The Old Weird Claymerica

Garth Johnson The Old, Weird Claymerica NCECA 2012

The Old, Weird Claymerica: Performance and Transgression in 1970s Clay

There are deeply rooted strains of nonconformity that run through the history of ceramics in

the United States. Performity and transgression are two emerging trends in contemporary craft

practice that have precedent in both heritage crafts and the studio craft movement. Although the

late 1960s and early 1970s are relatively recent, innovations in the field of craft in general and

ceramics in particular owe much to boundaries that were stretched during that period by artists

like James Melchert, Clayton Bailey, David Gilhooly and Rimas VisGirda.

Melchert’s 1972 “happening” Changes, which involved ten individuals dunking their head in

clay slip and contemplating the drying process for an hour, has become widely enshrined as

touchstone of “performance craft”. (J. Schwartz 122) The work of other artists during this period,

including Bailey and VisGirda is less widely discussed, and deserves to be included in any

conversation about performative and transgressive impulses that have come to shape the field of

modern craft.

In his book Brothers in Clay: The Story of Georgia Folk Pottery, author John Burrison cites

two behavioral traits that were shared by stoneware potters in Georgia: a fondness for drink and

an independent nature. In the pre-Tupperware era, itinerant “tramp potters” were so in-demand

that they were able to drift from job to job, finding easy employment that would allow them to

set their own working hours to facilitate their lifestyle choices (Burrison 12).

Independence and extravagance of character is especially evident in the life and work of

George E. Ohr, popularly known as the “Mad Potter of Biloxi”. Ohr is now known for his artistic

vision, which paved the way for the 20th century studio pottery movement. Ohr’s persona was

inextricable from his artistic vision—from his outsized handlebar mustache to the five-story

pagoda tower that capped off his workshop. Never one for false modesty, Ohr showed his work

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at Worlds Fairs and other international expositions, always accompanied by placards proclaiming

him as the “GREATEST POTTER ON EARTH—‘YOU’ PROVE THE CONTRARY”. His

over-the-top persona served to attract attention to his work, leading him to confide “…long ago

that it paid me to act this way” (Hecht 21).

The physicality and mythos of the “rugged individualist” in Abstract Expressionism factored

greatly in the critical evaluation of ceramic sculpture of the 1950s and 60s. (Buszek 4) In her

seminal Craft Horizons article “The New Ceramic Presence”, Rose Slivka wrote of an American

climate that “not only has been infused with the dynamics of machine technology, but with the

action of men—ruggedly individual and vernacular men (the pioneer, the cowboy) with a genius

for improvisation”. (Adamson 526) When Slivka wrote about Voulkos, her prose was perhaps

overly concerned with his physical attributes, writing about her impression of him as “giantlike”,

“hulking” and possessing “superhuman strength” while studying clay as its “lover, as its scholar,

as its very medium”. (Voulkos)

Slivka’s fixation, while making the reader slightly uncomfortable, is entirely the point. At the

Oakland Museum of California Art, an entire gallery is devoted to art made by California artists.

The section of the gallery devoted to ceramics exhibits a signature Voulkos stack at its very

center. Next to the physical object is a video screen that shows Voulkos modifying a large,

thrown piece by alternately tearing, hacking and beating it with a large piece of wood. In

showing video alongside an actual Voulkos object, the museum’s curators have cannily

acknowledged that the performance and object are virtually inseparable. Additionally, Voulkos

enjoyed collaborating with others in a workshop-like setting to construct his large-scale works.

This twist on the ceramic workshop became both participatory theater and theater of the

spectacle. (Oliver 15)

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As Voulkos was wrestling with clay, the art world was discovering new ways of deprivileging

the object through “happenings” and other performance art. Alan Kaprow coined the term

“happening” while he was a student of John Cage in 1958 as a way to describe a performance in

which a number of events take place together in space and time, never to be repeated in exactly

the same manner. (Meyer-Hermann 2) The early, anarchic events staged by Kaprow led to a

staggering array of performative explorations in the 1960s that ranged from Claes Oldenberg’s

Proto-Pop exhibition “The Store” in 1961 to Carolee Schneeman’s 1964 feminist performance

“Meat Joy”, which involved Schneeman and her friends wrestling with raw fish, sausages, wet

paint and other materials.

