Lee Love

Thank you Arthur Park for inviting me to this Exhibition.
2024 Korea-US Invitational Ceramic Exhibition

https://miamulti.iscu.ac.kr/exhibition/ceramic/2024.asp

In celebration of , we’re looking at this stoneware jug made by the remarkable artist known as “Dave the Potter” or David Drake, who made pottery while enslaved in the Edgefield District of South Carolina.

Dave's history has slowly been recovered, in large part because of his extraordinary assertion of self through signatures and poetic texts that he incised into the pots he made from roughly 1834–1864. More than one hundred examples bear his name or date, and dozens have snippets of original poetry and observations, such as:

“I wonder where is all my relations / Friendship to all—and every nation.” Aug. 16, 1857.

“I made this Jar all of cross / If you don’t repent, you will be lost.” May 3, 1862.

Dates on several of Dave’s works show that he was marking his name even amidst extremely punitive anti-literacy laws to prevent enslaved people from reading or writing, making his practice an exceptional act of resistance and defiance.
___

Dave Drake, (c. 1800–c. 1870), “Jug”, Lewis J. Miles Pottery, South Carolina, United States, 1853, Alkaline-glazed stoneware, 14 1/2 × 12 × 11 1/2 in., Collection American Folk Art Museum, New York, Gift of Sally and Paul Hawkins, 1999.18.1. Photo by John Parnell.

I came across a letter from Warren Mackenzie he sent me while I was in Japan. He was complaining about group exhibitions he was in where folks ignored the other potter's work and just came in to "Buy a MacKenzie." After that, he wrote about trying to arrange a show for me at Gallery Shunn in Tokyo. Maybe a Two Man Show, he sending a few works to go with my larger presentation. He was thinking the shows at Shunn were only one week, so it made it difficult to present new artists.
It always seemed that MacKenzie's letters would come when I was having an especially difficult time during my apprenticeship and gave me enthusiasm and confidence to continue. It was important, because only one other non-Japanese apprentice after the '70s, finished their commitment. I completed mine: 3 years and 3 months.
Back to the present. I've been feeling creatively isolated recently, not having really plugged into the ceramic hierarchy here. My connection being personally with Warren. But finding and reading this letter was like speaking to the Obi-wan "force Ghost" of Star Wars. Mack's encouragement was still alive and with me. I felt refreshed.

These horses can read people

TikTok · KingsGuard28 7449 likes, 127 comments. “Thank you official 🫡”

I came across this stack of letters from Warren MacKenzie when I lived in Japan. My apprenticeship was difficult at times. I was a 47 year old Japanese-American working beside four 20 year old Japanese apprentices. Hearing stories from folks, it was evident that no Foreign potter, to my knowledge, after the '70s, completed the full term of studies with my teacher (what they initially agreed to), except for a Chinese student who was there for a year after his application to Harvard was rejected (He was accepted, after his year apprenticeship at my teacher's workshop.). I had the longest Foriegn apprenticeship: 3 years and 3 months. I credit it to my time in monasteries in the USA and Japan.
It seemed like on the hardest days, I would get home and see that I received a letter from Warren from America. It always buoyed me up and gave me energy to continue. I recall hearing about his correspondences with Bernard Leach, letters across the Atlantic Ocean, and felt like, in a time when people no longer wrote paper letters, accepted into a small band of travellers.
I found these letters in boxes that were never unpacked until now. We sea shipped many boxes from Japan to Minneapolis. Some letters have been nibbled on by mice.
It has sometimes been difficult since Warren passed. Also Japanese-American potter Taeko Tanaka's passing left a void for me. Both were inspirations and encouragement. I miss them both.

Haven't shared this in a while:

My kiln in Mashiko. Two fireboxes, but they face forward.
https://m.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2229050500757241&type=3

Plans and Step by Step photos of my kiln build

This is similar to what I have done
In semi-retirement:
No more Art Fairs
I only make what I want to make
I only look into entering galleries,
shows, shops and competitions
After the work is made

And I also work up to 30 fulltime weeks (and possibly more) as an Early Election Judge for the City Of Minneapolis
Which means I am just as busy as before "semi-retirement."
Thanks to Jean's help

As she closes her shop, Charlottesville potter Nan Rothwell prepares to glaze a new trail After 50 years, Rothwell says she is ready to leave the business side behind and focus on the art form.

When Wendell Berry spoke in Minneapolis, shortly after I moved back to Minneapolis from Japan. I gave him a boxed teabowl.

Worn to brightness, this
bowl opens outward
to the world, like
the marriage of a pair
we sometimes know.
Filled full, it holds
not greedily. Empty,
it fills with light
that is Heaven’s and
its own. It holds
forever for a while.

