Michael Schwegmann Artist Statement:

Getting started:

My desire to make ceramics initiated from watching a professional potter at work on the potter’s wheel.  There is grace, fluid motion, and what looks like magic to the uninitiated.  There is also a confidence and mastery present when watching any kind of craftsman at work.  I wanted to have that mastery. 

After a while of making a bunch of shapes on the wheel, I needed to finish and fire them.  Anyone can get a wheel and throw some pots with enough practice, but it gets complicated after that.  The challenges with ceramics include physical coordination, sensitivity to the drying and the stress points of a material that changes from the consistency of mud to the hardness of rock, and a deluge of technical knowledge regarding chemical calculations, mineral properties, and firing atmospheres and protocols.  On top of these things, an understanding of solid design and some creativity is required. 

I gathered a lot of this information and still felt like I wanted to keep going.  Making pottery seemed a sustainable solution: I could continue to work with clay, and then sell the final product to pay for it all. 

A little philosophy:

Though I have made pots for years as my sole income, I have always first considered the stuff I make as sculptures, even when they are “obviously” pots.  This is to say, I am primarily concerned with my work having the right balance of form and surface, the attention to detail that an artist brings to his work.  If it is a piece of pottery, it needs to meet the obvious conditions of “use”, but I also want it to function as a presence of grace and mastery.

I believe that the function of something I make is not complete if it meets only what we consider the baseline of hands-on use.  For example, a plastic milk jug pours perfectly, is lightweight, you can see how much is left without picking it up, it will not break when you drop it, it is cheap, it takes up little space in the recycle bin or trash heap.  In many ways it is superior to a ceramic jug.  So why make a ceramic jug if the plastic one is superior?

There is not a difference between good sculpture and good pottery, but in my time making a living selling art pottery, I know that most people think of pots and sculpture as two different things.  Often times this is the case--we can say there are bad sculptures and bad pots.  Another complication is that many United States audiences have been raised to associate “pottery” with “common knick-knack”, “grandma’s painted figurines”, or “brown, heavy, and ugly”.  When one says “pottery”, many people are expecting the exact opposite of the kinds of things I make.  So often the response I hear when people come into my shop, “I wasn’t expecting this!” I have always worked to improve my design and craftsmanship, to go beyond the basics.  My intent has been to make good sculptures, good pots.

Currently:

What I decided to do recently was increase the physical scale of the work.  Make them larger than typical functional size and a few things happen.  No longer are they regarded as “pots” by most people, and the larger pieces do not face the immediate dismissal that often faces pottery.  They become more sculptural, more figural.  We are more acutely aware of the details, the surfaces, the failures or successes of the forms, and concerned less about what kind of fruit goes in the bowl.  More of the audience begins to see in the larger pieces what I have been seeing in the smaller pieces.  Also, the technical challenge of the increased scale is a refreshing change for me when I have felt complete control over pottery-size pieces for many years.  The scale has also changed the relationships of the forms and opens up new design challenges.

What inspiration? 

A lot of what I make comes right out of the process of moving clay around.  One of the things I enjoy most is the time I have to work without interruption.  I intend to convey that.  I also know that I can get a little too involved in the showmanship that can come with mastery of a material.  There is so much technical knowledge and skill to be demonstrated that at times it is tempting to show off.  But technical information and skill should be tools, not answers.  The purpose of art is to get its audience to start asking questions.

So I look at sources other than clay for inspiration.  These sources include the human form and skins, architecture, industrial objects, and the spaces in between things. I am interested in the transitions between objects, and the effects of time and environment on the objects themselves.  I make this stuff to help me answer questions. What changes happen when one object presses against another? What about the space, or change of space, between objects?