Clay
Christopher Greenman
Clay
Montgomery, AL
I have been making pots since 1982. I have my own pottery studio behind my house. I am trying to find my way in the Great Tradition of Pottery (Ken Beittel, who wrote Zen and the Art of Pottery) which combines the world traditions of pottery, from all places and all times. I find great inspiration from the pottery and sculptural ceramic forms that come from the east-Japan, China, Korea. I also look at the Japanese/English Mengie tradition of “folk pottery” -simple unadorned forms made for use made with a knowledge of trying to trying to reconnect the user with the outside world.
I try to make work that where “A certain love of roughness is involved, behind which lurks a hidden beauty, to which we refer in our peculiar adjectives shibui, wabi and sabi. .. It is this beauty with inner implications that is referred to as shibui. It is not a beauty displayed before the viewer by its creator .. a piece that will lead the viewer to draw beauty out of it for themselves. The world may abound with different aspects of beauty. Each person, according to his disposition and environment, will feel a special affinity to one or another aspect. But when their taste grows more refined, they will necessarily arrive at the beauty that is shibui.” The Unknown Craftsman: A Japanese Insight into Beauty, Soetsu Yanagi, 1973.
I try and balance my life between teaching, potting, seeing, listening and experiencing life as much as possible.
Several of the works displayed here are from firings at the University of Montevallo’s anagama kiln. This style of kiln is old technology from Japan that is used today for its firing process’s capability to create natural glaze surfaces that resonate with the concept of shibui.