By the late 1960s, the Museum of Contemporary Crafts in New York City responded to this

energy by hosting a remarkable series of exhibitions that redefined the boundaries between art,

craft and performance. Alongside adventurous (but object-based) exhibitions by up-and-coming

artists like Erik Gronborg and David Gilhooly, the museum launched an all-out sensory assault

from 1969-1971. In January, 1969 the museum mounted an exhibition entitled Feel It by

Swedish architects Gustaf Clason and Eric Sörling that turned spectators into participants in a

“multi-sensory environment” that included a springy jute carpet, a forest of dangling plastic

strips that “embrace (participants) like wet macaroni”, a huge walk-through globe that sensed

viewers motions and delivered bits of electronic music accordingly and column that gives a

congratulatory vibrating massage when hugged. (Glueck) Craft Horizons dispatched playwright

Israel Horovitz to the exhibition, where he reported that the exhibition “had its viewers

staggering out the emergency exits gasping crisp, winter, polluted West Fifty-third Street air,

then plunging back into the exhibition as mad British weekenders after an almost forgotten bird”.

(Horovitz 15)

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In 1971, the museum mounted a series of three exhibitions called “Acts”. The first show, by

Swiss artists Heidi and Carl Bucher opened in April featured outrageous sculptures that were

designed to be worn, including balloon-like phosphorescent inflatables that are only complete

when donned by a museum-goer. (Museum of Contemporary Crafts) The second “act”, entitled

CitySenses was perhaps the most “far-out” exhibition ever mounted by a crafts-based museum.

Upon arrival at the museum, guides greeted the guests and explained the intent of the exhibition,

which encouraged participation above all else. Visitors were directed to a wall containing some

instructions and ten different mimeographed “scores” that directed them to go back outside and

perform actions like “choose a place for fantasy. Assume a role …and devise a task… to do in

this role in this place.” Another score encouraged viewers to help build a “continuing Citysenses

exhibit by the people of New York” out of discarded objects from the street. (B. Schwartz 30)

The third and final show was Costume Statements, a group exhibition of experimental fashion

that “considered clothing as an extension of the body and the body as an instrument for

movement and expression” that also marked the museum debut of noted performance artist Pat

Oleszko. (ibid.)

This free-wheeling atmosphere of experimentation resonated within the clay world. The

“Funk” movement was in full bloom, and ceramic artists were rebelling in every conceivable

way. Although west coast ceramic artists get much of the credit for pushing boundaries in the

60s and 70s, one of the most groundbreaking (pun intended) exhibitions in the history of

American craft was a national open invitational unfired clay exhibition that occurred at the farm

of Southern Illinois University professor Nicholas Vergette in 1970. The show was curated by

conceptual artist Lowell Darling, who was a graduate student in Carbondale at the time, but later

made a name for himself running for governor of California in 1978 and 2010.

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The one-day exhibition included sixty-two entries by different artists, including a piece by

James Melchert that consisted of a clay slab draped over the crest of a small hill (subsequently

decorated by a passing dog’s feet). There was also a Robert Arneson piece entitled Earth Link

that was a six-foot section of chain carved directly into the earth. David Gilhooly sent elaborate

drawings for an entire unfired “frog world”, which was then pared down to a request that dozens

of his unfired clay frog figures be dropped onto the site from an airline. After that idea was nixed

by the FAA because of safety concerns, the attendees settled on flinging the frog figures onto the

frozen pond using slingshots. (Darling) No pieces were returned to their creators, none sold,

none insured, and “All pieces will remain at the exhibition site and become part of the site.”

(Johnson 38)

As a member of the Bay Area “Funk” movement, Clayton Bailey possessed a suspicion

(perhaps even hostility) to everything the ceramics world held dear. In the early 1960s, as a

ceramics instructor at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, Bailey encouraged his students

to look beyond beauty. He noted “that ‘beauty’ is an attribute of the familiar and the comfortable.

