Kristen Calder - Aug 26'
Q&A
1, You have spoken about exploring local and familiar places through this body of work. How has looking more closely at your everyday surroundings changed the way you see these places?
Yes in the past I have been really drawn to the harbour or the wetlands or the beach as beautiful landscapes to wander through, but I have been more housebound over the past 8 months and not able to drive quite as far all the time so this kind of forced me to find places that were close by to explore. Initially the local parks seemed kind of manicured and mundane with a touch of the discarded thrown around but it made me start to look at things on a smaller scale. Instead of seeing a the sports complex down the road I now know that park as the place with the dead tree covered in beautiful lichen. The overgrown fields with rubble piled up actually have beautiful wild flowers and weeds if you stop to look and then if you keep going back you start to notice more and realise how alive these places are that we don’t really pay much attention to usually. In a way it challenged my preconceived ideas of what is a beautiful landscape, where do I SEE nature and what places do I hurry past without really looking at them.
Are there any particular discoveries, encounters or moments of joy that became important to this collection?
One of my favourite encounters during this time was making friends with an old oak tree. Away from the fancy new playground and landscaping at this particular spot was a couple of really large older trees. I never saw anyone on that side of this park and in the far corner was one old oak tree on its own. This tree was huge despite having grown around what looked like a metal rake that was now stuck through part of its trunk. Each time I went back there I always found a new little joy. One day I watched a tiny caterpillar climbing it’s way up this huge tree and then another day I arrived and found that there was a rope swing in the tree and a cushion for a crash pad. It was a great joy to think that I was not the only one who appreciated the old oak tree.
2. We are always drawn to the tactile quality of your work. Your surfaces feel almost geological, something that invites us to touch, examine and spend time with.
You often incorporate materials gathered from different places, such as sand, ash, clay and other found materials. What draws you to these materials, and how do they become part of your work?
I think most things for me are intuitive. I don’t remember when my clay practice and my need to be out in nature to stay sane in this world morphed together but I don’t go out specifically looking for natural materials and I am not drawn to materials by their usability. It is difficult to explain but it is as though a childlike awe and my innate love for geography and geology collide at times. I am drawn to unusual colours of things or the way something feels and the texture of it. I will often have a rock in my pocket from somewhere and find it so hard to not pick things up or touch them. I think this was something I relearned from my son when he was little as he used to bring home everything from acorns to kina and would refuse to leave somewhere without a beloved stick. I am a bit of a book nerd too and so I love tracing the connection of where something comes from or the history of the place and the landscape.
I once found this tiny round piece of pink sandstone on the Kaipara harbour and it came home with me and sat in my studio for a while. I wondered for so long where it came from as it was so out of place in the white and terracotta coloured cliffs at that part of the harbour. One day when the tide was out we ended up walking a long way over the mud flats and as we came round the corner of this little bay I looked up and there was a cliff that was crumbling into the sea made from pink sandstone and lots of little pieces of round pink and orange sandstone the sea had shaped. I had a piece of this sandstone for a long time before I thought about it becoming part of my work and that is often the case.
When I do think about incorporating something that is a found material like this I will usually test it first to see how best to use it in a considered way that is going to have the least amount of waste. This is why I don’t really use local clay for Kurinuki work and will preserve a small amount of gathered clay by using it as a slip on top of a commercial clay. I will also often collect sticks and branches fallen from trees like a 6 year kid and these follow me home. Some end up in vases and some sit in the garden until my husband gets sick of them and they end up making their way into my fire pit and eventually become the ash that makes up my glazes.
How do you approach making a piece? Do your forms and textures develop intuitively through the process, or do you begin with a particular idea or intention?
My making is mostly an intuitive process and there is so much learnt through trial and error for me. I usually start with a very vague idea about something like darkness or erosion and that is usually related both to my inner landscape or personal life journey as well as the physical landscapes I am currently looking at. Sometimes it is more of an obsession about a certain form like the bottle or at the moment it is the brick and sometimes when I really just am lost and don’t know what to do I simply come back to the tea cup and the groundedness of kurinuki. I absolutely love carving texture into my kurinukipots and I often use rocks I have found during this process too.
