Tales of a Red Clay Rambler: A pottery and ceramic art podcast

Today on the Tales of a Red Clay Rambler Podcast I have an interview with Amy Smith. Her porcelain pots are decorated with female nudes delicately drawn with slip inlay. The translucent glazes pull the cobalt out of the inlay accentuating the movement of hair, hips and other aspects of the pose. In our interview we talk about the emotive power of the drawn figure and how running and movement influ...

Today on the Tales of a Red Clay Rambler Podcast I have an interview with Adrienne Eliades. From her Vancouver, Washington studio she makes highly decorated functional pots that draw from mid-century modern patterns and aesthetics. In our interview we talk about developing confidence as a teacher, using die-cut stencils, and her role as program coordinator for Idyllwild's Hot Clay summer program....

Today on the Tales of a Red Clay Rambler Podcast I have an interview with Janet Koplos. A noted critic and writer, Janet has published over 2000 articles and essays since she started writing about art in 1976. From 1990 to 2009 she was senior editor in Art in America and has authored numerous books, including her most recent What Makes a Potter: Functional Pottery in America Today . In our intervi...

Today on the Tales of a Red Clay Rambler Podcast I have an interview with Ryan Wilson Kelly. He works in both clay and papier-mache to make figure sculptures and vessels that are theatrically staged within narrative scenes. In this interview we talk about the influence of puppetry, essentializing facial expressions, and how humor can be an entry point for narrative work. Ryan's exhibition Anxious...

Today on the Tales of a Red Clay Rambler Podcast I have an interview with Cassils. Their performance-based work often utilizes physical force and exertion as a metaphor for struggle and survival. In our interview we talk about creating pieces that are in dialogue with past artists, the role the audience plays as observer within a performance, and how they use their body as both a material and tool...

Today on the Tales of a Red Clay Rambler Podcast I have an interview with curator and scholar Paul Greenhalgh. His recently published book Ceramic Art and Civilisation establishes a historical through line linking four transformative eras into a larger history that explains how ceramics helped civilizations flourish. In our interview we talk about the great aesthetic transformers (Mediterranean cl...

Today on the Tales of a Red Clay Rambler Podcast I have an interview with Juan Barroso. His ceramic forms are decorated with finely painted pointillist images of family members and objects that link to childhood memories and immigrant narratives. In our interview we talk about taking the "handyman" approach to art making, how pointillism stands as a metaphor for labor, and how art is a conduit for...

Today on the Tales of a Red Clay Rambler Podcast I have an interview with curator and scholar Wendy Gers. She has curated numerous international exhibitions including the First Central China International Ceramics Biennale in 2016 and the Taiwan Ceramics Biennale in 2014. In our interview we talk about the dynamics of curating, the award-winning exhibition Post Colonialism? , and how ceramic studi...

Today on the Tales of a Red Clay Rambler Podcast I have an interview with Mark Shapiro. He is a noted potter and author of ceramic history based in western Massachusetts. In this interview we focus on his research into Thomas Commeraw, one of the most important potters working in New York City in the early 1800's. We discuss the iconic Oyster jars that are attributed to his studio, his political a...

Today on the Tales of a Red Clay Rambler Podcast I have an interview with Natalia Arbelaez. Her terracotta sculptures often involve figures interacting with one another or conveying emotion with their facial expressions. She draws from her Colombian family's immigration story to tell a larger cultural history of hybridization that is a result of migration. In our interview we talk about activating...

Today on the Tales of a Red Clay Rambler Podcast I have an interview with Brett Kern. His ceramic sculptures of dinosaurs and spacemen are tied to his love of collectable toys and pop culture nostalgia. In our interview we talk about making slip cast molds from the inflatables he creates, dealing with flippers who buy his work to resell on eBay, and his recent exhibition The Lost World . The yearl...

Today on the Tales of a Red Clay Rambler Podcast I have an interview with Masa Sasaki. His functional pots are decorated with vibrant color schemes emphasizing motifs of deer, one-eyed aliens and punctuation marks, forming a cryptic biography for the viewer to decode. In the interview we talk about the meaning behind his symbols, how previous professions helped build skills for his ceramic career...

