Alex Jones - March 26'
Q&A
1, What was your first experience with clay? And when did you start making yourself?
When I was young I spent a lot of summers in the Coromandel, and have a vivid memory of visiting DCR when I was about 6 years old. I rode the train, and got given a small snail, I think by John Green from the gift shop that I really loved.
I got given a couple of Louis Kittleson beakers for xmas one year, and it started the ball rolling really. After about a year of collecting pottery, I took a throwing class in London, but was really taken after taking a beginners hand building course run by Becky Richards in 2020. Interestingly, Carmel Pollock was in the same class, and it’s cool we’re now both part of the Public Record team. Being able to share that experience has been really valuable to me.
2, You began as an avid collector of pottery, and built a strong connection with ceramics and ceramicists in this way. Now you are building your own body of work - what is it like moving from observer to maker? What lessons have you carried into your own practice?
I think what I look for in the pots I collect I try to replicate; specific unique quirks in how a potter makes things, that make the pieces their own. Like Pat Perrin pulling the feet on her jars off the base, Scott Brough trimming his mugs “manually”, or the way Barry cut his pots off the wheel with a swirl on the base. So there’s a few little things l try to do each time that are signatures in themselves.
I'm drawn to work that looks like it fits together, has reoccurring motifs or visual themes running through it, so I've tried to do that myself.
3, Do you have any tips for people interested in collecting? Where do you hunt and what catches your eye?
My biggest tip would be to find a thread in ceramics you like to tie the collection together in a way that gives it a reason to exist.
What I have gotten the most joy from is having the collection work towards telling a story in its own right. I’ve mainly focused on collecting Barry Brickell pots from the 60s, as I felt like there was a lack of information and images of his work from that period. He had a big studio fire at DCR that took with it a lot of extensive notes, so I feel like I'm trying to put a few of those pieces together that were lost.
4, What kinds of forms and textures are you drawn to when making? Can you tell us a bit about your iconic winged figures?
I always seem drawn back to making ‘pots’ in a sense, even though hand building lends itself to sculptural and more abstract work. That’s got a lot to do with starting as a collector I think. At the moment I tend to make pots that have both balance and asymmetry to them. Ideally, features that visually work together, without needing to be exactly perfect, but don’t look out of place, random or unconsidered.
The winged figures came about when I was trying to copy a James Grieg pot I really admired. He had press moulded the pot I was aiming to replicate, but I’d just smashed two slabs together and tried to make it work. I made a few more, and it fell off my radar initially until Yasmin Dubrau (who I was doing a residency alongside at DCR) encouraged me to make some more and I got attached to them. I make them almost entirely differently now, but the essence of that first lucky accident is still there.
5, This 'groggy clay' you use reminds me of the classic Japanese Shigaraki styled pottery. You use a mixture of commercial clay with wild clay and river sand, creating a connection to this land, and your patterns and textures appear through firing experiments. Are you satisfied with your recipe, and the development of your now recognisable style?
Grog is probably the element that I’ve considered the most in this work. It’s important structurally, to prevent serious cracks, as well as visually.
I’ll continue to play around with my source for grog, clay, and glaze ingredients. It takes me a while to be comfortable taking materials from somewhere, until I’ve taken steps to understand the impact of taking them, and made some sort of effort to positively impact that place first. I’ll be more satisfied once I’ve got a variety of places I can reliably use material from in a positive way.
These pots have a variety of grog used. The “holey” pots use pumice sand, that almost completely melts out of the work and gives me that rotting log / scoria sorta texture. Some was from a recent trip to Great Barrier Island, where you can see the white chunks of quartz bursting out through the glaze. The more ‘functional’ pots I stuck with a white clay grog to go a little finer than is possible with the bigger grades I use on the more sculptural work.
6, Do you have any challenges in your practice that you wish to overcome?
There’s a lot more for me to learn in how I’m decorating pots, but I’ve pushed myself with this collection to be more purposeful with my glazing. Each of these pots have all had glaze applied by either brushing or pouring the glaze, which requires a bit more thought than dipping or spraying everything evenly like I used to.
7, Where do you see yourself, and your ceramic practice heading in the future? Is there anything you're still interested in trying?
Long term, I'll make pots for as long as I’m physically able to. I get a lot out of channelling my energy into creating and designing stuff, and that will always be something I’m compelled to do.
I think there is still a lot to explore in my work. Technically I still want to better understand low fire clays and earthenware. I really admire Richard Parker, and he did so much with the medium that it's drawn me to it as well. But I still need to figure it out before jumping into it.
I feel like large pots have a big impact, which can be both positive and negative depending on the space. So I’m most comfortable making larger stuff where there is a real place and purpose in mind I can work with. I’ve had a few of those opportunities recently, but I’d love some more, especially in public spaces.
