Authenticity, My Own Personal Struggle With What It Means

[Chris Campbell]

I don't think so ... A lot of our frequent contributors are off at NCECA ogling pots and talking pots.

 

Your post made me think back to the one I found powerful .....

"you cannot critique and create at the same time because the critic will nuke the creative."

[rayaldridge]

It's true.

 

Before I became a writer, I would read even the most awful science fiction with pleasure.  After, acceptable reading matter got a lot scarcer.

[Judith B]

 

 

What is the Canadian pottery tradition? Should we be searching for it? It is not painting polar bears on plates.

 

 

I ask myself this question all the time.

 

I remember reading an article about how it was hard to be a potter in British Columbia because there wasn't an old tradition of pottery. Rather, the "style" here is a patchwork of recently imported cultures and many potters are struggling because of that. Because yeah, the first nations here are among (said the article) the very few indians people in the world to have no tradition of pottery. It's all about wood here (and it's gorgeous). I don't know if the same can be said about Eastern Canada though.

 

So I think it makes it harder than, say, a European potter, or even an Asian potter, because there,it is a super old tradition.

[jolieo]

Hi Tyler, I just found this post , glad I didn't miss it !

I have no formal training, I am completely self taught. I am originally from Manhattan , and if you haven't seen it there it probably hasn't been done. I came out of a dysfunctional fog of a home, to find at a very early age (4-5) that I was drawn to art. My parents had many books, some of them art books; but the kind that had the saints as pincushions dying with Angels around them in a field. I would pour over these books,which trully didn't have the good stuff, but I couldn't get enough of it. My older sister had the talent, and in my family there wasn't enough room for two of anything, or maybe there was a need for another role, who knows? But drawn as I was to art in at form, I could never hope to actually be an artist. And still I drooled over anything either crafted or created. By the time I realized i was an artist, good ,bad, or indifferent ,I had taken to try to copy ,timidly ,anything current or ancient. I felt horrible because : my copy was invariably displeasing to me; I would feel as if iwas betraying myself because I wasn't coming up with a completely original idea of my own, and I was plagiarizing.

I was neurotic for most of my young adulthood (albeit I do have other issues) , I was drawn to everything, wanted to copy everything , and the guilt was huge . Really youth is so conceited: no dead artist could care, and I was no threat to the live ones.

I was born in nyc, spent from 8-18 in Switzerland,boarding school. A lot of know it all snobs in my world, not a lot of hands on.

Now I have healed myself a good deal. These art traditions started as craft, and craft started from necessity. I really believe that we are built to seek perfection. First to noodle around until we get the craft so it is stable,repeatable,functional. Form will follow function. I believe a lot of "tradition" is just the parameters that are created to keep the form functional. I think this is the nature of craft: creativity kind of dances between the rules, but overall stays true to form. Every once in a while a wildly creative person takes those rules and makes the whole thing stand on its head. Turns it into Art. But they started by essentially coping the guy before them, as the guy before them did. They learned the rules by copying, then learned to master their medium.

The aaahhh I felt as child, would've primed me for being a copier. But we don't do that any more. Maybe Asia does, but we don't. And it really is valid, really doesn't matter who you copy, as long as you stick with one long enough to see how (s)he got there.

If try to paint Whistler's flesh, his cloth, the gleam in the eye, I won't be there yet: I will more likely than not , have to go find someone whose very nature intrigues me, dress them up, pose them, and be unyielding in trying to capture the essence of what intrigues me. Now if I did all that, what would be on the canvas might have started as a copy of a Whistler, but by going the whole journey ,it will have become mine. (Good ,bad or indifferent).

I believe the fact that you or I are so entranced by an object that we want to decipher it's existence, goes way beyond culture. Not every one in Japan is enthralled by pottery, there are many many living there that do not know or care about the history of the tea ceremony. They probably are more cultured than we are ,and that contributes to the long and varied history. But cultural heritage as a motivation seems some what fanatical, and I would rather believe that they would have been driven towards creating no matter the circumstances.

Finding my place for me is to yield to what enthralls me, by first obsessing, deciphering,aaahhing.second is to imitate, assimulate,try to possess. Then comes the sorting out, the let down, because we are not as one. But when I walk away,the process has changed me.when I go to create , something new is in my work(good ,bad or indifferent). And I am Doing, which is what I wanted anyway.

