[Clayart] Ponder a priceless gem from the Clayart past!!!

[vpitelka at dtccom.net]

Smart posts from David Hendley and Hank.  Thank-you!  Hank, there are few people of your generation and experience who are still active in the studio and sharp in the brain, so please keep posting your pearls of wisdom as often as possible. 
- Vince

Vince Pitelka
Potter, Writer, Teacher
Chapel Hill, NC
vpitelka at dtccom.net
www.vincepitelka.com 
https://chathamartistsguild.org/ 

-----Original Message-----
From: Clayart <clayart-bounces at lists.clayartworld.com> On Behalf Of Hank Murrow
Sent: Thursday, October 20, 2022 7:23 PM
To: David Hendley <david at farmpots.com>; ClayArt discussion forum <clayart at lists.clayartworld.com>
Subject: Re: [Clayart] Ponder a priceless gem from the Clayart past!!!

Dear David;

I am afraid you are operating under a false impression of my capabilities.

Perhaps it is that I have had more mishaps, accidents, and misunderstandings than most; Because I have been a producing potter since the age of 19, and operated a group studio for three years for 65 would-be potters with my excellent partner, Jane Heald, who held my youth -ful energy in check with grace and humor. A return to the U of Oregon to work with Bob James and David Stannard sealed the deal for me, as we had workshops there with Michael Cardew(6 weeks)
Leach(4 days), Voulkos(6 days), and Harry Davis(2 weeks). Add in MC Richards and my fellow students there for the three years I was there getting my BS and MFA; well, it was Hog heaven for anyone in love with clay and fire. I built eleven kilns in the process of getting ready for my twelfth, which was a natural-draft oil-fired salt kiln; firing to cone 10 in ten hours with ten gallons of #2 heating oil. I followed that up with a 7 month residency at a school for teenaged boys and girls in La Paz, Baja CA; where I built an oil fired kiln for the pottery students there before de-camping to Ohio U. in Athens, OH, and a delightful year of kiln building with George Kokis and a fine bunch of students, some of whom remain life-friends. Then Anderson Ranch for three years in Aspen, CO building more kilns and glass-blowing furnaces and annealing ovens, and a foundry; before heading back to Eugene to build a studio at our home with Bev Wickstrom, who I had had the good fortune to marry when I returned from La Paz. The subsequent 49 years firing my Lifting Fiberkiln has been a dream of constant surprise that I can put wares on the table that people enjoy using, and even bequeath to their children.

Anyway, I am content that those mishaps, accidents, and misunderstandings have got me to the brink of 84 years safely, and even promising more. Perhaps I will even finish the“Potters Primer”that I began to write on a B&B balcony on the south coast of Crete!

Cheers! Hank in Eugene


> On Oct 20, 2022, at 6:55 AM, David Hendley <farmpots at eastex.net> wrote:
> 
> Hank Murrow is a wise man.
> The more mediums (media?) you utilize, the better you will learn and 
> retain knowledge and understanding. See, hear, read, write, smell (see 
> my previous post about mold in the studio), and of course, do!
> 
> David Hendley
> david at farmpots.com
> www.farmpots.com