About Nick Joerling

• LOCATED: Bakersville, NC
• MATERIALS: Stoneware
• SURFACE: Thin Shino under glazes
• PROCESS: Wheel thrown and altered. Wax resist decoration. Gas reduction fired to Cone 10

The pots I make come from loving and being curious about pottery, and my inclination to draw. I don’t have any drawing training, but I tend to think with a pencil. Not drawing as rendering but simply doodling, then working hard to get that doodle to work as a pot. With vertical pots profile is therefore a strong attraction. Plates and platters are a canvas for restrained line and brush drawing.

I sometimes describe myself as a hand builder at heart trapped in a wheel thrower’s body. I love putting pots together at the table. The liveliness that wheel working can put into the clay continues to be my starting point. Beginning with round pots coming from the wheel, I push, cut, coax and stretch those forms. Why alter pots? Tom Spleth nicely observed: “As work departs from thrown forms that typically refer to pots and pottery, it gains the ability to describe forms in nature, suggest the vulnerability of the figure, and express the asymmetry found in human experience.”

I like the blue collar aspect of utilitarian pots, pots that do the everyday work of carrying, containing, delivering, but can also “step out” and stimulate the mind and imagination. I like pots that make good use of the constraints of utility, and I like pots that push against those boundaries — pots that entertain some dicey possibilities. In my own studio I hope for pots that have qualities of sensuality, empathy, humor and risk.