Recently I heard Jerry Saltz the art critic for New York Magazine speak. It was NCECA (National Council on Education of the Ceramic Arts) week here in Portland and the equivalent of a medium sized town of mostly artists converged upon this city.
Although I’m not particularly interested in the education of my beloved medium, the conference is about so much else - seeing 30 years worth of old friends from all over the world, watching amazing demonstrations, hearing ceramic artists from all over the world talk about their approach, philosophy, technique and of course seeing lots and lots of ceramic art. Just about every gallery in Portland and many additional pop-up spaces were showing ceramic work in conjunction with the conference, it was a pretty exciting week.
For this post I’d like to share some thoughts that stuck with me from Jerry’s talk. I should note first that for most of the talk I was thoroughly entertained by his, witty and whip-smart humor and astute observations, but after awhile I began to feel cheap and icky like I’d been “taken in”.
He has a bit of a smarmy way about him. Maybe he uses excessive flattery to pad his overall criticism so people don’t feel that he is criticizing them as much as he actually is; maybe he just doesn’t want to sound so, well .. critical. I like the charm but think it would have left a better after taste if not poured on quite as thickly.
A points I found worthy of note and not in any particular order:
(these are his points but put into my words)
Artists, deal with your envy and your cynicism - they will KILL your career and your work
Art is over priced, everything should have one less 0
(I passionately disagree and will likely write more about this in another post)Why don’t ceramic artists call themselves “artists”? Practitioners of most other art mediums call themselves artists, why not ceramics?
The ceramics community has always been it’s own thing and proud of it. It has its own world and community that has a lot of fun, is very pack-like and doesn’t really care much about the art world. But the truth is, this isolation has worked against clay folks when it comes to making a living and being valued by society at large.
Ceramics has taken far too long to have its time in the sun as the hip, chic and trendy medium and but it very much needs to be this in order to develop cache in the art world. Breaking down the barrier of the insular clay world is well underway but there’s still distance to go.
- Take the risk of being the artist you actually are, not someone else’s idea of it. Being an artist is both blessing and curse but you wouldn’t be struggling with 2 jobs to support your habit and still living in poverty unless you really need to do this work, so DO it, use YOUR voice. Yes try on others' styles, copy to learn but have the courage to find out why you need to do this.
Do you have the courage of Jasper Johns to have a dream about an american flag, to wake up and actually paint it? We all have dreams that come and go and move on when daybreak comes, but do you listen to what you want to make and have the courage to do it even when it seems completely stupid?
A side note is that Jerry’s wife Roberta Smith is a critic too but for the NY Times. This is a pretty cool thing I think - art critics are few and far between these days and to have 2 in a marriage together strikes me as poetic.
Lastly, as an afterthought I went into the NECEA K-12 exhibition and the below photo is of a piece “Baby Bird” by 12th grader Artur Melika from Council Bluffs, Iowa. A 12TH GRADER!
It so pointedly captures something I’ve thought of but never put into words or form quite so well. The sophistication of concept and technique are really impressive.
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