In Which Paul Bellardo Does Julia Child

Paul Bellardo is eighty something which is certainly, absolutely, the new forty, at least in Paul's case.

Paul comes to work nearly every day at about nine in the morning and stays until one.  Since I've been hanging around the studio, he's been sculpting big pieces that start with big cylinders that are thrown by his assistant (and one heck of a fine potter, too), Gene.

Gene has arms as big as my thighs.  I have biker's legs (but no ass: hence occasional use of suspenders, a family trait) which is to say that Gene has big, strong arms, which are needed for throwing 25 or 30 pounds of clay into big cylinders that rest on top of one another to create a structure for Paul to sculpt upon.

But I digress.  (Gene's arms are a little distracting, sometimes).

Handsome Bellardo teaching in New Orleans Army Airbase, 1945.
Photo used without permission from Paul's website.

Paul used to run a studio and a shop in the West Village in New York.  He taught GIs about pottery during the Second World War, when he served as a teacher, and, it seems, when he cut quite a fine figure in an army uniform.  He still cuts a fine figure, in fact.   Paul is one hell of an artist, throws a mean-ass pot, and completely loves what he does.

Paul, I discovered, also does shtick.

The other day, Paul was glazing pots.  He was at the glaze-table, stirring up some glaze that he'd soon apply to one of his sculpted  heads, the sculptures, the pieces he's been making for some time, like the ones in the gallery window from the big show a few weeks ago.

January 18, Palm Springs Galleria.  

I watched Paul work at the glaze table for a while, and while appreciating his focus, I gave him this opening:

"You remind me of Julia Child," I said.

Paul's eyes were all sparkling (which is the way Bellardo eyes always look, anyhow).

"Yes.  I'm Julia!" he sang out, in a crackling-good imitation of the Bostonian matron.

"I am going to cut off the head of this chicken, here; and then I'm going to stuff sausage up its woo-hoo-hoo!"

And Gene wonder's why I do little dance steps, from time to time, when moving about the studio.  Its the Bellardo-aura.

Better Looking is Not Better

Pots sometimes look better after they are thrown but before they are bisqued, glazed, and fired up white hot to 2,300 degrees F (more or less cone 10).

After glazing, well, I guess if you've lived in Maine or rural Western Kansas in the spring when things are melting and wondered if you are driving a truck or a ball of sludge, then you have some idea what things look like after they are glazed but before they are fired.

Rarely does a piece of future stoneware look good after coming out of a bisque fire.  It just looks dead, no matter how strong the shape.  But no bisque fire before the high fire, and you got no stoneware.  It has to dry out, firm up, and find out if it wants to crack or explode (which can happen).

So shiny.  So seductive.  So delusion-inducing? I had a boyfriend like that, once.

Bisque stuff, and a failed attempt at off-kilter little bowls that I won't do again, I promise.

But all shiny and right off the wheel, you can fall in love.  Later on, you might change your mind.

"Look at us! We're taller than a Chapstick!  Slick and shiny!" said the pots, sitting on their bats, posing for photos.

A siren-song. Don't believe a word.  

Ugly Brushwork, Handy Pot

I was not going to show these to anyone, since the brushwork is cringe-inducing.  But it turns out that the shape and size are perfect for cereal in the morning, or a bowl of rice and tofu and assorted vegetables and whatever meat sneaks in for seasoning, in the evening.

I need to make more of these.  But I need to figure out something a little less awkward for the decoration. I seem to do better with slips, since they mean carving (and you can take your time with that) or doing whatever its called when you drag something across it, comb it or incise it, while its wet, which is fun and less likely to make a frigging mess.  When I think I can really do brush work, I need to think again, and just slap it on and quit thinking about it.

There it is.  Quit thinking about it.  Its that practice-realization thing, maybe.

Glazed and Waiting

I'm getting a little more comfortable with a few things.  Throwing, for example.  Tim D. has been helping with that.

When I made some noise about wanting to work on some basics, he answered with a question:

"How would you teach someone to make a bowl?"

I muttered something, I don't remember what.  Tim said:

"I guess there are two ways.  Let me draw you one of 'em."

He did that.  Then sat me down, had me throw a cylinder, and had me use a stick to open it into a trumpet and then from there, into a bowl.  

