Artaxis Conversations

For the grand finale of the Project: Cup’s Studio Visit series, we got a sneak peak into the home studio of potter and painter, Samuel Johnson. Sam’s studio practice is rooted in the thoughtful creation of functional vessels. He throws and hand builds on a low-momentum kick wheel, which engages the body in a different way than weighted kick wheels or electric wheels. The rhythm of this style of throwing, including the sensitivity to pressure and speed, is a delight to witness. That attention to the subtle interactions between object and user isn’t just apparent in the studio process. Each of the vessels we handled and used in the studio was infused with a strong sense of purpose and opportunities for small discoveries - like the unexpected presence of a stone just under the surface, or a blush of ash from the wood firing highlighting a pattern in the clay.In Sam’s words: "There was a different kind of philosophy embedded in the different places that I worked at early in my career – the St. Johns Pottery in Minnesota, the Denmark Design School in Copenhagen, and at the studio of Koie Ryoji.""I found that these different experiences and perspectives led me to thinking about the essence of form. From the time in Denmark, I learned to think about how to pair things down. How to find one quality to focus on and reduce the noise or superfluous elements. I wondered how that would relate to a type of pottery that took a “natural” approach to materials – an acceptance of imperfection, an acceptance of the idiosyncratic qualities of the glaze or clay or firing method or even the hand. Those ideas were present in my experiences in Minnesota and Japan. What would it be like to pair these things together? In time, I started to think about it as relating the nature of materials to the nature of self, to the intellect. I wondered what it would be like to pair together 3 elements: clay as a natural material, fire in its raw state and me as a person in my own humanity. I wanted to know what that meant in terms of making things that had a theoretical, mathematical type of precision and was also full of emotional impulses."⁠Sam's studio visit images⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||Artaxis Conversations is a production of Artaxis. This MiniSeries was produced by Bobby Tso and recorded by Bobby Tso and Casey Whittier. We invite you to view the work of the artists that were part of today's conversation and many more at⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠artaxis.org⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠or ⁠⁠artaxis.org/conversationsArtaxis is a non-profit organization that promotes the ceramic arts. We are a volunteer-run organization that relies on generous donations from the community. If you would like to support Artaxis, please consider making a donation through our website or sharing our work with your community. Thank you.Music Credit:⁠⁠⁠ BugaBlue⁠

Project: Cup snuck into the studio of Sunyoung Park! Sunyoung’s early life and education was in Korea. There, historical ceramic objects were part of the everyday and an interest in art shaped her education. Sunyoung discusses the process for re-imagining everyday inspirations in her work and the transitions that she experienced as an international student and artist in residence. We laughed so much during this conversation - here are a few snippets (sans laughter) from Sunyoung: “Sometimes, I find myself lost in surreal thoughts while working with clay. Initially, my thoughts are grounded in reality, but they eventually transform into bizarre fantasies. My creative process involves capturing a few items in my memory or taking pictures, followed by sketching in my idea book and creating a three-dimensional sculpture. Currently, I am working on integrating mixed media with my ceramic sculptures to establish a cohesive conversation between the contrasting media. I developed an interest in mixed media due to my curiosity, which was sparked during my graduate studies in Korea. Initially, I thought mixed media would not complement my clay sculptures, but with Pattie’s guidance at SIU, I found my own vocabulary by using diverse materials. My colleagues, Meg Howton, Caro Burks, and Liz Stanslands also inspired me. Over the years, I have enjoyed the privilege of working with diverse media to develop my artistic language. I am now more experienced in making the right choices that make sense with my content, creating a cohesive moment.”Sunyoung's studio visit images⁠⁠⁠⁠|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||Artaxis Conversations is a production of Artaxis. This MiniSeries was produced by Bobby Tso and recorded by Bobby Tso and Casey Whittier. We invite you to view the work of the artists that were part of today's conversation and many more at⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠artaxis.org⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠or ⁠⁠artaxis.org/conversationsArtaxis is a non-profit organization that promotes the ceramic arts. We are a volunteer-run organization that relies on generous donations from the community. If you would like to support Artaxis, please consider making a donation through our website or sharing our work with your community. Thank you.Music Credit:⁠⁠⁠ BugaBlue⁠

