Kathy Kearns: A journey through the poetics of pottery
– With Chloe Tsolakoglou – July 2019 –
When I picked up my phone to dial Kathy Kearns’ number, I felt an immediate sense of longing. The afternoon heat in Colorado had exhausted me, and thunder clouds slowly sutured the sky around the Rockies. Prior to conducting our phone interview, I had spent the week researching her work and her website, and we had only emailed each-other information about ourselves. Asynchronous communication came to define our embryonic relationship, but I remained curious about many things — I wondered what Kathy’s voice would sound like, and how it might be imbued with fervor and excitement when talking about art.However, what I knew was this: Kathy is a potter residing in Crockett, California, and she follows her Greek roots with ardent passion. She grew up in Boulder, Colorado, and subsequently got her degree in Ceramics in college. Kathy has been a potter for about forty years, and has operated her studio in Crockett since 1994.
After a few dial tones, Kathy picked up the phone. The sound of her voice calmed my heart a bit; it was soft but precise, and I felt my confidence return to me — one of the first questions Kathy asked me was how to pronounce my last name. Diasporic nostalgia is instilled in most ethnic groups, and I got that sense from Kathy when she talked about how her grandmother had immigrated from the Peloponnese in 1921. Although we have very different upbringings, our Greek roots sprung forth and birthed a common cultural memory; I spelled out my last name for her using the Greek alphabet, and took pleasure in hearing her repeat the letters back to me with precision and glee. Kathy has spent the last couple of summers travelling around Greece and piecing together an almost metaphysical experience — she has participated in an artist’s residency in Crete where she combined her abundant knowledge of ceramics with the archaic knowledge of the island. What is lost in fragmented time and displacement can be made up for in tender communication and intuition.
Culture lives in the body, and when you visit your homeland this state of being is especially heightened. But what happens when we have more than one homeland? How does it inform our artistic practice? On the phone, Kathy mentioned how she came of age in Boulder, and how she considered that her homeland too. I was born to an American mother and a Greek father, so I resonated deeply with Kathy’s contemplations. It can be confusing when your body is split between two places — like a tear in the fabric of time and being. When I asked her a bit more about her family, she talked about how both of her parents were artistically inclined: her father was a faculty member in the Music Department of CU Boulder and her mother practiced pottery as well. Kathy grew up around art and clay; it was almost an extension of her body. Her mother kept a wheel in the garage of their home and Kathy got to practice when she was in Junior High — it was the beginning of her own artistic lineage and the continuation of her family pathos.
When I was drafting questions for our interview, I tried to consider how much of an embodied practice pottery is. You lean into the clay and it leans into you; working with the wheel requires a tremendous amount of physical and mental concentration. I also wanted to rope in our common cultural facets, and how Kathy’s background has influenced the way she creates art.
Kathy and her work.
What immediately strikes me in your artistic practice is your devotion and interest in history. Given our shared Greek heritage, I see parts of myself in you and resonate with that sentiment. Can you speak to how Ancient Greek pottery has influenced your own practice — either overtly or covertly?
I look at many ancient cultures in terms of their clay art work, but the order and elegance of the Greek pieces resonate with me, maybe because of my heritage. Often I will mimic a form, or a pattern, which I see as universal in nature. For example, spirals are patterns used in all cultures and bowls are a useful shape for food. When you look at an object, you take into consideration all of its combined histories — it has a life to it.
I’m also interested in how clay was used in a functional way, both ritually and as a practical way to store food. Ceramics is one of the first advanced technologies that enabled people to settle somewhere, instead of following the food source. Clay has been accompanying all of humanity for 30,000 years. I feel a part of that continuum.
At this point in the interview, Kathy also mentioned how she utilized the concept of the “ostracon” in one of the classes she taught at Solano Community College. She named the piece Judgement of Shards, part of a larger series named Election, and combined the Ancient Greek practice of ostracizing — which was enacted by writing the names of political figures on the ostracon — with current political tensions. Kathy had prepared shards of clay and encouraged people to carve the names of political figures they wanted to see eliminated. When the piece was complete, Kathy stuffed an amphora-looking vessel with all of the shards she had collected. Kathy said “I don’t set out to make political art, but the personal is political.”
Judgement of Shards.
You say “A functional pot becomes complete by the act of use: by filling it up and emptying it.” Here, I am interested in the concept of the vessel and how artists also engage in the acts of filling and emptying. We give birth to work after we’ve brimmed with inspiration. Do you view your artistic practice as an extension of yourself or as a separate state of ‘ecstasy’?
