Ceramics as Drawing

Over its 25,000+ year history, ceramics has demonstrated an artistic impulse for drawing. Ceramics and drawing share qualities of intimacy and immediacy and both traditionally use base materials that accept and record every action of its maker. Clay, however, requires intense heat to be transformed into ceramics, as does glaze. That science, however, is what defines ceramics as a medium and not as a conscious means of making. My tableware and larger table environments emerge through a mediation with drawing. My awareness stems from a rigorous, observation-based, undergraduate education in drawing. It also has been enhanced by my extensive career as a gallerist. As Director of Revolution, Detroit, (1993-2005) I fostered a non-hierarchical, cross-disciplinary exhibition program in which drawings by such artists as Frank Auerbach, Julia Fish, Thomas Nozkowki, Joan Synder and Peter Williams were featured. It also included expanded forms of drawing by such artists as Joseph Grigely, Tony Hepburn, Jim Melchert, and Anne Wilson. While the practices of Helpburn, Melchert, and Wilson stem from craft tradition, none of their work retains crafts inherent intention of use. I find the operable element of use imperative. It not only establishes an intimate context, it allows the work to exist as a finished drawing and as a sketch. Useful objects, like sketches, invite imagination and completion. And, whether anticipated or actual, the ephemeral, participatory histories that emerge from movements of hand, fork, spoon, and/or knife and the texture and colorization of food remain with the work like pentimenti.