The artist, he claimed, should seek to discover the new and unusual, and should not strive for

beauty.” One of Bailey’s students took his words to heart and scrawled “think ugly” in large

letters on the studio wall. (claytonbailey.com) Bailey’s artwork reflected this dictum. His

ceramic output throughout the 60s and 70s was inspired by “lowbrow” comic artists like Basil

Wolverton and Ed “Big Daddy” Roth and was made of materials like whiteware clay, hobby

glazes and lusters. Bailey tried his best to put in “only as much craftsmanship as each piece

demanded.” (Bailey)

Bailey’s actual ceramic works were only the tip of the iceberg. As a noted figure in the

ceramic world, he constantly received requests for demonstrations and lectures. The only

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problem with this was that Bailey found them insufferably boring. His solution was to turn the

lecture on its head: he saw each gallery talk or workshop as an opportunity to unleash his

personal brand of Dadaist mayhem on (mostly) unsuspecting audience. To this end, Bailey was

aided and abetted by his alter ego, Dr. Gladstone, a lab-coated talking head that lent a veneer of

pedantic respectability to Bailey’s ceramic “experiments”. Bailey’s 1971 discovery of the

“kaolithic” fossil of an eight-foot humanoid in his Port Costa, California backyard was explained

thusly:

“It is well known that fossils are created in nature when minerals gradually replace the buried

remains of a creature with a deposit of stone. This process often takes millions of years to

complete. The kaolithic process is much faster. Kaolithic fossils are formed when the buried

remains are replaced by ceramic compounds which have been shaped through impaction by

unnatural forces. When they are exposed to high temperatures in a kiln, metamorphosis occurs

and the kaolithic fossilization is complete. The entire process can happen within a few days.”

(Bailey 86)

Bailey’s exhibitions were almost always accompanied by performances. The opening of his

Wonders of the World Museum in 1976 featured the artist and his friends performing as “Dr.

Snootfull’s Medicine Show”, a “cascading avalanche of hard hitting, down-home MUSIC,

incredible SLEIGHT-OF-HAND, outrageous scientific GYMNASTICS, verbal

PYROTECHNICS, outright CHICANERY and just plain BOMBAST!!!” (ibid.) Nearly a

century later, Clayton Bailey was picking up where George Ohr had left off.

Bailey’s presentations at conferences like NCECA and Super Mud have become the stuff of

legend. At the the1975 Super Mud conference, Bailey demonstrated his “psychic ceramic” skills,

whereby the artist, seated at a potter’s wheel explained that creating pottery was a matter of

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“mind over matter”. He put a special “Electro Encephalo Strap” over his head to channel his

psychic energy to a rotating mound of clay. The wheel stopped, and a large ceramic bottle

quickly emerged out of the formless mound of clay on the wheel. Bailey was of course, aided by

a large spring inside of a latex mold of a bottle, and was rewarded by a pie in the face dispensed

by a disgruntled audience member. (Irving)

At the 1978 NCECA conference in Champaign, Illinois, Bailey and collaborator Jack

Dollhausen tested the compression strength of a variety of ceramic vessels, ranging from a “rare

Ming vase” to works by colleagues such as James Melchert and Richard Shaw. One by one, a

machine filled with loose wires and blinking lights called the “aesthetron” placed compression

on the pots until they were crushed. The test was followed by a steady stream of outraged letters

to the editors of Ceramics Monthly and the NCECA board from people who failed to see how

firmly Bailey’s tongue was lodged in his cheek. (NCECA 10)

One of Bailey’s frequent collaborators in these demonstrations and lectures was ceramic artist

Victor Spinski. Spinski’s major contribution to the genre of ceramic performance came in the

form of a trompe l’oeil ceramic garbage can that he had sold to a collector who requested he

make a few changes to the piece. After picking up the piece, Spinski began to chafe at the

request, and decided to have some fun with it instead. That night, he put the ceramic garbage can

out with the real garbage cans and waited behind a bush for the garbage truck. When a sanitation

worker finally arrived, Spinski managed to photograph him struggling with the (glazed on) lid of

the ceramic garbage can, and finally captured a photo of him smashing the can to bits on the side

of the truck. (Spinski)

Many west coast artists including Robert Arneson and David Gilhooly consciously used

materials and rhetoric borrowed from the world of “hobby” ceramics. Arneson’s work self-

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mockingly refers to the art world’s view of ceramics as “the world’s most fascinating hobby”.