I try to work with very little expectation or judgement of what the work will look like in the end as the years have taught me that I might love the form of a pot early on and then not like the finished surface or vice versa. I will carve or form pots with no idea of how I will put slips on or glaze them later. Everything just goes into the bisque firing and then I sort it out after that… argh. My clay, rock and sandstone slips go onto bisqueware (even though I was taught that potters do not do this) and I am slap dash crazy in my approach to glazing. I do usually have a plan for glazing and I almost never stick to it as I slowly turn into the Swedish Chef from the muppets and often push through the pain of my body to just get the job finished. I refuse these days to think that electric kilns are boring and so I do push the boundaries quite a bit with what I put in the kiln and I will keep adding materials to pots and refiring them (sometimes up to 5 or 6 times) until I have something I really like or something I absolutely cannot stand.
3. You spent time living in China. Did you ever visitJingdezhen, the world-renowned porcelain city in China?What was that experience like for you?
Unfortunately no I didn’t visit Jingdezhen when I lived in China or on subsequent visits. I think I was young and although I appreciated the likes of Crown Lynn and old crockery the art history and practice of ceramics was not really on my radar yet at that time. However, one of my favourite pieces I own comes from my time in China. When I left the school I worked for to come home they asked me if there was anything I wanted for a leaving present and I said that I wanted this gourd like shaped piece of pottery I had seen. I still have it now and I still love it so much. I would love to head back to China some day and spend time in Jingdezhen so I will report back when that happens!
Did your time there influence the way you think about ceramics or contribute to the development of your practice in any lasting way?
I think my experiences in China have had a rather lasting influence on my life as a whole and most definitely on the way I think about ceramics but possibly not in the way you would expect.
I worked in a manufacturing city in the south of China and was teaching English and Business skills in factories and hotels. I saw first hand the contrast of those who worked in factories with those buying the products in the west or the corporations that own these brands. This made me really appreciate the handmade, the slow and the artisans who make and sell their own goods.
I fell in love with tea when I lived in China and this has greatly influenced my ceramics practice. Tea and ceramics went hand in hand of course so I think I also fell in love with the tea ware at the same time. There were the small teapots and cups along with open top pouring pots from the gongfutea rituals, the tea kettles and beautiful tea ware at the tea shops with the weird snacks and of course the well-used broken cheap china pots that the tea would be served from at my favourite noodle shop on the corner. Where I lived it was customary to wash your plate, bowl and cup with tea before your meal and during the meal tea would be continuously poured for you if your cup was not full. I drank a lot of tea! I think all of these contrasting experiences influenced the way I make my own tea wares.
In this exhibition there is one teapot made in the open top style with a cup stuck to the top of it alongside a small gongfusized tea cup. This piece reminds me of the women who would balance the teapots and bowls and cups to the tables in the noodle shop with the plastic stools and pour tea for everyone as you tapped your hands on the table to show your appreciation. A tea ceremony doesn’t always need to be formal and in a special place. Sometimes it is just drinking tea with friends at a noodle shop.
4. We have become particularly fond of your brick works. They feel like a kind of material library, each one documenting your clay, glazes and experiments over time. this work could be artefacts also the plinth for some other beautiful objects, versatility. What first led you to work with the brick form?
I have always loved bricks for some reason. I have a strange collection of bricks including these tiny ones made by Luke Adams and another old set from Driving Creek that I love. Years ago I bought a few vintage brick moulds and I tried using them for a bit unsuccessfully before I got distracted by something else. Fast forward to a collection I made last year that was focused around erosion. I made work that was very personal and looked at erosion through the lens of mothering and the domestic landscape. As part of this I made some crumbly bricks using cardboard boxes from our kitchen recycling. I discovered that the thin boxes were enough of a container for me to put very wet clay slops into and dry a solid form before peeling the box off the outside. I thought it would be a one off at the time but I kind of got hooked on the brick form after that so I pulled the old brick mould again to see if I could figure it out.
We love the way the same mould can produce repeated forms while each brick remains completely individual through its materials, marks and surface. What interests you about this relationship between repetition and difference?
I find repetition of the same thing really hard and clearly it is why I never became a production potter. Discovering in the last few years that I have ADHD makes total sense now why I struggle to make the same thing twice as I get bored or need to change something when I start to make a clone of another piece of work. I honestly have so much respect for potters who make production work. They have the patience of saints!
