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| Comment: May 2008
The Thursday Night Challenge
by Dick Lehman
This cup was made by Dick Lehman during one of his studio’s “Thursday Night Challenge” assignments.
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Recently, I sent an e-mail note to a friend of mine telling her how much I was enjoying a little cup that she’d sent me. What I didn’t tell her was this: her cup was different from any I’d ever used, and my particular enjoyment of the piece caused me to stop and attempt to identify the elements about the piece that felt so “right.” It was interesting for me to notice how her piece nudged me to see a little more deeply, imagine with a bit more creativity and hatch some ideas for new ways that I might like to approach cup-making. How interesting to me, then, when her reply e-mail included this paragraph:
“Do you ever find yourself feeling a bit stagnant or in need of a deepening? I’m curious what other clay artists do to stoke the fire. Good books, talking with others, travel, meditation, personal assignments? I suppose the process is unique and personal to each of us.”
Her question caused me to reflect, with a little more purpose, on just what it is that I do to “stoke the fire” within. Of course, there was the obvious: how important it is to surround oneself with good work—the best of one’s own work, and a fine collection from other makers from across the span of history. This, most all of us do, whether through our own personal collections, trips to museums, international travel or simply a trip to a fine museum collection, compliments of our local broadband connection.
But what else can be done to stay fresh—to stoke the fire? And is this “freshening” different for production potters, or sculptors, or those who never tie themselves into a pattern of production or repetition? I’m not sure I know. But as I thought more about it, I noticed that I utilize at least three regular patterns in an attempt to keep things fresh:
Each week, I set aside at least one day to work in ways that are not production-oriented. So what does that mean? For me, one who spends most of his life working with several key employees producing a line of 100 different production pieces, it means rejecting the production demands of success and salability. I give myself permission to explore a new teapot design, or a new pitcher or baking dish, without the requirement that the work I create will produce something that will make its way to the kiln, much less be something that I can sell. It is freedom from any sense of commodity being attached to the efforts of these work days. Such investigations always produce some work that ends up in the re-work barrels. Yet without fail, there is some idea or component of this exploration that informs my visual literacy and sets aflame some new understanding of composition, balance or utility. And these understandings are eventually utilized in future work, creating new ideas that I would not have come to without setting aside the requirements of productivity, commodity and salability.
Another way that I try to stoke the fire is to give myself assignments. Recently, I assigned myself the task of creating 100 cups for under $100 in 100 days, and loading them on the “ceramics for sale” portion of my web site. An additional requirement that I gave myself was to try to make cup forms that were largely new to me, or that utilized our existing glaze materials in ways that I had never attempted before.
The remarkable speed of development, progress and newness within this 100-piece series surprised even me. The “assignment” allowed me the freedom to take risks, try the improbable and stretch myself. The results expanded my visual literacy, my technical acuity, and enabled me to see beauty in new ways. What a gift! A gift only surpassed by my collectors’ willingness to see and enjoy my works in new ways, as well.
One of Dick Lehman’s “Thursday Night Challenge” cups, during which everyone in his studio completes assignments that take them outside of their comfort zones.
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Finally, I want to tell you about the “Thursday Night Challenge”—obviously named, as you will see. I employ two other full-time potters who work with me, but who also make their own works and pursue their own careers. Once each week, on Thursdays, an hour before closing (schedule allowing), we stop the “regular” work. The employees stay on the clock, but work on their own pieces. What guides our time together is an assignment to which we have all agreed. Deciding the nature of the assignment is a task that is passed around among all the studio mates. Our most recent challenge was altered cups. The rules are simple: during the first half hour, we each commit to pursue the challenge-piece in a way that we have never tried before. At the end of the first half hour, we spend five minutes looking at the methods or approaches that the others have attempted. The assignment for the last half hour is to appropriate from someone else a method or approach that they utilized, which is also new to us.
Here is a list of some of the challenges we have tried, or plan to try:
Platters over ten pounds; five-minute teapots (completely thrown and assembled); faceted and expanded (while on the wheel) cups; facetted, textured and expanded (while on the wheel) cups; altered bowls; divided dishes; pitchers with spouts guaranteed not to drip; thrown and altered plates; extruded trays (using existing dies in new ways); flattened bottles; a pot thrown upside-down; two-part assembled pots under three pounds total; two-part assembled pots over fifteen pounds total; handleless pouring pieces; high-footed cups requiring trimming; textured and expanded (while on the wheel) vases; left-handed cups; handleless lidded jars.
The point of all this is to purposefully place ourselves in a position to encounter what is unfamiliar to us, to work outside our areas of comfort, to counteract stagnation, to encourage “deepening” and to “stoke the fire.” What might be the applications/implications of such an encounter with the unfamiliar for the larger community of ceramics artists? How does all this make sense for the production potter, the artist potter, the sculptor?
How we each approach the necessity of deepening, seeing with new eyes and avoiding stagnation will likely depend on our temperaments and the complexities of our lives. Each one of us, undoubtedly, already has sound intuitions about what we need to do to take the next step. The only real question is whether we will discipline ourselves to move forward in ways that are deeply unique and intimately personal.
the author Dick Lehman works at the Lehman-Goertzen Pottery in Goshen, Indiana. The 100 cup assignment was completed on February 23, and can be found in the “ceramics for sale” link at www.dicklehman.com.
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