The Saratoga Arts Clay Center’s new exhibition explores the relationship between maker, material, nature and place.
The exhibit features artists like Andrew Sartorius, heard here working at the Oki Doki studio in Germantown, New York.
Harrison Levenstein is one of the potters in the exhibit. He was approached by the arts center and was asked to create a theme focused on woodfire pottery.
After listening to a podcast themed around the word syncretism, his idea for the exhibit was born.
“That word syncretic comes from a Greek word synkrētismos, which means together and Cretan. The federation of Cretan cities and its sort of like a confluence of cultures. Crete was this melting pot of different cultures and trading and art,” he said
Originally from California, Levenstein was exposed to pottery from a young age. His mother was a hobby potter.
He fell in love with the art after taking a ceramics class in high school.
He continued following his passion for clay-working in college at what was then Humboldt State University, now California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt.
While studying, he realized he was more interested in the craftsmanship surrounding ceramics than the academics.
“And the deep ties that potters have to the land and these traditional shapes that different places are known for and different techniques that different places are known for. I was reading all about it and I realized I needed to find an apprenticeship,” he said.
After Levenstein graduated in 2014, he began to travel. He went to India, took up an apprenticeship in Washington state and then spent about 18 months in the Midwest with another woodfire potter.
After his second apprenticeship, he returned to India.
“I lived there for 6 months and I worked at a pottery in Pondicherry, southeast India, in the state of Tamil Nadu, at the Golden Bridge Pottery, which is a spectacular place, and I learned how to make big pots there,” he said
He adds he has always felt like a nomad.
“Seeking something meaningful and clay has always been my avenue of trying to find that. Feeling connected to something that is much older and deeper and more meaningful than just me. When I discovered the idea of syncretism it was like this a-ha moment, like how this is what I have been doing the whole time,” he said.
Levenstein mixes his own clay and fires his pieces in a Japanese-style kiln called an Anagama. He wants his work to be beautiful and have utility.
“It kind of took me a while to realize that that’s one of my like values and thats what I strive for, is beauty and evoking an emotional response in the folks who view it. Because it’s not a given, not all art needs to be beautiful,” he said.
Sartorius is another artist whose work is featured in the exhibit and is one of Levenstein’s best friends.
A video provided to WAMC by artist Alex Olson documents Sartorius’ process as he creates art from clay.
He says he first began working with ceramics to better connect with his students while working as an English teacher in Japan in the early 2010s.
He was invited by the school’s craft instructor to learn to make tea bowls.
“I said, ‘Sure that sounds really great. I’d love to try.’ I started using YouTube to teach myself to throw and making tea bowls and then we invited the students to come make with me and they spoke to me a lot more,” he said.
Later, he fell in love with clay on the wheel and began learning more about traditional and functional forms of clay in the Far East.
Sartorius says his early projects featured a rugged, rigid feel while his work in the new exhibit explores softer lines.
“This body of work is entirely sculpturally themed and the first time I’ve really shared that amount of work focused in that way. So, I thought this show would be really great. The theme of this show is sort of influences over time and the way that they grow and intermingle to create something new and different, so that felt very relevant to that idea,” he said.
He also runs a program at the Oki Doki studio where he teaches people how to create, glaze and fire clay works of art.
Sartorius says the program is a continuation of his educational work.
“I really loved being an English teacher. I really enjoy pedagogy and talking about how to teach and watching people discover new things. So, I think having that opportunity to continue in my ceramics career has been really exceptional,” he said.
Turiya Gross is the third artist featured in the exhibit at the clay center. She resides in Taos, New Mexico.
Gross was born in Mexico City in 1984 and was homeschooled by her parents.
She says the arts were a focal point in her education.
“Drawing came naturally and that was my way of moving in the world. We practiced a lot going to parks and drawing trees and things like that. My parents knew of this Craft Community in upstate New York because friends had told us about it and that’s how I ended up in New York and one of the things that they had were ceramics,” she said.
There, she trained under a Turkish man who taught her about folk art Turkish motifs, which she now uses to decorate her pottery. Some of her work features blue painted patterns on top of a white background.
Gross also takes characteristics found in cultures’ pottery and blends them together to create her own original artwork – like handles found in Etruscan pottery found in ancient Italy.
“I think we’re living in an era where there is a lot of questioning, how to have reverence for different cultures and not take without knowing or doing your homework as far as where that comes from, which I understand. And yet, I think that as humans I’m really surprised at how especially with the decoration, different cultures were doing pretty much the same thing in a way,” she said.
“Syncretics: Crafting Identity,” opens Saturday and runs through April 26th in Schuylerville.