I think this relationship between repetition and difference though is what excited me about working with the brick mould. It forced me to be contained while allowing me the freedom to decide what went into the brick and still having enough variation and surprise in the pieces as the different clays dried and cracked to keep me interested. There is something that feels very soothing visually to me to see a series of objects that are both the same and different at once. At first glance the bricks feel like the most boring part of the exhibition. They are the plinths for cups to sit on or there in the background and you see them initially as being just dark chunks of clay. But when you pick each one up and examine them they all have their own little personalities and stories to tell. I think this is what I perhaps love most about this relationship. There is the one with my footprint in it and a huge chunk of melted sandstone that was in the kiln when my elements decided to stop working. There is the one that has some red clay in it I haven’t used for about 8 years that I discovered in the bottom of one of my scrap buckets which a friend tells me reminds her of toast; and there is one brick that cracked on an angle as it dried and I mended it with some local clay and bits of glass melted through it. All the same but oh so different!
Do you see the brick series developing into something larger within your practice?
I don’t think I have had enough of the bricks yet so yes I do see the bricks continuing for a while. I have some ideas about sticking them to other forms and building with them a bit as well as exploring more of the glass element with them.
5. Is there something you would like to explore, challenge or experiment with in your practice that you haven't had the opportunity to do yet?
Oh yes so many things. I think this is what keeps me interested in ceramics and is a part of the work I really enjoy. I like seeing where I can push the boundaries of a material or experimenting with something I haven’t tried yet. There is one piece of work in the Edgelands collection that I think might be a stepping stone to a new experiment and that is the small white brick that I made from the high fire clay we use for wadding to put under works in a wood firing. By adjusting the wadding recipe it allowed for the brick to stay solid but also meant that I didn’t need to dry it before I fired it. I want to have a play around with some different mixtures and see where else I can push that material.
Other things I am keen to do one day that feel like a bit of a pipe dream at the moment is to make bespoke house fittings like handles and knobs and tiles; I want to make some wearable arts from ceramics; I want to explore combining kurinuki with other making methods and work with other potters to collaborate; If my body allows it one day I want to immerse myself in a Japanese pottery residency and go back to Scotland and learn their traditional pit firing method using peat; and, I want to build some tiny kilns and explore saggar firing and and and… I want to try everything!
6. You have generously shared your knowledge through teaching, workshops and community-based programmes, including your workshops with us over the years.
What have you learned about your own practice through teaching others?
Having to show someone (and explain to them) exactly how you do the thing you are used to doing without thinking is always a great shake up for me when I feel stuck or stale in my own practice. With Kurinuki workshops I seem to find new ways of doing things each time and the students even challenge my own thinking about what can and can’t be done with clay. I think it is always a two way street with teaching. I might be passing on my experience and knowledge and skills but I am also benefitting from spending time with interesting people who all have different backgrounds and ways of approaching this craft.
Kids are especially great teachers as they will just do all the things you tell them you can’t do with clay. Sometimes that means their handles fall off and things explode in the kiln, then sometimes they surprise me and I learn so much about letting go of expectations and how to do things your own way from them. I do find it physically exhausting teaching workshops these days, but, I always find that my cup is full after spending a few hours sharing my knowledge with other people. It is really an honour that people want to come and listen to me ramble on about clay for a few hours!
Has there been a particular recent experience with a student, workshop or community that changed the way you think about your own work?
There is one particular experience with a kid at my son’s school a few years back that I think completely changed my life and the way I think about creativity/art for myself and in general. I was never keen on teaching pottery to kids but my son who was six at the time convinced me I needed to come and make stuff with his class because of one kid who didn’t speak much and he thought it would help. I end up making pinch pots with groups of kids over a few weeks and the last group I encourage this shy kid from the back of the class to come and have a go. The teacher aide told me the kid didn’t really engage much and could only do things for about 5 minutes so I could send them back to class if I needed. This kid sat down and worked on their little pot for 20 minutes with a huge smile on their face and after they were done they picked out the letters for their name and I helped them stamp it into the side of their pot. The teacher came in at the end of the day and was gobsmacked, told me this kid couldn’t read or write yet and they didn’t think they could even spell their name. It turned out this was the kid my son had told me about. I went back for a few more sessions with the class and then did another session with this kid and a few others that had a teacher aide work with them. They sat for almost an hour straight making these incredible creations they were going to put on their Christmas trees. I had not witnessed such free creative expression before and realised that these kids who were really struggling with school were incredible little artists. I have since taught kids a few times at the local school and at a number of other schools or art centres and I have noticed that those who ‘struggle’ with school have this creativity or artistry that I don’t see in the other kids. It may sound like a simple nice story but that first encounter with that six year old taught me just how transformative creativity and working with your hands can be.