Noted Navajo sculptor and ceramic artist Christine McHorse died earlier this week. She was born in 1948 in Morenci, Arizona and started working full-time in the arts after attending the Institute of American Indian Arts in Sante Fe in the 1960's. At the school she met her husband Joel and learned to make ceramics in the Pueblo style from his family. After more than two decades selling at the Santa...

Today on the Tales of a Red Clay Rambler Podcast I have an interview with Jessica Putnam Phillips. Jessica creates objects that are decorated with depictions of women in combat situations juxtaposed against floral patterns from historical dinnerware. She uses the pairing to question and contrast the role women play in both domestic and public service. In our interview we talk about using art to pe...

Today on the Tales of a Red Clay Rambler Podcast I have an interview with Mandy Kolahi. She co-founded POT, a community studio in Los Angeles, to create a safe space for artists of color and other marginalized groups to work in ceramics. In our interview we talk about how the founding principles of equality guided the growth of the studio, how they have pivoted their programming since the pandemic...

Today on the Tales of a Red Clay Rambler Podcast I have an interview with Larissa Warren. She is based in Tamborine Mountain in southeast Queensland, Australia where she uses the Nerikomi process to make ceramic vessels that reference geological strata. In addition to her ceramic practice, she has been researching the raw clays that are native to her surrounding area and the potters that have used...

Today on the Tales of a Red Clay Rambler Podcast I have an interview with Jason Sandy. He is a modern-day mudlark searching the foreshore of the Thames River in London. In our interview we talk about the history of London as a riverside city, the wide variety of objects that are found in the anaerobic mud of the Thames, and what these objects tell us about the eras they came from. We also discuss...

Today on the Tales of a Red Clay Rambler Podcast I have an interview with Deb Schwartzkopf. She recently released a best-selling book on ceramics titled Creative Pottery. In our interview we talk about writing the book, using templates to help construct asymmetrical shapes, and using bisque molds to make multi-part ceramics forms. We also discuss how she shifted to teaching online as her home city...

Today on the Tales of a Red Clay Rambler Podcast I have an interview with Kate Roberts. Roberts often uses unfired clay to create sculptures of topiaries, gates, and landscapes that feel both ancient and temporary, like they might slip out of existence right before your eyes. In our interview we talk about the influence of literature on her work and the risks and rewards of building site-specific...

Today on the Tales of a Red Clay Rambler Podcast I have an interview with George Rodriguez. He creates ceramic sculptures decorated with vibrant low relief patterns that explore themes of personal identity and community building. In our interview we talk about the influence of the Bonderman Travel Fellowship, which funded his travel to twenty-six countries, and how this shaped his understanding of...

Today on the Tales of a Red Clay Rambler Podcast I have an interview with Natania Hume. She is a potter and educator who splits time between teaching at a private school in Massachusetts and making pots in her studio in Vermont. In our interview we talk about selling small batch wholesale ceramics through home stores, looking for subtleties of color and form within minimalism, and using daily ritu...

Today on the Tales of a Red Clay Rambler Podcast I have an interview with Marty Gross about the Mingei Film Archive. We talk about how a gift from Bernard Leach started him on a decades long project to collect and restore videos surrounding the Mingei movement. In our interview we also talk about his methods for digitizing reel to reel films, understanding the impact of D.T. Suzuki on Soetsu Yanag...

Today on the Tales of a Red Clay Rambler Podcast I have an interview about the Studio Potter with Jill Foote-Hutton and Jessica Detweiler. Established in 1972 the Studio Potter has been active in documenting the growth of American studio ceramics. In our interview we discuss the move into a digital format for the journal and the opportunities this presents for the organization. We also discuss equ...

Today on the Tales of a Red Clay Rambler Podcast I have an interview with Bill Brouillard. He came to clay in the 1970's and has had a variety of positions including being a resident artist at the Penland School and teaching for many decades at the Cleveland Institute of Art (CIA). In our interview we talk about the value of team teaching, which he did with Judith Salomon at CIA for over thirty ye...

Today on the Tales of a Red Clay Rambler Podcast I have an interview with Angelik Vizcarrondo-Laboy. She is a curator and writer focusing on the intersection of craft and contemporary art, with a particular interest in increasing the visibility of artists of color. She is currently the Assistant Curator at the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), New York, where she has helped organize over twenty exh...