Locally, we like our ceramics to be straightforward, handsome and classic — preferably in the form of recognizable vessels. Defining the role of ceramic art in Charlotte’s panoply of taste usually comes down to one word: safe.
Rarely do we Charlotte folk opt for the edgy form; the broken not whole; something that is questionable, challenging or purely experimental. Rarely do we go for something decidedly not classic, or classical. Whether pottery, sculpture or painting, the categories of “predictable” and “safe” truly describe Charlotte’s fondness for comfortable and cozy art, whether it is two-dimensional, like printmaking or painting, or three-dimensional, like sculpture or pottery.
The Carolinas are rich and rife with potters of all ilks, some of them quite famous and masterful. The tradition of Ben Owen and his family is a tribute to our history. The cover story in a recent issue of Ceramics Monthly features a very handsome stoneware vessel on the front in the finest classical tradition of NC’s “own” Ben Owen (III), whose name alone attests to the meaning of the word tradition.
Don Reitz at the Mint is not Ben Owen. He’s not Ben Owen II. Or even Ben Owen III. His work bears no relation to that of North Carolina’s famous first family of potters at Seagrove. Neither is he something feel-good or cuddly.
Reitz is Reitz and Reitz alone, a solitary king of his craft; a potter’s potter, not a populist.
Just as North Carolinian Harvey Littleton, born 1922, is the founder of the American studio glass, so Don Reitz is the founder of studio pottery in America. Now, Clay, Fire, Salt and Wood, the first major retrospective for Reitz, has traveled to the Mint Museum of Craft + Design in Charlotte from its organizing institution, the Chazen Museum of Art at the University of Wisconsin–Madison (formerly the Elvehjem Museum of Art), to remain on view uptown through the end of the year. Go see it. It will help you (re)define what pottery is. The retrospective also includes a video and a photo album of interesting black-and-whites of an outdoor Wisconsin salt-glaze kiln, with images of the artist pulling very large, cylindrical forms through the 1960s, 1970s and later.
We love the Owen tradition, but is there room for Reitz’s stoneware in our appreciation of pottery? Is there room for the 15-inch tall, salt-glazed “Cut Out” (circa 1977), a remarkable piece that is clearly nonfunctional?
We have to ask: Can we be ready for Reitz’s unusual stoneware, and for other nontraditional work, at a time when we let Gallery WDO vanish, leaving in its wake a disconsolate and empty space at the foot of the Hearst Tower? When Clay on Camden closes unexpectedly? And when, until quite recently, the local ceramics cooperative Clayworks was still struggling?
With each of these changes and closings comes a lessening of the quality of the “everyclay” objects in our midst, and one wonders if the mass-produced vessels in trendy stores are going to eclipse the hand-thrown unique object altogether.
Are we really ready for Reitz — for his purity of technique and idiosyncratic expression, characteristics that mark his work as esoteric by popular standards? Are we ready for the nonfunctional forms such as the unique “Cut Out” or the fabulous silhouette of “Ex-Voto #1” (1969), stoneware, salt glaze, 19-1/2 inches tall? Both of these ceramics have the rough, unpredictable glazes that are the hallmark of the Reitz retrospective. Do they fit the slick, commercial veneer of urbanity that we’ve so recently wrapped around this small Southern city?
What brought Reitz to this place, this creative juncture? In part, it would be the influence of painting, abstract expressionism in particular. Just as that revolutionary movement “freed” painting from the burden of representation in the mid-20th century, so Reitz discovered his own freedom of expression in the ceramic arts when he began using salt-glazing.
But does Reitz’s work speak directly to the soul, as Kandinsky claimed abstract painting does? The way Reitz digs into the clay to incise the mark of the artist and the way he displays painterly gestures when he uses glazes like paint, spattering the liquid to be fired and leaving patches of bare, honey-colored stoneware, I’d have to say yes. After firing, the effect is something like the revealed edge of the raw, unprimed canvas of an expressionist painting.
Follow Clay, Fire, Salt and Wood to its end and you’ll witness the diversity. The mix of forms, shapes and surfaces presents potent evidence of the wide range and reach of Don Reitz’s ceramics. This level of ceramic creativity is certainly akin to abstract expressionist painting — obeying laws and following concepts that are generally visible only to the initiated and eschewing recognizable imagery. Does an appreciation of this art require in-depth knowledge? Is it a good thing or just too esoteric for Charlotte’s popular taste? You have to go see it to find out for yourself. Go on; challenge yourself.
The exhibit Clay, Fire, Salt and Wood is on display through December 31, 2005, at the Mint Museum of Craft + Design, 220 North Tryon Street. For more information, call 704-337-2000.
This article appears in Dec 7-13, 2005.