Today Project: Cup are in the studio of current Charlotte Street Resident, Elaine Buss. Elaine’s work explores ambiguity and the nondescript, specifically in relation to the sensory, ineffable, and intangible experience of inhabiting a human body. Her inspirations include: anthropological forms, ancient grinding stones and/or the qualities of stone, and sacred architecture.In response to questions about the material experimentation and staying attuned the nuances in the work, Elaine offered:“I really feel like an alchemist. I have rules but then I just forget the rules and go for it. I let myself do the weird things, and then I take really good notes after. I have this whole body of work where I take ceramic materials and use them in ways that are not traditionally appropriate. It creates lots of interesting materiality. It feels other and that is so fascinating to me. I started with an interest in frits and plaster casting glaze- I was just using the materials that were available. Honestly, It was kind of like one accident into another. My thought was ‘Oh, that’s interesting, let me try that more.’We also have a chance to visit home studio of Natasha Hovey! Natasha dives deep into research - both with material and content. Her forms are often derived from data sets and methods of data visualization. Tasha says “my practice and research of the human physiology are often approached simultaneously utilizing metaphorical associations and microscopic imagery that seeks to make sense of my own being at a genetic level.” Natasha’s Project: Cup submission has a distinctive glaze surface that she discovered by accidentally overfiring. In Natasha’s words: “I'm exploring genetics and data visualization within my work. That is a starting point for me but a lot of it then shifts to focus on surface and presentation. Right now, I am looking at the micro and macro of the images from the research I'm doing. My work is made with molds and slip casting. It's a very repetitive process. My surfaces tend to be that way as well. I can get kind of lost in the repetition and get into that moment of flow with my work…so this idea of repetition and flow happening in my surfaces is related.⁠Elaine's studio visit images⁠⁠⁠Natahsa's studio visit images⁠⁠⁠|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||Artaxis Conversations is a production of Artaxis. This MiniSeries was produced by Bobby Tso and recorded by Bobby Tso and Casey Whittier. We invite you to view the work of the artists that were part of today's conversation and many more at⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠artaxis.org⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠or ⁠⁠artaxis.org/conversationsArtaxis is a non-profit organization that promotes the ceramic arts. We are a volunteer-run organization that relies on generous donations from the community. If you would like to support Artaxis, please consider making a donation through our website or sharing our work with your community. Thank you.Music Credit:⁠⁠⁠ BugaBlue⁠

This Studio Visit Project: Cup took us to the renovated studio of @kylastrid to speak with her and her husband, Louis Wigen-Toccalino. Their first conversation was an argument about cups. For years Kyla produced cups for Decade in Lawrence, KS. Louis is now the owner/baker/chef/mastermind behind @cellar.door.cafe .Kyla says: If you want to learn about your cups and what their lifespan will be, put them in a commercial setting. It’s condensing a lot of use into a short time. With each series I made I learned so much. In addition to the mugs at Decade, we started using bud vases. Louis works with a local florist, @moon_on_the_meadow_farm. Then it was cool because it was a collaboration with her AND the baristas. They were all giving me feedback about what worked and what didn’t. I realized again that I had to make some adjustments to height and how much water they could hold…It was an amazing feedback loop for me.Louis: What made it easy for me (to incorporate pottery into the business) was finding someone local. It keyed off of the philosophical principles I held…The challenges of using craft pottery are that we really put it through a stress test: like temperature they are going from cold to as near boiling as we can get them; to being dumped in the bus tub and dropped in the dish sink and cups that are not designed to be stacked are being stacked. It’s one thing to have 4 cups at home that are precious, but we go through 30 of them every hour…. It’s a stress test of a different sort. It was a challenge, but it was worth it. It elevated our product to be more than just another latte.When I opened Cellar Door, Decade was still going. The decision was to differentiate the brand. We still use the vases for flowers and have a window display. They are fantastic because they are always on display and the vases last a lot longer. We are constantly thinking about what to display the pastries on and how to get more mugs in as we grow and evolve.Kyla is making exciting shifts in her new studio toward more sustainable clay, glaze, and firing options. Swipe for a look at new work & follow Kyla and Louis as they continue to offer delicious pairings of food and pottery.Kyla's studio visit images|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||Artaxis Conversations is a production of Artaxis. This MiniSeries was produced by Bobby Tso and recorded by Bobby Tso and Casey Whittier. We invite you to view the work of the artists that were part of today's conversation and many more at⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠artaxis.org⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠or ⁠⁠artaxis.org/conversationsArtaxis is a non-profit organization that promotes the ceramic arts. We are a volunteer-run organization that relies on generous donations from the community. If you would like to support Artaxis, please consider making a donation through our website or sharing our work with your community. Thank you.Music Credit:⁠⁠⁠ BugaBlue⁠

