All text and photographic images are copyrighted. Copyright by Scott Galloway © 2003. All rights are reserved. No section of text, and no photographic image or portion of a photographic image may be copied, printed, distributed or used for any commercial, business or other purpose, or for the purpose of distribution electronically or in any other form without the express written permission of the author. Original photographers retain all rights to the photographs appearing on this page.
This page contains a chapter from the book JOJI, which will be published by Solo Publications in 2003.
In this portrayal of the development of the aesthetic of George Dymesich, Scott Galloway has captured the twin cultural perspectives that drive the potter’s craft. JOJI is the story of a resourceful and rugged American potter who grew up working as a cowboy on a ranch in Northern California, to achieve mastery of his craft through introspection gained from years of working and studying in Japan.
At The Heart of Process
One morning in his kitchen at Glen Canyon Pottery, I asked George Dymesich to explain his view of the linkage between process and creativity. He responded by saying, "I think creativity comes out of process. Especially if you are trying to accomplish two different things. You can get into the rut that I do sometimes where I am making pots and decorating them in the same manner, and using the same glazes. Then I will hit a burst where I will take the same form and try different glazes on it, and the glaze changes the form. So even though I make a whole bunch of cups that look like the ones before them, by changing the glaze it changes the form. I like most of my glazes to move."
Then pointing at a pair of coffee mugs on the table steaming with our morning tea, he added, "For instance, this glaze is pretty static. If you look at these two glazes, I think that this one is a little more interesting. It reminds me of a waterfall. It has that painterly look. Something exciting is happening here. I am working to create that effect. But examine the two cups together. The forms are actually identical."
I looked closely at the two mugs. The mug that George admired was the mug that he chose for his morning tea. He chose the mug because it pleased him aesthetically. It was the satisfying product of his creative process. The mug had been dipped in an saturated iron Ohata red glaze. An ash glaze covered the top third of the mug. The ash glaze moved as it flowed over the Ohata red.
"That is an ash glaze on top of an iron bearing glaze, isn't it?" I asked
"Yes, this is the Ohata Red. George answered, "By dipping it in a coat of ash glaze, just clay and apple wood ash, just a thin coat over it, it changes the melt so that it moves. It runs. You can see where it moved down the surface and around the handle."
I asked George if he felt that process is more important in functional work than it is in sculptural work?
He responded, "No, I don't think so. I think that it is equally important. It's just that the sculptor sees what is there when he starts. But I don't know until I glaze, or perhaps until after the bisque, how I am going to decorate or glaze a piece. My forms are thrown to standards and measurements. It is the glaze application that changes the form."
It was 7:00 AM on the June morning of a glaze firing of George's propane fired kiln. I arrived at Glen Canyon Pottery too late for the beginning of the firing. George was out of bed and dressed by 5:30 AM. The kiln was lit by 5:45 AM. He started the flame slowly, cracking all of the vents on the kiln, and allowing only a candle flame to lick against the shelves of the kiln.
At 6:45 AM when I drove into his driveway, George was closing the door. He held a small mirror against the top peep hole. That morning there was no steam on the mirror when George pulled it back from the peep hole. Lack of steam signified that the ware was fully dry. It was safe to increase the gas pressure. He set the flame higher by adjusting the flow of propane so that the kiln temperature would rise by 100 degrees centigrade per hour. Then he walked back up to the house to make breakfast.
At the breakfast table I asked George whether he thought that potters who produce functional pottery can be leaders in cultural expression today, or whether he believed that the role of the modern potter is primarily in the preservation of traditional or archaic form. We talked for awhile about the role of the potter in modern society and came to no conclusion. Finally I said, "When people come out here to see your work, they are not coming to see George Dymesich's urban forms in some Soho Gallery, they are coming out into the forest, where there is this barn like studio, in a yard with a creek running through it. Is the whole approach getting back in touch with a lost art? Is it nostalgia? They come out here and they really feel like they have been somewhere both physically and temporally that is other than the place they live."
George looked at me for a brief moment, and answered simply, "And its raining today. Come on. Let's check the kiln."
On the way down the path to the kiln I realized that George had been saying in effect, " Yes, this is a different time and place than the place from which we have come, and it is raining today in the middle of June. The full wet rainy day is before us, and the kiln should have risen to 200 degrees. There is no place or time like it on earth."
