Searching for Beauty

I would like to think, perhaps due more to my sweet disposition and naiveté than realistic appraisal, that potters and ceramics artists are somehow superior in their tolerance and acceptance of others than the average run-of-the mill person who cannot create those marvelous pots and wondrous ceramic artifacts.  Please do not rob me of my illusions if that is not the case, I could not bear it.  We all unconsciously ingest the toxic prejudices of our society as we are nurtured and developed within its cultural envelope.  There have been tremendous improvements in my lifetime in regard to whole categories of people that have suffered bias in the past.  These victims of past prejudice unfortunately form more than half of our population; including women, people of color, the physically disabled, and those of a different sexual orientation.  How has this historical reality impacted ceramics?  Is it still operating today in ceramics, perhaps in a more discreet and subtle form?  I started writing letters several years ago to a women potter in San Francisco.  Those letters later become a book.   As a young teacher I taught mainly students of color in schools in low-income areas.  Later, as a teacher educator, most of my students were women seeking to become professional educators. I was committed to a world where these distinctions in differences, often representing various forms of prejudice and discrimination, should not have been permitted to obstruct the full development and potential of all human beings.

The history of ceramics differs in different cultures.  In many indigenous cultures, women were and are the makers of pots.  In Western society in the 19^th century, where the production of ceramics became an industrial process conducted in a factory setting, women were not allowed to throw the pots but only to decorate them.  I still have a teapot in my pottery gallery, a blank porcelain piece from Bavaria, hand-painted in an Art Deco design by my mother in 1925.  It was quite fashionable in those days for women in the middle and upper classes to refine their genteel status by taking classes in the hand painting of porcelain ware meant for domestic purposes.  My mother never worked outside her home.

That teapot has great sentimental value for me now but I am glad that much has changed since then.  I would guess that at least half of the art pottery pieces in my home were made by women – not just the finishing decorative touches   – but the entire work.   What does that say about where we are in ceramics when it comes to the relationship and status of men and women? Is this not good news?

In my book “Searching for Beauty: Letters from a Collector to a Studio Potter”, I write about the status of women in the arts and crafts. In my 7^th letter to Christa Assad, I talk about how the invidious effects of gender stereotypes impact both men and women,

“I am not oblivious to possible gender distinctions in discussing friendship.  In the popular culture of my youth, women were not thought capable of friendship with other women.  According to this logic, due to the need to compete for men, they were natural competitors in the sexual and marital arena.  Embedded in western culture, the fraternal urges of men for other men’s company was considered normal and natural, be it the exclusive gentlemen’s club of the nineteenth century or the college fraternity of the twentieth.  Sports promoted the team spirit of those athletics dominated by boys and men.  I know that much has changed in our culture and I am not sure how the impact of that historical residue still haunts the efforts of women.  What about contemporary potters?  Your pottery partners are women.  Do men control the galleries, ceramics publications, and university ceramics departments?  To what degree are these issues safely buried in the past and to what degree do they still operate in your world?  Sexism did not only restrict the temporal advancement of women, it also sought to define their very character and nature.  In my youth, you would have been counseled into Home Economics classes to prepare you for domestic chores.  I ended up in ‘shop’ classes where I made things with wood and metal.  There was

an invidious reverse side to this. My memories of gender bias as a boy and young man involved in the arts were the vague unease of family and friends.  For a boy caught drawing and painting, for a young man to aspire to be an artist was not only a retreat from the manly contests of the marketplace but a sign of ‘effeminate’ tendencies.”

As an adolescent boy, however I loved to paint and draw, the dread of being called a sissy was always lurking close by on the playground and in the classroom.  Do you have personal stories to tell about how your gender identification influenced your experience in ceramics?  Did you ever get signals from the culture that somehow your gender status was a negative factor in your role as a ceramic artist?  Tell me this is indeed a brave new world and my stories are just the obsolete memories of an old man.

I will return to my first thought.  I would still like to believe that there is a different culture in the crafts that includes the full acceptance of all your colleagues who strive to create beauty out of clay and there is a loving community of makers who would not tolerate practices and behavior that diminished the opportunities of other members of that community.  Please tell me that my hopes are grounded in the world in which you exercise a creative process that produces those results which have filled my home with ceramic treasures.