(Listed In The Order Of My Discovery)
As a long-time surfer, I was stoked when I first saw George Ohr’s mud babies. That was also my reaction to my first ceramics class and my first tai chi lesson. All of these activities—surfing, making things out of clay, doing tai chi—embody a tension between a disciplined, balanced core and an expressive and sometimes explosive flow of movement. They’re meditative and solitary, and they’re tribal at the same. And, putting aside the Zen business, they’re a whole lot of fun! Ideas are important, but they don’t mean a thing if they ain’t got that zing.
I suppose it was impudent and maybe imprudent to want to be a member of a George Ohr tribe, to attach my work to that of an artist who was so clearly one of a kind. But, as with surfing and ceramics and tai chi, he was irresistible to me. I saw his pots and I wondered, How do you do that? And then I just wanted to see if I could.
It took several years to learn to work in the way of George Ohr—to throw thin and to execute the twists, dents, pinches, ruffles and collapses (controlled or otherwise). These techniques are more akin to glassblowing, as is Ohr’s method of working on the top and bottom of a piece at more or less the same time. Many of his glazes are also very glassy; it was a challenge to develop my own glazes in the Ohr spirit.
When you adopt someone’s methods, inevitably you will arrive at many of the same conclusions, but you hope you can push a little farther, past mere emulation, or perhaps in a different direction. Standing on George Ohr’s shoulders is no easy feat: it’s a balancing act, like trying to stay on your board atop a wild wave. I know there are many more waves out there in several vast oceans, but this one has been a great ride.