We walked down the driveway in the gentle rain. The second growth redwood trees towered 100 feet above the barn studio. Water dripped from the ends of their bowed branches. As we approached, I could hear the muffled roar of the burners at the burner holes. The kiln is located in a kiln building that houses George's working kiln. The building also covers a partially completed kiln built of bricks recycled from an old salt kiln at UCSC. The working kiln is a twelve cubic capacity updraft kiln. It is built of two layers of hard brick held together by an iron frame. The burner table holds seven vertical burners which penetrate the floor of the kiln. When we reached the kiln it was 8:05 AM. The kiln temperature had risen to 200 degrees centigrade.
George lifted a clip board from the top of the unfinished kiln. He wrote the time and temperature on the clip board. It is his custom to keep precise records of each firing.
George spent the rest of that rainy June morning watching the kiln temperature climb slowly as he adjusted the flame, until it reached 575 degrees centigrade by mid day. He occupied his spare time working in the studio. Since it was raining and I was with him for the early part of the firing, we sat for a while in the studio and talked. I was occupied with my inquiries into his relationship with clay. I scarcely noticed his actions as he selected a bag of premixed white clay and wedged it into two pound cones for throwing. Then he went to the wheel and began to work. His throwing project for the morning was a series of udon bowls with a classic "S" shaped cross section, standing on a formal foot ring. When they were trimmed and glazed, only a hint of the white clay body would show. He would leave unglazed only a one eighth inch margin at the bottom to prevent the bowls from sticking to the shelves. Although he previously told me that he does not attempt to visualize the glaze until the form is taken from the bisque kiln, I enjoyed imagining the finished forms glazed in George's metallic black, with a quarter of each bowl dipped in a mixture of rice hull ash and ball clay. The effect would be a splash of color running down into the center of the bowl, and down the outside edge; the colors of the earth from space, a swirl of blues, whites and browns.
George placed one of the cones on the wheel. His powerful hands in three movements, in and up and then down, centered the clay on the wheel head. With the tips of his fingers he opened the centered clay. Then with his right knuckle and the index finger of his left hand he raised the walls of the form. It took the shape of a terra-cotta flower pot. With the flat side of a teak wood rib he worked the outside of the form, packing the clay tightly with the rib as the evened the walls of the pot. Finally with the rounded side of the same rib, he began to work the rib from a point at three o'clock as he faced the wheel, down into the bottom of the pot pulling the rib towards him into the six o'clock position as he stretched the form of the pot into a broad bowl shape.
George packed the bottom of the pot before lifting the rib vertically from the clay. With the form filled out he selected a tombo, a Japanese measuring device consisting of three pieces of split bamboo, to measure the width and depth of the bowl. He made a slight almost imperceptible adjustment to the bowl shape, widening the rim slightly as he passed the rib once more from the lip to the bottom of the bowl. Again he measured with the tombo. Next he traded the tombo for a split bamboo cutting tool known in Japan as a takebera. With the takebera, he cut a small angled ring of clay from the base of the bowl. Then with a needle tool, he separated the ring from the wheel head and deftly pulled it away from the form. He cut the bowl from the wheel head with a piece of knotted string attached to a small dowel end. With the edge of the index finger and thumb of his left hand and the edge of the palm of his right, he lifted the bowl from the wheel head and set it on a ware board opposite the wheel.
The second cone of clay was centered almost immediately. The process continued with neither of us speaking more than a few words. I studied his deliberate and consistent movements. By the third bowl, there was no longer a need to pass the rib for a second time down the inner surface of the bowl after measurement of the form with the tombo.
At 9:05, George rose from the wheel, wiping his hands on the towel that lays across his lap when he throws. He walked outside into the rain to read the pyrometer on the kiln. He had been throwing for forty five minutes. He had completed nine udon bowls. The bowls squatted on their ware boards in mute echo to an earlier conversation. He had been throwing twelve bowls an hour.
The pyrometer reading indicated that the kiln had climbed 60 degrees since the last reading. The firing schedule was on target. The rain was lighter now. The humidity would affect the firing. Slight adjustments would be made in the firing cycle. It would not be a predictable firing for the month of June.
George returned to the wheel to make more udon bowls. I began our conversation again where we had abandoned it at the breakfast table. "What is it then that makes people want to drive out into the woods or the countryside to see a potter in his studio?"
George looked up at me from the half formed udon bowl on the wheel head. "I think it is the passion."
"Passion?" I asked not understanding the relevance of his chosen word.
Turning back to the wheel, he answered as he worked methodically, "Yes I think so. It is something that I have found over the years, I've come in contact with a lot of students over the years from a lot of professions and a lot of backgrounds, but you don't find too many people who have a real passion for what they do. There are a few, like Joel Mangen, Sandy Deal and some of the other students that I've had. For the most part, people doing whatever they do every day for a living don't really have a passion for what they do, or if they do, then it is short lived. But most of the potters that I've worked with over the years have this drive. It is almost a diabolical drive. It is a drive to keep working at their craft." You can name some of the great artists who sacrificed themselves for their art, suffered great personal hardship for their art, cut off their ears, and weird things like that. Maybe you have felt that way about something. Maybe you felt that way about sports when you were in high school, or maybe it was something else, but whatever it was, but it captured your whole life at the time, your whole energy."
