Potters show varied facets of their craft

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photo by JAY FRIESS Above, Melissa C.G.R. Jones, left, and Ada Van Hecke are two of the four artists featured in the ‘‘In Process” show at the Mattawoman Creek Art Center in Marbury. E-Mail This Article | Print This Story Click here to enlarge this photo Photos by LAURA FRIESS Left, the ‘‘In Process” pottery show at the Mattawoman Creek Art Center features examples of different pottery processes, such as carving, coiling, throwing and glazing. Right, carving straight from a block of clay, potter Tom Gannon has produced layer after layer of forms on his three-dimensional pieces being displayed. Click here to enlarge this photo

The walls and pedestals of the center’s main display gallery were filled with all manner of clay pottery and sculpture which endured long hours of several hundred degree temperatures in the bowels of hellish kilns.

The show being prepared by artists Ada Van Hecke and Melissa C.G.R. Jones of Montgomery Village was called In Process, a reference to the different pottery processes the artists used to create the artwork.

‘‘The four of us use different processes in our work,” Van Hecke explained.

‘‘Ada is all about the glaze,” Jones said of Van Hecke. ‘‘I’m all about forms and really about the technique of throwing.”

Van Hecke is the chemist, the colorist, the glaze queen. He work is characterized by its depth of color – rich reds, pearly blues and onyx blacks. She spends long hours formulating and test-firing glazes and colored liquid clay known as ‘‘slip.” Her signature piece is a small dish and lid with concentric grooves to collect and pool glaze, achieving a subtly varying effect.

Jones, on the other hand, is an expert thrower – an inelegant term for the delicate task of forming wet clay into cups and vases on a spinning wheel. To truly appreciate Jones’ skill, one has to actually pick up her pieces, testing the lightness of the heft, placing fingers in the ergonomic dimples and feeling the fine texture of the clay.

And don’t forget to look at the bottom of the piece to appreciate the ‘‘feet.”

‘‘This is a hands-on show,” Jones said. ‘‘Artists spend a lot of time on their feet.”

Jones and Van Hecke met at their alma mater, Alfred University, where they studied their art. An entire wall of the gallery is dedicated to pieces ‘‘thrown” by Jones and glazed by Van Hecke.

‘‘This is all about formulas of slip, clay and glaze,” Jones said of the series of small vases lining the wall. ‘‘This is where ceramic artists can actually collaborate.”

Again, one must hold the pieces to feel the contrast between the abstract applications of smooth glaze and the slightly rough areas of bare clay.

‘‘I always want people to pick up my pieces,” Van Hecke said.

The show also features two of Van Hecke’s fellow instructors at the College of Southern Maryland.

Tom Gannon is displaying what Jones calls ‘‘sculptural pottery,” including a startling set of vases with repeating two-dimensional faces spiraling out from a central cylinder like blades of a fan.

Seth Dressler is showing works that begin life in a large extruder. The extruder pumps out coils of clay just like a noodle maker. The resulting work, with its muted glaze, looks like a Dr. Seuss version of a coral reef.

Dressler has also submitted a series of pieces that are essentially the glazed plugs of clay that come out of the emptied extruder.

The result is pieces that appear eerily organic.

There are a few other oddities, including a bowl that was formed from pounding dry clay pieces into a form as well as a piece that appears to be made from pounded and aged copper.

Van Hecke explained that the latter piece was produced with a process called ‘‘baku.”

The piece was placed in a kiln until the glaze became molten and was then removed and placed into a trash can full of combustible materials. The process set the glaze within an hour and gives it a blackened carbon look.

‘‘I would call it ‘instant gratification process,’” Van Hecke said.