JAMES ROBINSON

PERSONAL

Born: June 24, 1950 Keene, New Hampshire
Married: Elizabeth Alderson -- Teacher, elementary school
Children: Katherine, born August 18, 1983

EDUCATION

Keene High School and Dublin School
Southern Oregon University

EMPLOYMENT

Studio Potter 32 years

ART COMMUNITY ACTIVITIES

EXHIBITIONS

GALLERIES

NATIONAL EXHIBITIONS/FAIRS

COLLECTIONS

PUBLICATIONS/WORKS CITED/TELEVISION APPEARANCES

LECTURES AND WORKSHOPS

LECTURES AND WORKSHOPS (Continued)

ARTIST STATEMENT

This is my 32nd year of clay. I arrived in Ashland the fall of 1968 with the intention of staying one year and then striking out for Florence, Italy to pursue a career in art history. I'd come from my native New Hampshire partially infected with the "clay bug", but here in southern Oregon it took hold and has not let go.

I follow my heart and hands. From my perspective now, I see a long line of unbroken forms, one leading to the next. I trust my instincts. I am stubborn. Technical knowledge leads to insight. I hike the mountains, I mill the mountains and then I incorporate them into the wares. I enjoy mystery. Why I rise each morning and come to the studio is a mystery. I can't imagine another life.

The pieces for this show are coil-built and honed to an essential simplicity. Sintered mat glazes, ones with no gloss development, are rubbed and sprayed to enhance the forms. The pieces are then fired to 2300 degrees Fahrenheit in a reduction atmosphere, which is vital for color development and durability.

In the deep hills of New Hampshire as a child I would climb to the out-cropping granite ledges to find the bones, the spines of the land. Here the passing glaciers had scraped away the milled overburden to reveal the form below. These rocks would almost pulse beneath my feet. I know now I have followed the mineral song I heard when I was young. These forms reveal my life's path.

ARTIST STATEMENT 2

I view this series of pots as an environment; an encapsulated vision of harmony between mankind and the Earth's other creatures. This wish for an accord is often not reflected very clearly in our heavy-handed communion with the wild world, but remains an ideal to seek.

Annie Dillard quotes an Eskimo shaman as saying, "Life's greatest danger lies in the fact that men's food consists entirely of souls." This means to me that life is not a simple prospect. Our choices as we live cannot be easy, and are at the same time full of peril and joy. The questions are: How well can we share the planet? How well dare we live? The harm we do to animals and the Earth, we do to ourselves as well. In our hunting and gathering, in the field and in the marketplace, there is still an air of desperation and a deep memory of hunger, but at the same time, works of wonder and generosity come from our hands.

Several years ago, dozens of sea lions were found at the mouth of the Klamath River in Northern California, shot, presumably by fishermen, who felt that the sea lions had stolen their salmon bounty long enough. It was never determined who these men were, but the tale remains a sad testament to man's tenure on the planet.

This world is full of wonder and I want my pots to share in it; a collaboration of heart and stone. These recent pieces are often still vessels, full of the warmth, familiarity and reassurance associated with containers. They serve also as a world for the creatures sculpted on them. The vases and boxes are hand-thrown, altered into softened shapes and finished off with slabwork. Many of the pieces are carved with patterns of fish, birds or other marine mammals, while the animals sculpted above soar over the mouths of the pots in fluid, arcing lines. Salmon dash, and polar bears box, all the while charging up the space below. The spirit boxes are home to salmon and loons and stand soundly on sturdy feet. The work also includes a series of purely sculpted animal forms, which begin on the wheel and are completed with handbuilding techniques. Ibex, bighorn sheep and polar bears are represented in this collection; sentinels at the endangered frontier.

The wares are fired at cone ten reduction atmosphere resulting in a durable, vitreous structure and are often glazed with an ultra mat coating, with the soft colors a result of a build-up of many successive glaze coats. Other coatings include black satin gloss and soft mats sprayed over rich, active slips which pull up mysterious shades of color from the surface below.

As I construct each piece, it is loaded with a specific meaning to me, an homage resulting from the many associations of form and image, but they leave themselves open to interpretation by others who come to them charged with their own life's experience. Through these pots I wish to show that we can embrace this world with a delicacy and joy so that it remains a deep, safe harbor for all living things.