"So," I returned, "You have that feeling with clay?"
"Yeah, yeah."
"You were referring to Van Gogh cutting off his ear. That kind of passion?"
George laughed, "I don't take passion that far."
"Today, you are firing. Are you one of these potters who will still be up at three in the morning watching the last cone go down, or do you have things timed for a 6:00 AM to 6:00 PM firing schedule?"
"No," George answered, I just stretch it out. Whenever it ends, it ends. Some potters have an eight hour firing schedule, a twelve hour firing schedule or a fifteen hour firing schedule. I just keep going with it till it feels like its right." I may be finished by dinner or it may be after midnight. It is moist today. It may be longer."
Returning to passion, I asked, "But do you obsess on your craft to the point that you deny yourself nutrition."
Every inch of his husky form shook with laughter. He was for a moment distracted from the wheel. "No, no, I want to feel good about this all the way around."
"Van Gogh bought paint instead of food. His brother, Theo, would send him money for food, but he would buy paint with it instead and just go hungry," I continued in pursuit of passion.
"No. It should be enjoyable. It is an enjoyable passion, not a destructive passion. Sorry," George apologized, becoming deeply serious. "The Van Gogh comparison is way out there. I mean that is really reaching. The potters I have known have, and certainly I have a less destructive form of passion about our life's work."
Attempting unfairly to lead him a little in this direction of inquiry, I said, "Well, I have some of those obsessive traits. I studied under you in night school, and then I went home to my studio and trimmed pieces I threw the day before. There was a period of time for a couple of years when I had three night work meetings a week every week, and I had pots drying at home on a lot of those nights. I would come home at 11:00 at night from one of those meetings and work until two in the morning in a cold studio, and then go to bed, and sometimes I would think, 'Boy I hate this. Boy I hate this craft,' but still I kept working at it, striving to improve my skill."
George laughed again, "Well when I was at UCSC it was like that for me. Everything was structured around whatever little free time I had. After night classes, I went home and trimmed pots until late in the night, because it had been twenty-four hours before I could get back to them. It was either trim or lose them."
"You were trying to hold down a job, go to college, teach and at the same time do your own work in clay. Without a kiln of your own, you were running across town to fire your pottery, weren’t you?
George paused again from his work at the wheel. "I had a carpet in the back of my truck and I would lay my plates and bowls on that carpet, because the carpet would more or less hold them in place after I had glazed them at home. Then I would drive across town very slowly, hoping that I wouldn't have to hit my brakes."
"If you really think about what you did to become a potter, it is amazing."
"Yes" George answered " That was probably pretty obsessive." Then he laughed again.
"It is really about being a potter against all odds."
"Its not the most ideal situation, having your wheel in your bedroom," George chuckled. He had been an urban potter, He had lived in an urban environment. Yet he attempted to engage in a craft form that is integrated with the soil and is born of fire.
"Do you think that the economics of pottery will permit new potters to develop that type of passion, and establish their own kilns?" I asked.
George provided a studied response to my question. "Pottery in the United States has largely been a rural craft, wedded to the land. In the sense of the economics of it, it is more difficult now. If you look into the history of pottery in the United States, commercially in the sense of the small pottery, there were two or three craftsmen working in a small studio, or maybe a potter on the East Coast working alone on his pottery. It really is more difficult, but there are still a lot of independents out in their own studios making their own pots. Some of them are making good money at it, but I think the majority of them are working in clay because it is something they really like doing. Somehow they survive. Somehow they buy a house and a little piece of property, get married and have kids They are making pottery and somehow they make it work. Perhaps they have a part time job on the outside, but they are not so obsessed with being an artist potter that they destroy themselves."
So finally I asked George, "So, do you think that the people who come out here to see your studio feel your passion? Is that what draws them out here?"
George rose from the wheel. It was again time to check the kiln. As he wiped the white slurry from his hands, he answered. "It is something that I have found over the years, that the people who practice this craft have a passion for their work." The work reflects that passion." As I pondered his answer, I could hear George's voice through the open doorway. "We're at 370 degrees."
It was time for me to leave Glen Canyon Pottery. I had an appointment in Santa Cruz. I left George to finish the firing alone.