7. As a tea drinker, your relationship with cups feels like a lovely extension of your ceramic practice. I know you have collected cups made by fellow potters, as well as pieces gathered through travel and exchanges. Could you share a few of your favourite tea cups and tell us what makes them special to you?
Oh this is the hardest question of them all because it is so hard to choose! I now have a cup wall in the kitchen thanks to a builder friend and I never get sick of looking at it. I have my trusty go to tumblers in a few different glazes by Esther of Thea Ceramics that I know I can take in the car or throw in my bag and they are incredibly durable. I don’t have a keep cup but I do have a Thea tumbler 3! Two of my favourite cups were made by my clay besties Janine Rata and Charade Honey. We all live in different parts of the country so when I am missing my mates I have tea in one of their cups. Charade’s cup is a woodfired beauty with a tui on it that fits so snug in your hand and my number one JR mug is a hand pinched mug with the most comfortable handle of any mug I have ever used!
I love the weird, bright, sweary and quirky cups too. It is like you can tell the world how you are feeling without having to say a word. Laurie Steers daughter made a cat vampire one during covid I love and Joshua of Fords Factory’s cup with its textured crazy finish always reminds me that mugs don’t have to be smooth to be cool. Drinking from Aaron Scythe’s wee cup is always a visual pleasure and when I am really over it I pull out the sweary mugs from Marita Green or Nicole of Nice Assets.
But if I really had to choose only one it would be this quiet brown tea cup with a delicious local clay slip on it by Scott Brough. It is simple in form but just the perfect tea cup and I reach for it often. Well I did until recently when it was broken by an unnamed household member and it now awaits some kintsugi repairs!
8. Making work, teaching and being part of a creative community all require time and energy. What helps you maintain a good balance between your life and your practice?
I don’t know if I would say that I have found a perfect balance between my life and my practice, but I have had to learn how to work within my limited capacity and listen to what my body needs. I think the silver lining from a concussion was having to actually start planning out my weeks and including breaks and rest in my calendar when I can.
Rather than trying to do everything at once which is my normal operating mode, I have become more aware of the need to pace myself, prioritise what is important, and accept that my creative practice often needs to be flexible. I am learning to work with the energy and time I have available rather than feeling that I should always be doing more. This has helped me think about productivity differently and recognise that rest, family, health, and time away from the studio are also necessary parts of sustaining my creative practice.
I have also had some incredible support along the way, and this collection of work has really reinforced for me how much we need community to sustain a creative life. Trying to balance making work alongside parenting and significant health needs (which can often feel like a full-time job in itself) is only possible because of the incredible support of my family and friends. I’ve had to recognise that sustaining my practice is not just about how I manage my own time and energy, but also about having the right people around me and being brave enough to ask for help when I need it. My osteopath is totally my ride-or-die of health professionals, keeping me mobile and helping me deal with the consequences when I have overdone it or injured myself again, I guess maintaining a practice is therefore less about achieving a perfect balance and more about finding ways to keep making and participating creatively that are sustainable for my body and family life. I am learning that sustainability doesn’t necessarily mean doing less; it means learning when to push, when to pause, and allowing myself to accept help along the way.
Do you have a personal motto, ritual or simple habit that helps you stay grounded?
I have a number of small habits that help me stay grounded and present including my favourite three; tea, books and music. But, lately the one thing I have found myself returning to most is sitting in the bedroom for a few minutes in the early evening, as the sun begins to go down. From there I can see the hills in the distance, and even a few minutes spent noticing the dappled light can feel really grounding. It has been particularly meaningful at times when I have been housebound, giving me a small moment of connection to the outside world.
In regards to mottos, I have this tiny brooch made by Pōnekeartist Sarah Read. It says ‘This too shall pass’ and sits on my windowsill where I can see it from my bed, alongside a few other special rocks and favourite objects. The words have been a mantra for me over the past few years. Somehow, this tiny brooch has become a little touchstone for me, something quietly reassuring to have nearby.
