| From the pages of Ceramics Monthly
Connectivity, 8 1/2 in. (22 cm) in height, thrown, altered and assembled clay, raku fired with ferric chloride fuming, 2007.
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Push Pull, 19 in. (36 cm) in width, thrown, altered and assembled clay, raku fired with ferric chloride fuming, 2007.
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Relic, 19 in. (36 cm) in width, thrown, altered and assembled clay, raku fired with ferric chloride fuming, 2007.
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Split Canister, 7½ in. (19 cm) in width, thrown, altered and assembled clay, raku fired with ferric chloride fuming, 2007.
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Standing
next to the 30-cubic-foot raku kiln, Lancaster demonstrates full
respiratory protection. The blue mits are for removing large works from
the kiln. In his hands, he is holding Kevlar gloves, which are used for
turning the hot pieces over in the reduction barrels.
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While this
is a dramatic image, Lancaster inhaled a large quantity of smoke during
this firing, resulting in Bronchitis. This was his last firing without
respiratory and eye protection. |
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Reinventing Oneself
by Hollis Walker
After many years of assisting with his wife's skyrocketing art career, Michael Lancaster returns to his own work and takes it in a brand new direction.
The last twenty years of Michael Lancaster's life represent a reversal of sorts of the traditional American tale in which the wife puts aside her career in order to support her husband's. Lancaster, now 52, put his own career as a ceramist in a holding pattern while that of his wife, Barbara Harnack, soared for the last two decades.
It was 1987 when the two left their successful pottery in Malden Bridge in upstate New York and moved to New Mexico. Soon, Lancaster said, "Barbara's career was so hot, really all I could do was be her assistant."
He never stopped making ceramics; it's just that much of the time, he was wedging and pugging clay, throwing raw vessels that his wife would later ornament, packing and shipping her creations to galleries across the country, and helping represent her at major craft fairs. And then there were the large adobe house, guest house and studio the couple built on their Cerrillos, New Mexico, property south of Santa Fe: Lancaster was chief builder and contractor on the job for twelve years, although Harnack did her share of adobe-building as well.
The house was completed in 2005, and perhaps Lancaster would soon have begun to refocus on his own work, but life has a way of changing swiftly. In the fall, Harnack and their seventeen-year-old daughter were in a serious car accident. Though neither suffered major injuries, Harnack sustained serious soft-tissue damage and simply couldn't keep up her previous pace.
At the craft shows in 2006, the couple purposely took fewer wholesale orders for Harnack's work to ease her work load. "But then we couldn't pay the bills," Lancaster recalled. "She needed to slow down, and I needed to come up with something of my own again," Lancaster said. "I saw that as an opening."
He recalled the thought processes that accompanied the economic demand: "So here I am, at age 51, I'm pretty proficient in clay-I can make what I set out to do." But he didn't want to make his old favorites-soda-fired vessels and Asian-influenced raku tea bowls in a soft organic palette-or other common ceramic forms at which many other people are talented.
Unbeknownst to Lancaster, the influences of building their home, both the engineering and the construction, had been germinating in the back of his mind. He picked up an idea he had explored many years ago, and began developing it into the Habitat Series. These nonfunctional vessels, essentially cylindrical forms with added feet and funnel-shaped tops, reference ancient forms of residence ranging from lighthouses to Navajo hogans.
One evening, he found himself thinking of his former mentor with whom he had apprenticed, stoneware potter Douglas Conkling. Conkling had Lancaster make thousands of pieces, cut them into parts, and reassemble them into different functional forms. "So at one point when I was really struggling, I grabbed this bow saw and cut one piece [of leather-hard greenware] in half," Lancaster recalled. He reconfigured the two halves at a 45-degree angle to each other and reconnected them. He liked the results and kept experimenting.
He discarded some of the early split pieces. "They were really bad; they didn't work visually," he explained. But as he continued to bisect his ceramic forms, Lancaster intuitively recognized the echoed influences of the chopping and cutting of ceramists Paul Soldner and Peter Voulkos: "These are the people who really influenced me."
Soon Lancaster became inspired by the scrap metal pieces leftover from the nineteenth and early twentieth-century mining activities near his home. Friends and neighbors often discover the old rusty fragments of machinery on their property or on hikes, and place them in their yards as lawn ornaments. Lancaster saw them as mysterious sculptures. "You don't know what it did... but you know it did something," he said.
Those heavy hunks of steel led to Split Cans, Split Canisters and Ancient Industries, ceramic sculptures based on the forms he saw; things that looked like old cam shafts, or automotive mufflers or giant gears. Suddenly, he realized, his works had ceased being vessels at all and had become purely sculptural. The new works weren't replicas of the forms but were inspired by them.
"I don't want to make something that's a reproduction of something else; I want the viewer to get engaged the same way I do with the stuff in the salvage yards," he explained. "Wouldn't it be ideal if you could get up every day, and look at something and question its history? If things like the yard scraps aren't always beautiful, they're always intriguing."