For me the act of working and the rhythm of the processes of clay work is engaging, and a process of hands and heart together. Wedging clay balls to prepare to throw a dozen cups on the wheel is a meditative act. Sitting down at the wheel and spinning a family of cup shapes is centering to me — literally. When you find that stillness of the center it feels right and embodied. I have never wanted a job where I file or type, I enjoy the methodical acts of throwing clay, like moving boards around or getting up and moving around. You’re in control of all of it.
With the rise of industrialization, however, people operated machines instead of actually working with the clay. They had their cup molds and made everything look alike, so there was an aesthetic of sameness present. A potter, however, creates pieces that look like they’re members of the same family — similar but not exactly the same. They take into consideration the form they’re working with.
How do you incorporate the concept of ‘ritual’ in your art? I understand that potters have to follow a certain methodology when they are throwing clay, but do you have any rituals that are uniquely yours?
I get my workspace, my tools, my clay all in an order that I have found works efficiently for me. I may listen to an audible book, if I am doing something repetitive. Or I listen to music, or just have silence. I don’t know if there’s anything too unique in what I do. There is such a privilege in being able to be in your own space and doing what you want to do–not worrying about anybody watching you or what they might be thinking about what you’re doing.
I chuckled when Kathy said that there is nothing too unique about her practice, because even the ritual of listening to an audible book is something that is particular. When we grow into ourselves we don’t realize that our lives are unique and uncanny in their own ways. Familiarity permeates our practice — I know that I would never be able to concentrate on my writing if I had a book playing in the background.
I especially love how the concepts of decoration and form are integral to your artistic practice — you remark “I am in awe of the virtuosity of our potter predecessors: the complexity of form, the color, the pattern, how THIN!”. The curvature of a well-made pot speaks to something deeply feminine. Do you feel like there is a divine feminine inspiration in your art? How do you incorporate it?
I’m not sure I understand what exactly the “divine feminine” is — working intuitively, having compassion and a certain sensitivity? I do think about the pots I make having a gesture, and parts of pots are named for the body….and a vessel is a body! Many pottery forms have such human characteristics: lips, bellies, arm or ear like handles, etc. I think about the user and how my pot will feel to their hands and to their lips. I was disappointed to learn that so many (all?) great Greek vessels were made by men. The wonderful Minoan work, which is my favorite, may have been made by women. That work is so full of life and humanity!
I told Kathy that there is no right or wrong answer for the divine feminine, and that everyone has a different understanding. The sensuality that exists within Kathy’s work could be a nod to the femininity of her practice.
The basic need to share food and drink in our communities draws a parallel to how an artist’s basic instinct is to create. How do you feel that you have evolved as an artist over the years and what role has your community played in this process?
The best compliment I get is when someone tells me that they reach for my cup every morning. In a funny way I feel like I get to be present in people’s most intimate setting: their homes. Tactility is a big part of pottery. You hold it, you fill it, lift it, caress it when you wash it. It brings a tactile experience to people’s lives. I love that it is a functional art form. My work is in use in people’s homes all over the country, and abroad. And then it gets dropped and breaks — but the shards are around for 10,000 more years! I have also made some non functional pieces that utilize shards.
Kathy shares with me that during a trip to Greece in 2019, she created a piece, titled “Trail of Daedalus”, composed of shards at the Mudhouse Art Residency.
I went to the Mudhouse Residency in the rustic village of Agios Ioannis intending to draw and paint, which I did. By the second week I was picking up clay shards on the pathways through the village and used them for the substrate of my paintings. I also gathered wire from the ruins of abandoned homes that exist side by side with lavishly renovated ones. Using the wire as structure to hold the shard paintings, this piece is both a found object and a newly created artwork. In Greek mythology Daedalus was a skillful architect, craftsman and artist whose inventions advanced civilization and sometimes caused destruction. Think of the wax wings that he built for his son Icarus, the great Labyrinth on Crete, and the wooden cow he made for Pasiphae. This piece was inspired by his sense of transformation and invention.
Trail of Daedalus.
Pottery as an art form requires a deeply embodied presence as it engages both the mind and the hands. How do you think it compares to other artforms and what makes it stand out? Have you experimented with other artistic outlets?
There is a craft and an art to every art form, be it painting, printmaking, sculpture or clay. I am attracted to the physicality of clay, to its 3 dimensional qualities. It is not a representation of something… It is THE something…
Pithoi in Kiln.
If you would like to support Kathy’s artistic practice, you can find out more here.
