here to examine the quote I was considering (at the end of post #10, part 1) from a different perspective.

“It’s the same line that has been coming out of the traditional pottery world since Leach began pontificating…  you are still loyally parroting dogma…  clinging to the past, uneasy with your own times.  I have heard it all before.”  --Garth Clark, post #6

I think that I successfully provoked Garth to lash out at me as an extension of Leach’s cloying rhetoric, and in the last post I have rather self-righteously defended my own position, which I feel shares common ground with Leach but is not some inferior copy of what Leach expressed.  Leach as an educator and advocate for craft in the mid-twentieth century talked about the importance of craft being rooted in function, and he was frequently preaching (this is one of the annoying aspects of Leach and all of us {including me} who defend him: an emotional zeal that can become irksome) about the importance of man’s ability to unite head, heart and hands in the craft media to express some basic human truths that he felt were sacred: dignity, humility and a natural, fluid style of unconscious human creativity.

My friend Jordan Taylor pointed out to me that while I may not be “parroting” Leach, what I am doing conforms almost perfectly to Leach’s central philosophy.  I think this is a good point.  

But I don’t believe that this is because of my inability to find a newer more contemporary voice.  Rather I believe that Leach successfully identified and articulated some of the inherent truths of traditional craft.  Because he presented the message and preached it as the gospel truth, it became a cliché that has bound itself to those of us who are interested in traditional pottery styles.  This seems an unfortunate cliché to be saddled with, particularly now that Industry’s coup (of replacing the functional needs that traditional craft addressed) is more or less complete.

I would encourage Garth and all of us who struggle with Leach’s baggage to ask ourselves this question:  Did Leach invent the idea he preached or did he merely observe it with the help of Yanagi and others in his circle and yammer about it until it seemed cloying?  

Many of us are (like Leach) drawn to craft because of its humility and purity.  But this becomes a conundrum with the commodification of craft, because as Garth has pointed out in his address, the market seems to want art and shy away from anything associated with the word craft, as if it were an inferior mimic of the higher ideal.  I see this bind quite clearly in my own work, as people will spend more money on a vase than on a pitcher of the same size, unless they are considering the pitcher to be an aesthetic object rather than a functioning vessel.  Of course even a vase can have a function as a vessel for holding a bouquet of flowers, but it more and more frequently seems to get purchased as an object for its own sake, perhaps as a reference to the noble history of craft.  I make lots of vessels in the shapes of our Carolina vernacular: crocks, jars and jugs as well as others that are derived from ancient mediterranean or far eastern oil and wine jars, but almost all of it is generated with an eye to the past.  This is what many of my customers like about my work.  It seems to be rooted in its own history.

Garth can see this very well, and so he assumes I am “clinging to the past, uneasy with (my) own times”.  There is something undeniably true about this observation, so I must claim it.  I am somewhat uneasy with my times.  I am not perfectly tuned in to the version of reality that is spit out of our televisions, and so I have carefully constructed a world within, that can protect me from some of the things I would like to resist about contemporary life and create work that is reverently looking backward into time.   

I like living out in the country, away from the nearest city where I am surrounded by farmland, mountains, woods and streams.  This scenery nourishes me.  It doesn’t seem obsolete.  Just because there exist huge metropolises, which can be very stimulating to visit, doesn’t mean that this is the setting where I want to live or make work which expresses its electric energy.  It doesn’t mean that pastoral beauty has ceased to be relevant or be worthy of work which might sing its praises.  I claim all of this and call it as contemporary as anything happening in urban areas.  What I make is relevant to the people I make it for.  People can like watching a contemporary sitcom like “The Office” and still enjoy old “Andy Griffith” reruns.  We are all capable of recognizing and appreciating values that contradict one another.  Each of us is as Whitman said: “vast” and capable of multiple ideas as they occur to us or fit our needs.  

I don’t much care for interior designers who want everything in a house to agree to a preconceived timeframe, where every object must be a “period” piece.   The idea of living in a historic reproduction may seem romantic, but you need a fridge and a toilet and a computer these days.  And an austere living space is frequently lent some considerable charm by presenting an object or two that might somehow express the ancient world.  Whether the aesthetic is modern or antique, there is room for some of each in a living space, and this is frequently the most honest expression of the complex individuals living there.  

Themes of simplicity and pastoral beauty are merely the flip side of aggressive modernism, and as such, I think they are important.

Take my friends down the road at Full Sun Farms growing organic produce for tailgate markets around Asheville.  They have a very hard time keeping up with the demand for their produce.  However, Garth might be tempted to argue that they are out of step with modern industrial agriculture.  He would be correct, but many people have come to the conclusion that modern industrial agriculture is not quite a perfect system.  In their way, my neighbors are rebelling and trying to revive an anachronistic method of fruit and vegetable production.  Is there anything wrong with that?  Their customers seem to appreciate what they are doing and I dare say Garth probably eats organic produce when he can.  Why can’t there be room for craft that does the same thing?

Peace,

Matt Jones