He never did get around to showing me the second way.  This way seemed to work well enough.

Here are some faceted bowls, with a little mucking around with a wax-resist brush before the second coat of the tenmoku-like glaze I laid on 'em.  And the rice bowls are celadon on the outside over a slapped-on-with-a-big-calligraphy-brush brown slip.  Inside is an opaque, non-shiny yellow they have under the glaze table that I rather like.  

I have this odd feeling that they looked better before I glazed them.  The faceted bowls, I mean.  (The larger scrafitto bowls, well, we'll see what happens.  They look lumpy, sitting all glazed and waiting.) 

Kiln gods are doing whatever kiln gods do while I wait for the stuff to get into the kiln.

Some Handles I Just Can't Handle

Okay, the one on the left (that's a yellow over a all-too-sky-blue glaze) is not so bad.  A bit high on the mug, I think.  But I like the little lugs.  They give your fingers something to do.

The handle on the right sucks.  Its too big.  I tried to hide it by moving the cup so you can not see how the handle does not grow out of the pot as it might.  But that's how it goes when you are getting started.

I can't imagine what stuff is going to look like, glaze-wise, before it gets fired.  They just look like some college freshman after a mud-football match or something, only not sexy at all.  Like this.

The other pots from this firing are not  very attractive. My brush work was horrid.  There were a couple bowls which weren't so yucky, despite badly trimmed feet; they've turned out to be pretty handy. The size and shape were okay, and if you put food in them you can't see the clumsy brush-work!

About This Here Potter's Blog

Well, its been a long time.

I first sat at a wheel under the watchful eye of Lynn Munns, a fine potter in a community college in Casper, Wyoming, back before George Bush or post-modern anthropology or neo-cons or HIV-AIDS or any of our present-day realities.  It was in the 1970s.  Since then, and for a long time, I didn't throw pots.

Now, Lynn has retired, but he still throws and still gives workshops at Red Lodge.  According to some potters I know, he is inspiring yet another generation of potters with strong, utilitarian forms and fearless salt glazed and (sometimes) wood-fired cone ten pottery.

As for me, I would not make a pimple on a potters ass.  But thanks to Munns I did make a start.  Thanks to  Patrick Siler (a ceramicist and amazing all-around artist at Washington State University, where I did some ceramics for a time) I also learned a few things. Like not over-thinking my pots, for example.  And my Dad is a fine furniture maker, his mother was a wood carver and sculptor;  Mom is still an amazing oil painter; two of my sisters are artists—the third one is artistic in maintaining a lovely family. I'm the prodigal, finding my way home.

So here is a place for me to post a few images of work I'm doing, the crappy pieces and the not-so-crappy pieces; a place to reflect on what progress means (if it means anything at all).

Nov. 2012 • First Pots in 20 Years. Mugs, soon. 

I'm at Silica Studios in Palm Springs, where I am surrounded by a crew—a family, really—of amazing potters and sculptors.  I hardly feel I deserve to be this lucky—but I am.  I mean, I'm lucky. Whether or not I'm deserving is something to consider; nevertheless, if I'm learning anything at all, its owing to the interaction of the clay, the fire, and the amazing potters and sculptors who come to the studio every day to work on creating new pieces, to create ways of telling the truth that you can see and touch and use.  For telling the truth is what pots can do; and quite well. Everything these potters do around the studio is a kind of teaching.  Lucky for me.

So while I've done a few other things and enjoyed them,  for me there's nothing quite as engaging as messing about with clay.  It speaks to my heart and hands in ways that bring to mind another valued teacher, Tenshin Roshi, who has been trying to get my head to open up to Zen practice.  Tenshin often reminds his sangha that the old Zen master, Dogen Zenji, called the doing of Zen "practice-realization."  Its realizing (real-izing) something (something beyond vast yet as transient as a flint-spark) through practice.

Making pots is like that.  Realizing something (often, an empty thing, like a finished, unused, empty pot—empty but potentially of service, empty but maybe nice to hold and see) through doing.

So that's what this blog is about: realizing pots. Which is, sometimes, about completely forgetting about pots and just making or using them.  Appreciating them, and the creatures who make, have made, and use and have used them.

Jeepers, that's all pretty highfalootin'.

This blog is really just some pictures and words about pots.  'Nuff said.