Project: Cup took a road trip outside of the city to meet with Momoko Usami-Cotter at her studio and home. Momoko, her husband Josh Cotter (artist/cartoonist), their two kids and two goats live on family land in a rural area about 20 minutes from Marysville, Mo. Her inspirations are wide reaching and her practice includes making work of all different scales. We spent time walking a recently established path from the studio that she often walks to gather inspiration (and objects!) for her work and discussing the risks, rewards, and reasons for making sculptural and functional work with such complex and precise drawings and surfaces. During our conversation with fellow Project: Cup Artist, Veronica Watkins, Momoko shared: “One thing that I do more, since I had children, is cook. Before when I was living alone, I could just eat ramen noodles. I just needed one bowl, but now I cook for my family. If you cook Japanese food (I am Japanese), you need lots of ceramics: a rice bowl and soup bowl and plates for the vegetables, there is a big bowl of food in the center. Because of this, I started making a lot more ceramics for my everyday life. For our next studio visit, Project: Cup took a field trip to visit Veronica Watkins at her studio at Northwest Missouri State University in Marysville, Missouri. Veronica teaches at Northwest Missouri State University, is mother of three, and she lives on a 100 acre cattle ranch. Her awareness of the way these different aspects of her life (place, family, food, and community) come together in the ceramics studio and with her body of work were central to our conversation. We got to talk a little about her surfaces (take a look at that lovely test-tile board) and their relationships to the colors and textures of the Missouri landscape. Veronica’s use of terra sigillata as a surface treatment is perfect for creating custom colors and sensual surfaces. Using terra sigillata to build surface imagery also met her need to have a more flexible schedule in the studio in order to focus on other important aspects of her life at different times - including spending more time with her family while her children were young.In addition to her studio work, Veronica shared her impressive ceramics collections from school and from home with us. In her words: “We’ve always had handmade ceramic utilitarian ware and our children are surrounded by beautiful objects and that helps form them and develop their ideas about aesthetics and elevates their experience. During Covid we remodeled the kitchen and were there together so much. I mean, we always have shared meals, but it was even more of a concentrated experience. I think that is the beauty of pots - they facilitate these interactions and our rituals whether they are special or just daily things, like, “which cup are we going to use?” Momoko's studio visit images⁠⁠Veronica's studio visit images⁠⁠⁠|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||Artaxis Conversations is a production of Artaxis. This MiniSeries was produced by Bobby Tso and recorded by Bobby Tso and Casey Whittier. We invite you to view the work of the artists that were part of today's conversation and many more at⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠artaxis.org⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠or ⁠⁠artaxis.org/conversationsArtaxis is a non-profit organization that promotes the ceramic arts. We are a volunteer-run organization that relies on generous donations from the community. If you would like to support Artaxis, please consider making a donation through our website or sharing our work with your community. Thank you.Music Credit:⁠⁠⁠ BugaBlue⁠

Project: Cup visited the studio of KC Urban Potters founding member,  and Artaxis member, Paul Donnelly for an extra-special studio visit. Pictured here are some images of Paul in his studio (shared with fellow artists, Rain Harris and Kate Schroeder) in Midtown, Kansas City. Paul brought a special cup made by Lee Rexrode to talk about.Paul explains:“This is the first piece of functional pottery that I ever owned. I won this. It was part of a Christmas raffle that Lee Rexrode, my teacher, would have at his house. At the time, I wasn’t that tuned into making functional pots…..This cup, in so many ways, just really inspired me to think about utility and function and the ideas of the handmade and all of these really beautiful things that a cup can encompass.What is so amazing about this cup is the handle. It used to be the thing that I would gravitate towards all the time until, you know, it broke. It got a little bit of a fracture, so it is retired at this point. When you go and pick it up, the handle is in a spot that is so balanced. It is the most comfortable handle that I own, hands down. The handle is cut so that underneath your finger can lay pretty flat, then there is a little thumb area on the top. I remember Lee talking about this when we were in undergraduate school and giving presentations about handles and talking about holding pieces and thinking how interesting that was. But actually really feeling this in real life…..and remembering how and what he talked about in relation to how he makes his work and how he thinks about his work was incredibly inspiring. There is this element of thinking about design and function here that has definitely influenced, you know, how I approach my own work in terms of comfortability, and ergonomics and those types of things.This one little cup just opened up a lot of things for me…in thinking about design and aesthetics and what people can make and…..all of that.”Paul's studio visit images⁠|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||Artaxis Conversations is a production of Artaxis. This MiniSeries was produced by Bobby Tso and recorded by Bobby Tso and Casey Whittier. We invite you to view the work of the artists that were part of today's conversation and many more at⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠artaxis.org⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠or ⁠⁠artaxis.org/conversationsArtaxis is a non-profit organization that promotes the ceramic arts. We are a volunteer-run organization that relies on generous donations from the community. If you would like to support Artaxis, please consider making a donation through our website or sharing our work with your community. Thank you.Music Credit:⁠⁠⁠ BugaBlue⁠