As I reflected on our morning conversation I was struck by George's concepts of passion and craft. George had initially used the passion of self sacrificing artists to illustrate his definition of the passion he feels for clay. Yet when we attempted to go deeper into this parallel, we found that the passion for craft, as obsessive and life consuming as it can be, is a different form totally than the passion of the artist. Art as I have earlier stated is an act of ritual. It is an act of symbolism. Art is ethereal. It is of the spirit. It is the precursor to and an expression of religion. Craft may be, but is not by its nature, a vehicle for artistic expression. It is instead the functional expression of the merging of the material with the human spirit for a purely functional purpose.
Consider what Henry Ford invented, and how his invention affected Western society. His invention was not the automobile. That had already been developed by somebody else. It was instead the assembly line, and mass production with it. Through that invention, Western society succeeded in increasing the apparent standard of living for urban populations. At the same time we dehumanized production and the people who produced the work.
Consider the potter laboring away prior to the industrial revolution in a small shop of two or three or ten. Note the virtual death of that trade as a craft after the beginning of the industrial era. I have been for sometime an advocate of developing a post industrial economy which is craft oriented and bioregional, tied closely to an agricultural base which is also bioregional. The advent of the craft movement in the 60's could have been the beginning of such a post industrial economy, but I suspect that it was not.
I prefer to think of the craft movement as germinal. I hope that society through the presence of craft around us in our daily lives will come to see the value in the product of an individual's hands. It is a complete product, produced by an individual, not by a corporation. It is a product which is a complete thought made physical by human effort. The inventor, the designer and the builder of the product are the same human being, a human being with passion for his or her life's work. Perhaps this is why people are attracted to the country potteries that lie just outside their industrialized cities. Perhaps after all George is correct. Perhaps it is the passion of the potter they seek.
Two hours after I left, the kiln passed the quartz inversion point At 573 degrees centigrade. George turned the propane pressure up to to increase the temperature acceleration rate to 80 degrees per hour. If the day had been hot as June days can be in Glen Canyon, George would have continued to throw bowl forms all morning. By early afternoon, he would have finished throwing the last bowl. He would then begin the trimming process. It is a cycle he appreciates but does not take for granted. Too much depends on the process of water leaving clay as the bowls change from wet to leather hard.
It was not a dry day however. The rain turned to a mist at 3:00 PM. The sky cleared at 4:30 PM. George noted both in his log book. He continued to throw bowls until late into the afternoon. When all of the available racks were filled with bowl laden ware boards, he occupied himself by milling mud stone. He had collected the mud stone from the hill side above his home on the previous day. He broke the mud stone chunks with a mallet. Then he went to work with his mortar and pestle, grinding the mud stone into powder. Periodically, he checked the kiln. The temperature continued to climb at 200 degrees per hour.
The kiln damper was kept open so that the kiln fired in oxidation until it reached 1225 degrees centigrade. Cone 8 dropped. At this temperature the pyrometer is no longer accurate. George then reduced the damper aperture to begin the process of glaze reduction. Although in his earlier years he followed the recommended cycle for body reduction, George now primarily works with white and light gray clay bodies. He has decided to forego body reduction. Body reduction offers no benefit to light clay bodies.
George measured the medium reduction by the appearance of the atmosphere in the kiln and the length of the flame that protruded from the bottom peep hole on the door of the kiln. George prefers to reach this stage after dark so that the color of the kiln can be more accurately measured by the human eye. The anticipation of the climax of the firing cycle grew with the aging of the day, until in the starlit forest night, the kiln, with burners roaring at maximum pressure struggled to attain cone 10 at 1260 degrees centigrade. The potter was welded to its side, checking the glaze reduction as he brought the kiln up to temperature.
As the kiln approached 1260 degrees work in the studio ceased. George's attention was focused on the kiln. He held a cup of coffee in his hand. "It was going to be a late night," he thought. When cone ten finally dropped, the kiln was still firing in medium reduction. George opened the damper again to oxidize the atmosphere. He soaked the kiln at 1260 degrees centigrade for one and one half hours.
An almost magic silence overtook the forest when George at last turned the valve on the gas line and closed up the kiln. The roaring of the burners stopped. George could hear a chorus of crickets chirping in the meadow grass. There was the noise of the crickets, and the crackling noise the bricks make as they cool. There was no other noise.
At the end of a January firing, as the kiln goes silent, with its orange light of incandescent pots glowing like jack o lanterns behind a double row of bricks, George can hear the water rushing over the fall beneath the bridge on the footpath leading up to the house. The stars, with their own distant incandescence, light the midnight sky as he leaves the kiln. In their twinkling there is an almost detectable crackling in the sudden silence, like the crackling of the cooling bricks of the kiln.
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