A Heritage of Art | Alex Matisse | Episode 135

Alex Matisse grew up in a converted white clapboard church in the center of a small New England town in a family of artists. For three years, Alex apprenticed in the workshops of North Carolina potters Matt Jones and Mark Hewitt. Their work combines traditions, from the Anglo-Oriental school of Leach, Hamada, and Cardew to the folk pottery of the south-eastern United States and many places between. In their workshops Alex learned to love simple pots; adorned or bare, quiet and strong, they make their place comfortably in the home and speak to the thousands of years of pots before them, and all that is to come. Alex's work is made in a fusion of pre-industrial country traditions in both process and material. It is fired in a large wood burning kiln and made of as many local materials as the chemistry will allow. Ales believes in the beautiful object; that there are inescapable aesthetic truths, physical attributes, that remove time and place from the defining characteristics of the made object. These objects can be viewed today or many years from now and be understood as beautiful. Though their quotidian value may become antiquated, their aesthetics will save them. Alex believes in making pots that carry this truth while, as Henry Glassie told Alex in passing one day, holding one hand to the past with the other outstretched to the future.