Project: Cup visited artist, Twiggy Cercy, in the beautiful small town of Oskaloosa, KS at their home and studio. Twiggy's work takes on many forms - from ceramic sculpture and functional pottery, to wearables and performance.During our studio visit and conversation, Twiggy offered:"What if I just started doing all the things that people tell me I couldn't do?...It started turning into these weird amalgamations of forms and colors and patterns and texture that started to tell a story about the intervention of myself and the society that I was raised in...It definitely feels like I have the power in this situation to re-tell that story. I still try to intervene with the way that I present my body because I think a lot about my queer body when I'm making work. Being a fat, queer person is distinctly different than being any other type of queer person in this society. ""As far as the vessel, it is very bodily in its form....But I always make sure they have undulations and concaves and convexes. Things that, you know, insinuate the body without being so straightforward about it. And they also insinuate the body in one of the most specific ways which is my fingerprint that is laid in the clay. I think that all of these aspects come back to my body but also come back to thinking about being a fat, queer person. These kinds of forms can happen in your body but can also happen and be shaped forever in time in clay. For the colors of the cup, I'm always influenced by the bright colors I see in nature and my surroundings but also the synthetic colors that I put in my home. "Peep these great images from our visit to the home, studio, and our meet up with Osa - Twiggy's Neapolitan Mastiff. ⁠Twiggy's studio visit images|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||Artaxis Conversations is a production of Artaxis. This MiniSeries was produced by Bobby Tso and recorded by Bobby Tso and Casey Whittier. We invite you to view the work of the artists that were part of today's conversation and many more at⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠artaxis.org⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠or ⁠⁠artaxis.org/conversationsArtaxis is a non-profit organization that promotes the ceramic arts. We are a volunteer-run organization that relies on generous donations from the community. If you would like to support Artaxis, please consider making a donation through our website or sharing our work with your community. Thank you.Music Credit:⁠⁠⁠ BugaBlue⁠

Project: Cup visited artist, Twiggy Cercy, in the beautiful small town of Oskaloosa, KS at their home and studio. Twiggy's work takes on many forms - from ceramic sculpture and functional pottery, to wearables and performance.During our studio visit and conversation, Twiggy offered:"What if I just started doing all the things that people tell me I couldn't do?...It started turning into these weird amalgamations of forms and colors and patterns and texture that started to tell a story about the intervention of myself and the society that I was raised in...It definitely feels like I have the power in this situation to re-tell that story. I still try to intervene with the way that I present my body because I think a lot about my queer body when I'm making work. Being a fat, queer person is distinctly different than being any other type of queer person in this society. ""As far as the vessel, it is very bodily in its form....But I always make sure they have undulations and concaves and convexes. Things that, you know, insinuate the body without being so straightforward about it. And they also insinuate the body in one of the most specific ways which is my fingerprint that is laid in the clay. I think that all of these aspects come back to my body but also come back to thinking about being a fat, queer person. These kinds of forms can happen in your body but can also happen and be shaped forever in time in clay. For the colors of the cup, I'm always influenced by the bright colors I see in nature and my surroundings but also the synthetic colors that I put in my home. "Peep these great images from our visit to the home, studio, and our meet up with Osa - Twiggy's Neapolitan Mastiff. https://www.instagram.com/p/CyrIEnnPUMx/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==Vist us at:https://artaxis.org/https://artaxis.org/conversations/