Lancaster throws his forms on the wheel, then slices them into segments and rejoins them, or attaches other pieces to them. He leaves the cut surfaces rough. "I want people who are into ceramics to know it's a wheel-thrown object that retains its clay qualities," he said. The strong New Mexico sun speeds the making process; he often places the pieces outdoors to dry them faster so he can cut them up. Once they are reconstructed, bisqued and glazed, he preheats the works to 300°C (570°F) before putting them in the large outdoor raku kiln he and his wife share. Of late, he's been using brilliant glazes-lavenders, blues, greens and yellows-and iron-fuming the pieces to make them look old. On top of the glazes, the iron fuming creates a luminous, age-polished patina. One of his latest favorites is Push-Pull, a long cylinder that appears to have a smaller, longer cylinder pushed through it at an angle.
Lancaster's new works have more in common with the sculptures of Mark di Suvero, whose work he admired during several visits to Storm King Art Center in Mountainville, New York, than with contemporary ceramic sculpture. Juxtaposing his rounded forms with the geometric planes of their sliced surfaces, the new works appear authoritative and weighty, a sensibility that is balanced by their playful colors. Though the impulse to bisect his forms shares an affinity with the practices of Soldner and Voulkos, Lancaster's pieces lack their organic messiness, instead favoring a sleek, contemporary aesthetic.
Lancaster comes by his creative passions naturally. His mother, Betty Warren, was a well-known portraitist, and her father, Alonzo "Jack" Warren, was the co-creator of the cartoon character Pecos Bill. Lancaster's great-grandfather on his paternal side was Charles Ringling, of Ringling Brothers fame. In addition to making ceramic art, Lancaster is an abstract painter, selling his paintings through galleries separately from his clay works.
But the return to creating in clay has been exhilarating and profitable as well. "I'm having a blast. I have all the passion I had in that first year I made ceramics, 1976, but with a sense of confidence," he said. "I draw all my new pieces on newsprint-big or bigger than life-sized-and then execute what I have drawn. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and imagine an invention, a new machine or an old industrial relic. Usually I try to make them within a day or two. They don't always work, but each is an exercise in growth. Lately, they are selling as fast as they arrive in galleries, so I don't feel pressured-just the thrill of keeping up."
In the meantime, Harnack's health has much improved, and the two are both working steadily in their favorite medium. Lancaster has gained a new perspective on the revival of his career, one he feels is worth sharing.
"Sometimes, when we're 25 or 35 years into our career, we have to reinvent ourselves," he said. When the couple needed money, he realized he could have gone into construction and safely met the bills. Instead, he took the bigger risk. "I decided to stay home and do what I love to do," he said. "And it worked."
the author Hollis Walker is visual arts critic for the Albuquerque Journal North. She is the author of Zink: The Language of Enchantment, about Taos-based ceramist and mixed-media artist Melissa Zink.
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Monthly Method: Raku Safely
by Michael Lancaster
I
look back to 1977, the first year I ever fired American raku. I think,
secretly, "It's a miracle any of us have survived this long!" We were
fuming with petrochemicals, smoking with sawdust, newspaper, pine
needles, straw and even unknown combustible garbage. Working with clay
can, for a potter or a sculptor, be a romantically "macho" sort of
thing, especially when it comes to dancing with fire.
In this age
of online videos, the ceramist can view many different approaches to
firing and safety. I have seen some that are downright scary. For
example, wearing paper dust masks for lung protection, wearing nylon
jackets, synthetic jogging outfits, shorts, sandals and rarely do I see
a fire extinguisher in the background. From experience I have found
that clothes can ignite, hair gets burned off, hands burn, and lungs
and mucous membranes can be damaged -even permanently! I have come up
with a few simple items that can help make raku more safe.
First, to
protect eyes, face, mucous membranes and lungs, I recommend Color Code
Olive/Magenta P100 Defender respirator cartridges from North, or
another company using the same codes, in a welder's clear plastic face
and respirator shield. The cartridges will arrest the fumes and smoke
from welding and will help for most of the smoke from Raku. The plastic
lenses generally are not fireproof, however will shield from some flame
up and will keep the smoke and fumes from your eyes.
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At a minimum, care
should be taken to be sure all clothes are cotton. We also wear
split-hide welders jackets. Some of my colleagues wear full-hide aprons
that go all the way to the shins. This can be helpful for extended
moments reaching with mits into the kiln.
We also wear different
gloves for different tasks. I wear Kevlar gloves for general work and
they last about three firings (that's about five to six firings each
time from a 30-cubic-foot kiln). I use a higher-temperature Kevlar
combination fiber mitt for hand lifting works that are too big for the
tongs. Boots with more leather and less plastic are helpful as I have
had boots burst into flame.
When fuming, it is an absolute must to
wear good lung protection. It is extremely important that anyone within
a 30-foot circumference also be protected. Fuming ingredients such as
ferric chloride, ammonium chloride, copper sulfate, etc., make caustic
gases which can burn sinuses, throat, esophagus and lung tissue and can
cause permanent damage. Finally, always keep a fire extinguisher on
hand. It could save a life. Raku should be fun, passionate, and, with a
calm approach, safe.
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