Gilhooly followed the lead of pop artists like Claes Oldenberg and introduced a layer of

consumer critique into his work, creating ceramic food to symbolize his own struggles with

weight. He then created a mobile donut cart where he sold his ceramic work alongside more

typical art fair booths in downtown Toronto. (Gilhooly 54)

A more trenchant examination of the role of commerce in ceramics is Rimas VisGirda’s

Captain Ceramics project. The project was devised as a satire of the hobby ceramics industry,

which was exploding in the late 1970s. Then as now, the back of magazines like Ceramics

Monthly were filled with pictures of burly men proudly posing at a potter’s wheel that is clearly

powerful enough to handle the hundreds of pounds of clay it takes to throw a phallic six-foot pot.

The September, 1979 issue of Ceramics Monthly contained twenty different advertisements for

kilns, each containing different testimonials and claims.

Captain Ceramics was a conceptual project that perfectly captured the zeitgeist of the era.

VisGirda created a range of products that were intentionally outrageous, but they were perfectly

packaged in vernacular language and imagery of the projects they satirized. Items like bats

containing pre-centered centered lumps of clay have become the stuff of ceramic urban legend,

but they were one of Captain Ceramics’ real offerings. The crown jewel of the Captain Ceramics

product line was the X-1, rightly advertised as “the world’s most powerful potter’s wheel.” The

X-1 was powered by a 300 horsepower V-8 engine from a 1965 Oldsmobile. (Minnesota Energy)

VisGirda completed the X-1 just in time for the 1976 NCECA in Baton Rouge, where they

exhibited it during the pre-conference, where they happened to be placed next to a booth that was

conducting a seminar on “sensitivity training”. According to VisGirda, they were “sitting cross-

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legged and communing with nature while ten feet away, we had this V-8 with no muffler.”

(VisGirda)

Captain Ceramics also offered the world’s “least powerful wheel”, a “home hobby economy

wheel” that consisted of a dowel and wheel head powered by a pull string that could be attached

to any table. VisGirda also offered up a reversible splash guard made out of a 50-gallon drum

that was suitable for extra-messy (or well-dressed) potters in addition to other “convenience

products” like pre-packaged kiln gods, glaze dippers and pre-started clay cylinders. Collateral

advertising material was also important to the project. From 1976 through 1980, VisGirda

produced a steady stream of promotional calendars, postcards and even an “under-the-counter”

Captain Ceramics-themed “Tijuana Bible” for his “best customers.” (VisGirda)

In her review of the October, 1971 exhibition Clayworks: 20 Americans at the Museum of

Contemporary Crafts in New York that featured Melchert, Bailey, Arneson and Gilhooly, Rose

Slivka pondered the sheer variety of humor that was employed, ranging from “scourging wit to

sad clowning intelligent and elegant wryness.” Slivka chalked this sudden influx of humor and

linguistic exploration up to the ceramics world’s need to invent a “protective patois, a dialect, in-

talk and double-talk not understandable by the aficionados and the entrepreneurs”. She wondered

whether or not the artists in the exhibition, who were university educated and “degree-laden” had

“outwitted the art world… and by so doing, outwitted themselves?” (Slivka 63)

It would appear that time, for the most part, has borne Slivka’s prediction out. While

Arneson’s work is often shown in museums alongside the work of other modern masters, the

work of other artists working conceptually with humor and clay in the 1970s has been largely

forgotten, even by the field of ceramics. When questioned about Funk, contemporary viewers are

often ill-at-ease with the hallmarks of the work—its use of chalky whiteware clay, hobby glazes

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and groan-worthy wordplay. Nevertheless, these artists have blazed a trail for artists like

Grayson Perry, who, like George Ohr and Clayton Bailey, is inseparable from his performative

persona. As contemporary practitioners in the field of ceramics continue to explore video,

performance, and processes that don’t necessarily result in ceramic objects, it is imperative that

the work of their forbears is preserved and celebrated.