I can go on, but that too makes me happy

[PSC]

I don't understand this word 'copy' in this context. If i try my hand at a form traditionally from another culture why copy...i am inspired by, internalize and the resulting object is not a copy, it is a collection of my experiences thus far in clay influenced by my new experience of this other form. Why should i copy? Its already been done, i just want to learn from the form and see where it will take me. Its like a painted discovering a new color.

 

Culturally speaking, if i were only to be able to explore the forms from my culture. My cultural clay experience ceramically speaking consisted of cheap cast dinner plates with ceramic decals, a cast and an albany slip glazed tea pot, a cheap rabbit cookie jar from kmart, a vintage pig cookie jar that my mom and aunt fought to each keep from their mothers stuff, and a salt glazed 3 gallon straight walled container that still sits outside my front door. Frankly not very inspiring. I never saw a handmade vessel until i walked into the pottery studio at college.

 

I was told once to "be a sponge"...soak up everything you can. Now this is a horrible way to use this analogy but: You ever squeeze out a sponge after wiping down the kitchen counter? Can you separate out the koolaid spill from the orange juice spill from the lemonaid spill as you squeeze that sponge? Nope it has all co-mingled.

 

Think about the first culture to make a bowl...What if the second culture to make a bowl instead said, "i don't want to culturally misappropriate their bowl so we won't make bowls." Now where would we be? Likely bowlless as some tragedy befell that first bowl making cultural.

[jolieo]

"Copy" probably isn't as easy in ceramics, but in fine arts, people copy to learn. I actually didn't know this till later, felt guilty for doing it. Really try to brush stroke for brushstroke copy. It is a method of learning.same way one learns fine penmanship,etc.

[bciskepottery]

"Copy" probably isn't as easy in ceramics, but in fine arts, people copy to learn. I actually didn't know this till later, felt guilty for doing it. Really try to brush stroke for brushstroke copy. It is a method of learning.same way one learns fine penmanship,etc.

 

My Chinese brush teacher learned from her masters by copying their work . . . day in, day out.  She studied bamboo with one master, choi with another, etc.  And, everyday they gave her copies of their paintings and told her to copy them, then copy them again . . . until they were satisfied she had command of the brush stroke, the loading of colors, etc.  That is how she teaches.  Copying the masters is also done in pottery.  You can't break the rules unless you know what the rules are. 

[jolieo]

Yes! But I think for me it is a search to loose the opinions, the over eagerness that says there are short cuts, to find the stillness where I livee. The wax on wax off, I become more me. So hard for me to stay with it, constraints of time, and I fear the initial conflict that I invariably feel.

[curt]

I am not an artist (yet, although I am eyeing it up seriously), so I am mostly footloose and fancyfree on these matters. I also don't have any art training or education, so there goes that prison in a teacup. And I am one of those culturally and geographically displaced people (by choice!) so no polar bear baggage to weigh me down either. And I have never had to deal with the realities of having to make money from my pots, and the choices that ensue. Please pardon any irreverence that results from these conditions, and consider what follows on its own merits even if you think how could this guy have any clue if this is where he is coming from.

 

Ah sweet freedom. Feels like just me, the clay, the making, my learning, my glaze experiments, my endless firings, and the works which result from all this which I wander around in wide-eyed, lost in the woods looking for the path....and.....hmmmm..... prison starting to sound good about now...

 

It would be silly to say that I am not influenced. For instance, many of my pots right now are looking suspiciously like those of some more advanced potters around me. But I just chalk that up to learning, since I see no future in knowingly imitating someone else's work, and I will eradicate any creeping imitation when it gets in the way of progress. Until that point I will just ride it, because it is moving me forward, day by day.

 

Much around us is derivative. Historically derivative, culturally derivative, intellectually derivative, etc.. In fact everything that comes off my wheel is frustratingly, derivatively round just like so many other pots that have come before. And generation after generation of derivation evolves into some mainstream idea of what is good because we are all taught (brainwashed?) locally or globally about the same things. In some places it is polar bears in others it is kangaroos. But derivative is not a dirty word to me, it simply defines the starting conditions that I - and (just as importantly) my audience - are constrained by.

 

This may not be such a problem. I may refuse to be constrained as the maker. And if I am both maker and audience rolled up in one then the dialogue all takes place internally and negotiation - and progress - is always possible. I can tell you from experience one can go on this way for quite some time, although eventually it is not enough.

