Creativity Tips: Something There Is ...

Paterae by Jean Wender

Jean Wender's show at the Kansas City Artists Coalition's Underground Gallery does exactly what great art should do: It stops you in your tracks and makes you reconsider your view of the world.

Jean's pottery is not glazed. It's not raku. It's something beautifully different. I consider it pottery poetry ... so this post from Jean describing her work makes perfect sense to me.

"Something there is that does not love a wall."

These words of Robert Frost beautifully express my rejection of putting a glaze on my pots. I love working with clay: the yielding fullness of clay in its raw state; its suppleness on a potter's wheel; the subtle sheen of a burnished surface. My hands have coaxed this entity into existence in a series of almost ritualistic steps. To encase a piece in a layer of glass strikes me as a betrayal of this precious relationship. Much better to leave the surface open and porous, receptive to the marks and colors that result from a saggar or a sawdust firing, open and receptive to the touch of a hand.

--- Jean Wender, 2013

Go see Ceramic Work by Jean Wender at the Underground Gallery, Kansas City Artists Coalition, 201 Wyandotte, KCMO 64105. The show closes March 29; gallery hours are Wednesday - Saturday, 11 a.m. - 5 p.m.

P.S. Full disclosure: I love Jean. She is one of the kindest, gentlest, smartest, funniest, honest people I know. But that's not why I'm promoting the show. I'm promoting the show for the art, which -- in this case -- naturally reflects the beauty of the artist.