Terry Gess Pottery

Description

The history of pottery stretches like a great river through the millennia. In the course of its travel, it has seeped into the archives of almost every culture. My work as a studio potter has allowed me to dip into this strong current as I developed a working competence with clay bodies, glazes and kilns—the mechanics of pottery making. When I lived in Seattle, I met a potter who had spent several years working for a generations-old pottery studio in Japan. On free days, he had made pots for himself, at which the Japanese workers pointed and laughed boisterously. Finally, someone took him into the office and unrolled a long scroll that diagrammed the specific range of forms that this pottery studio produced. His forms were not to be seen. In my case, restrictions on form have not been mandated by tradition; nonetheless, they exist, though self-imposed. Overlapping and integrated into the world’s traditions of form are entire chapters of technique, design, color, status, significance, purpose, politics, culture and varied interpretations of the meaning of beauty. History offers a beautifully illustrated volume. My referential choices from this extensive list have long been the spirited, populist styles—the Medieval English jugs, for instance, with their casually thumbed bases, and the 15th-century Islamic tin-glazed wares, such as the fat, swollen-bellied Persian jars. I value them for their clunky forms, thick lips and age-worn surfaces. These are forms that I appreciate for their mundane beauty and their immediacy. Much of the vigor and charm of these pots is based in the repetitive circumstances of their production. Made in large quantities with limited regard for each object as an individual statement, they achieve life through what appears to be a demeanor of neglect. Their casual, everyday earthiness, healthy and unpretentious, holds a subtle grounded beauty that reveals its secrets slowly. The hand of the maker has not been overshadowed by skillful mastery or opulent lusters, yet is still clearly present. My allegiance and affiliation are with this careless, repetitive work. It is not that I wish to mimic or interpret these qualities as much as I wish to adopt the emotive subtleties of presence, stance and gesture that are infused throughout this work. The textures, edges and various undulating surfaces of any good pot are best appreciated by its feel in the hand, not through the comprehension of the intellect. I judge the success of my own work by its ability to elicit from the viewer a desire to physically experience the object through the sense of touch. While I am committed to the development and promotion of my career through galleries and exhibitions, my pottery is ultimately meant to be placed in people's homes. An object of small scale allows a work of power and substance to be incorporated into the household environment. It assures the role of tactility and brings beauty to the commonplace. All of the best pottery throughout history has possessed spirit.

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