The Ceramics Reader : Brickyard Ceramics~Complexity grounded in basic things/movements

A sanctuary for promise.

Clay carries more than form. It carries energy, scale, repetition, accident and the histories of those who have worked with it. The brickyard becomes a field of material possibilities: abundance, excess, misfiring, construction and movement. Fired clay remains marked by these conditions. What appears as a ceramic body is therefore also a body of accumulated encounters, carrying making beyond the moment in which it was formed.

Clay+Ceramic : Complexity grounded in basic things.

A source of energy, intense and exuberant in the early days, more subtle in later decades, but always leaving its mark on so many artists' work.

The Archie Bray Foundation : A Legacy Reframed.

Patricia Failing.

But the Bray energy field left its mark on ceramics history did not emanate from the early production pottery alone. The Foundation provided unique opportunities in the early 1950s, and not all were associated with celebrity visitors. LaMar Harrington remarked on one of the most significant contributions the Bray made to Peter Voulkos's artistic development:

It was the sheer abundance of material. He could be as prolific as he could be and throw the biggest pots he could throw in part because he had carloads of clay-enough clay to absorb his tremendous energy. I don't think he would have become the artist he did without that opportunity. I also think the look of the brickyard-the slag heaps and misfired bricks-had some effect on the style of his later work. As for Rudy Autio, the slab constructions he made for architectural commissions at the Bray gave him some of the insights that came together in those large figurative pieces of the 1960s.

The Ceramics Reader.

Fired Clay : Markings and Volumes.

russellmoreton.com

This is a very different body.

“Clay+Ceramic : Complexity grounded in basic things.”

And then the remarkable movement through abundance of material → energy → clay → Voulkos → brickyard → misfired bricks → slab construction → architectural commissions.

That makes it extremely relevant to your current thinking about the material persistence of ceramic.

 

First constellation — Ceramic Bodies

Making Matter(s)~Truth

Overspilling Forms

The Ceramics Reader / Brickyard Ceramics

Making Iterations / Procedures

Working Notes : Clay, Interior Skins of Light and Dark