Garth Johnson is a writer, artist and educator who lives and works in Eureka, California. He

is an assistant professor of art at College of the Redwoods. Garth has written for magazines like

CRAFT, Readymade, FiberArts, American Craft and Hand/Eye. His first book, 1000 Ideas for

Creative Reuse was published by Quarry in November, 2009. He has also contributed to books

like Handmade Nation, Craftivity, Craft Corps and World of Geekcraft. His work has been

exhibited internationally, as well as featured in magazines such as The Observer, Ceramics

Monthly, American Craft, Metropolis and The Artist’s Magazine.

Garth is also a curator, with two recent exhibitions under his belt. His first exhibition,

Renewal Notice was curated for the 2010 American Conservation Film Festival in

Shepherdstown, WV. His second exhibition, Era Messages was curated from the permanent

collection of the Museum of Contemporary Craft in Portland, Oregon and was on display at the

museum from January-June 2011.

Currently, Garth is serving as the guest editor for an upcoming issue of Studio Potter.

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Works Cited

Bailey, Clayton G. "A Short Chronology of the Artist's Life." The Ceramic Sculpture and Metal Sculpture of Clayton Bailey. Web. 05 Jan. 2012.

Baker, Kenneth. David Gilhooly. Davis, CA (140 F St., Davis, CA 95616): John Natsoulas, 1992. Print.

Burrison, John A. Brothers in Clay: The Story of Georgia Folk Pottery. Athens: University of Georgia, 1995. Print.

Buszek, Maria Elena. Extra/ordinary: Craft and Contemporary Art. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2011. Print.

Clark, Garth, Robert Ellison, Eugene Hecht, and John White. "The Life and Times of G.E. Ohr." The Mad Potter of Biloxi. New York: Abbeville, 2002. Print.

Gladstone, George. "Compression Tests Shatter Esthetic Beliefs." NCECA Newsletter 2 (Jan. 1979): 2. Print.

Glueck, Grace. "Making the Spectator the Participant; Feel It' Environment at Crafts Museum." The New York Times 1 Feb. 1969: 25. The New York Times. Web. 3 Jan. 2011.

Horovitz, Israel. "Feel It: Museum of Contemporary Crafts Exhibition Explores Anti-visual Experience." Craft Horizons Mar.-Apr. 1969: 15+. Print.

"Interview with Clayton Bailey." Personal interview. 23 May 2011.

"Interview with Rimas VisGirda." Telephone interview. 19 Dec. 2011.

"Interview with Victor Spinski." Telephone interview. 4 Jan. 2012.

Irving, Rebecca. "Sculptor Gets 'pied' during Pottery Test." Niagra Gazette [Niagra Falls, NY] 25 Oct. 1975. Print.

Johnson, Evert. "Two Happenings at Southern Illinois University: 1/ Clay Unfired." Craft Horizons Oct. 1970: 36-39. Print.

Marcus, Greil. Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes. New York: H. Holt &, 1997. Print.

Meyer-Hermann, Eva, Andrew Perchuk, and Stephanie Rosenthal. Allan Kaprow - Art as Life. London: Thames & Hudson, 2008. Print.

Minnesota Energy: An Artist-curated Exhibition. Duluth, MN: University of Minnesota-Duluth, 1980. Print.

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The Museum of Contemporary Crafts. PUBLIC TO "GET INTO THE ACT" AT NEW EXHIBITION/EVENT SERIES. New York: Museum of Contemporary Crafts, 1971. Print.

"The New Ceramic Presence." The Craft Reader. Ed. Glenn Adamson. Oxford: Berg, 2010. 525-33. Print.

Oliver, Valerie Cassel. "Craft Out of Action." Hand+Made: The Performative Impulse in Art and Craft. Houston, TX: Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, 2010. Print.

Schwartz, Barbara. "The Self in City Space and in Clothed Space." Craft Horizons Aug. 1971: 30-35. Print.

Schwartz, Judith S. Confrontational Ceramics. London: A&C Black, 2008. Print.

Slivka, Rose. "Laugh-In in Clay." Craft Horizons Oct. 1971: 39+. Print.

Voulkos, Peter, Rose Slivka, and Karen Tsujimoto. "Introduction: The Dynamics of Duende." The Art of Peter Voulkos. Tokyo: Kodansha International in Collaboration with the Oakland Museum, 1995. Print.

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The Old Weird Claymerica