+ Wendell Berry

Momo (white pup) one day old. Her brother didn't make it

Please "Shoot Me" if in my old age I only make "Brown Pots."
Shimaoka added pink and yellow slip inlays in his later work
Not to mention his cobalt blue salt fire and colorful enamels

for Les Blakebrough and the memory of John Chappell

by Gary Snyder

Bitter blue fingers
Winter nineteen sixty-three A.D.
showa thirty-eight
Over a low pine-covered splay of hills in Shiga
West-south-west of the outlet of Lake Biwa
Domura village set on sandy fans of the sweep
and turn of a river
Draining the rotten-granite hills up Shigaraki
On a nineteen-fifty-seven Honda cycle model C
Rode with some Yamanashi wine "St. Neige"
Into the farmyard and the bellowing kiln.
Les & John
In ragged shirts and pants, dried slip
Stuck to with pineneedle, pitch,
dust, hair, woodchips;
Sending the final slivers of yellowy pine
Through peephole white blast glow
No saggars tilting yet and segers bending
neatly in a row--

Even their beards caked up with mud & soot
Firing for fourteen hours. How does she go.
Porcelain & stoneware: cheese dish. twenty cups.
Tokuri. vases. black chawan
Crosslegged rest on the dirt eye cockt to smoke--

The hands you layed on clay
Kickwheeld, curling,
creamed to the lip of nothing,
And coaxt to a white dancing heat that day
Will linger centuries in these towns and loams
And speak to men or beasts
When Japanese and English
Are dead tongues.

Photo below: Gary snyder in his dharma shack in japan c 1955

Or, as a Scottish Potter in Kasama, Japan told me:

"You can always get more money
But you can never get more time."

Happy Pi/ Π Day!

I don’t remember this yunomi. Unusual glazing. The guinomi looks like what I have made before.

https://live.adampartridge.co.uk/images/lot/1144/114445_0.jpg?1600114570

I remember this Jar. It got from Shaller’s to England.

https://live.adampartridge.co.uk/m/lot-details/index/catalog/208/lot/102104

At the Minnesota State Fair. I was asked by a Wellstone Aide if I would be willing to have this work in Paul Wellstone's new office in Washington D.C. "Paul wants Minnesota Art in his office." Sadly, funding for the project never came together. But it was a big creative boost to me for the politician I most admired to have this request made.

Here is a sculpture I made in my first clay class, when I was 36.
Mark Pharis’s TA, Canadian Linda Sikora fired it for me, because the electric kilns in the kiln room were too short, she fired it for me in the Graduate studio where they had extension rings for one of the electric kilns. It was fired several times.

I made this in my first clay class with Curt Hoard at the UofMn in 1990. It is titled "Homage To A Hawaiian Shirt." It is a copy of my favorite Hawaiian Shirt that disintegrated. This was also the year Paul Wellstone was elected. I had this show in the Minnesota State Fair as a part of the Northern Clay Show. An Aide to Paul Wellstone asked if I would consider allowing this to be put in Wellstone's new D.C. office. I said "SURE!" The Aide said that Paul wanted to have Minnesota art in his office. The funding for this project never came through, sorry to say. Much to my disappointment, his piece "disappeared" while I was living in Japan. I am happy I have a photo of it!

This was made during my first ceramics class with Curt Hoard at the UofMN.
It was a hand building class. Coil and paddled. Hand building was required before taking a throwing class.
It was on display at Northern Clay Center when NCC was still in St. Paul. It was my first work seen by Warren MacKenzie and began my informal mentorship with him.

Henko. Ko-Shigaraki clay. Fired in my woodkiln in Mashiko

This was anagama fired in Craig Edward’s kiln in New London, Minnesota. Made of Continental Clay’s wood fire porcelain with Neph Sye “gravel” inclusions. You used to be able to get jars of different mesh Neph Sye from Unimin but its ownership changed hands.

The Seiji (Green) Nuka is Roger's synthetic with 5% copper

carb added. It is in his book.

Roger's Synthetic Nuka

Potspar 35.6
Whiting 21.8
Talc 2
Bone Ash 2
Ball Clay 5.9
Flint 29.7
ferro3134 3.0 (I have subbed wood ash)

add 4% to 5%copper for Sage (Seiji) in Oxidation (white without) Ox or Reduc

I use Nuka white over this tenmoku:

Temmoku cone 9-10

Whiting 17
Custer 33
EPK 10
Flint 40

R.Iron Ox 11



This was the shino I used in Minnesota:

Linda's Shino
Neph Sy 48
Spod 25
EPK 5
Ball Clay 8
SodaSpar 7
Soda ash 4%

Another you might enjoy:

Reeves Synthetic Mashiko Kaki

OM4 11.5
EPK 11.3
KonaF4 31.4
BoneAsh .5
Talc 5.2
Wollastonite 6.5
Silica 27.0
Spanish Irn Ox 6.4
TiO2 .5
MnO2 .2

LG Clear (I use this under Kaki with was resist:
Porcelain and Stoneware

Custer 27
OM4 14
Whiting 20.5
Flint 31.5
EPK 7

Please share any tests!

My friend Tatsuo asked some questions about Taeko Tanaka's pots so I took this photos for him. The one with fruit and oatmeal in it is Jean's morning oatmeal bowl.