 

However if the audience is external and I want to have dialogue with them via the medium of my made objects, then I have to recognize those derivative constraints they have about what is approachable subject matter, and respect them. I think if you are successful as a maker you are almost be definition bending these constraints, but rarely if ever can you break them. Bend just enough and you are genius. Bend too far and you will find yourself alone because the audience will have checked out when it all just got too hard.

 

So authenticity is in the eye of the audience. If the audience is you then it is easy to set the goalposts for authenticity wherever you need them to be and you will eventually get there (unless you are paralyzed by the aforementioned "maker/self-critique" paradox). However, if the audience is external, I think you will always be dancing the narrow ridge between "already-been-done" and "what-were-they-thinking?"

 

I think personally that is not a bad way to be. It kind of renders harmless all that head-caving, voodoo stuff about traditions, local relevance, the old masters, etc., etc., If you need that stuff to get making, OK, but just don't waste a lot of time trying to force those round motivators into the square authenticity hole - let them be what they are and keep authenticity separate and pristine.

 

Andy Warhol said something like "make some pots and while everyone else is deciding whether they are authentic or not, just make even more of them." OK, not exactly what he said, but you get the picture. Just you and your audience. Do they like your stuff. If so, keep making it.

[drmyrtle]

 

Trawling around looking at many pots whislt on the road of self discovery.. too much external stimulation unless a strong dispassionate eye is used. "oh, I could make that"  but  Where does this sit in my "room"?

Too many fluctuations, too messy . Less time on  the computer , more on the wheel. Going inward takes much practice.

Back to the artist statement.

The practice of making pot when it is meaningful practice will free your brain from the physical to allow that watchful self to create .

 

Oui, ce ca. Tyler, I have been pondering your original post for a while, and find that it resonates with me in this way. Could you accept the construction that somehow, through what ever miss-mosh of genetic, evolutionary, energetic, personal beliefs, forces, etc. *you* have uniquely arrived at this point in time? With you arrives your history, cultures, traumas, hopes, intellectual teachings as the substrate of you? Then perhaps, you also have arrived here with specifically unique issues or problems to be solved, or at least tinkered with.

 

It is your attempts at solutions to these unique issues or problems is what makes your life interesting to you, and what makes your attempts so interesting to other people who know you well. Your creative output and expressions will reflect exactly your attempt to tinker and find solutions. It isn't that it is easy to know exactly what one's personal issues are, and sometimes it's exasperating to have one's "issues" slap you in the face over (and over, and over) again until you recognize what is happening and say hello and recognize it's existence. Sure, this discovery process hurts sometimes, but if you can step back and consider your original post, I wonder what it says to you? I wonder what the core of your search is?

 

I know you have the answers to those questions, even if you don't have solutions to the problems or tasks. The task of finding authenticity ("I can’t help but feel like I’m betraying myself and my own potential for a naturalistic artistic vision if I carry those desires too far.") is speaking from this highly intellectual Canadian male who speaks crappy Spanish and has a hard time choosing which cup to drink his tea from in the morning. At least that's saying something. Somehow, although I've never seen your work, I'll bet your work say's that too, and if it doesn't, perhaps it should. Some believe that if you don't solve your unique karmic puzzles before you die, some next schlep will be born with the crap you couldn't solve. I surely don't know why anyone is born with the stuff they experience, but I do know it's an interesting place to ponder from.

[Karen B]

The thing about cultural expression is an interesting idea. In Japan the culture was so much more contained, the evolution of the forms so much slower. Here in America, the culture is a true melting pot. To express this culture is not a simple form or idea. It will vary from state to state, town to town, neighborhood to neighborhood. It will never develop like Japanese pottery. That is not a bad thing. It is true. The huge variations and choices we have within our own studios ARE reflective of our culture.

 

When I was studying art (painting) in NYC back in the early 80's, it would not remain 2D. It broke out in 3D with plaster, chicken wire, wax, wood. The museums and galleries reflected a lot of this genre.

 

I spent one summer back then in San Francisco in a painting class at San Francisco Art Institute. I gathered mediums for the class, but all I felt compelled to work with was colored pencils and water colors on paper. 

 

The air, the culture, the smell, the energy, the people, all different. It affected me. 

 

 

Maybe one should take Hamada's comment about adding granite to the clay as just about that specific act.