[sparse piano chords]
♪
[oboe leads
calm orchestration]
[scraping noise]
♪
(man)
People always say, oh,
it must be just like Christmas
opening a kiln...
♪
but it's not, really.
There's a lot more anxiety
because there's
so much work that--
that goes into each firing,
each load of pots.
♪
It's a really private,
personal time
and can be really wonderful,
but it can also be
really pretty difficult.
And I can't even really
objectively see the pots
for...about two weeks.
♪
Once you can let
your expectations melt away...
♪
then you can actually
look at the pot and see it.
They, um--
they really reveal themselves
very slowly to you.
♪
The cold never bothers me...
'cause I--
I grew up in New England.
I like the cold;
I like a real winter.
[soft piano melody resonates]
♪
There are days, certainly,
when I wake up out here
and I wonder and I question,
what motivated me
to be out here?
[strings support piano]
♪
And I think
that maybe there was a--
a small percentage
that was running away
from something.
♪
And there's days when,
very clearly,
I feel like I needed
to put this space here.
♪
[quick whistled note]
[animal footfalls]
Came down to North Carolina
to go to college
at Guilford in Greensboro,
talked my way into a class
with Charlie Tefft,
who runs the ceramic program.
It was there that my eyes
were really opened
to this huge world of clay
that exists in North Carolina.
[oboe leads wandering piano]
There was a potter
named Matt Jones,
and I started
helping Matt fire.
The first time
I went into his workshop,
there was a smell about it,
and it has a dirt floor,
and it was very dark,
and something felt
really right about it.
[sloshing]
I felt, and I could really
put my head down
and learn something.
The apprenticeship
at Matt Jones's
was structured
in the same way
that his apprenticeships
were structured.
I would do chores
like chop wood,
mix glazes, mix clay.
As long as I had those things
taken care of,
I could also make pots.
[off-screen]
Corey, these
are little coffee mugs.
They're sort of
a variation
of that Cole mug
that I love
from Sanford,
North Carolina.
[voice-over]
He would throw a pot.
That was the sort of
small piece of perfection
that I was striving for.
I actually think
that somewhere in between--
[voice-over]
And the rest of the day,
I would look at that pot,
and I would try to mimic it.
♪
And you need to sorta
sacrifice your ego.
If you can't do that,
this type of apprenticeship
will prove
to be very difficult.
Keep it a little
wider at the top.
[voice-over]
It's bigger than just you.
You're part of a whole arc.
I worked with Matt;
Matt worked with Mark Hewitt.
Mark Hewitt
was with Todd Piker.
They were with Michael Cardew
in England.
Cardew was Bernard Leach's
first apprentice.
We're all sort of
in it together
and pushing
each other forward.
[rustling]
North Carolina's really a--
a land made of clay.
It's everywhere.
[machine whirring]
I can number the first time
that I used a local clay,
and it was
a huge amount of work,
and it's incredibly
labor-intensive
to refine it and process it.
But it threw beautifully,
and the color was beautiful,
and it had all this character.
[slapping]
But the throwing,
I struggle with it.
[strings support piano melody]
♪
I think
that's a funny illusion,
that art is joy
'cause it's not always joy.
And I think a lot of good art
comes from struggle...
and there's good days,
and there's bad days.
♪
The way that I throw is--
it's looking at older pots,
especially older pots
from North Carolina,
and looking at characteristics
of those pots.
Since most of those pots
were made for function,
it was important
that they were light,
and so there's certain things
that I really
beat myself up about,
trying to make them
as light as possible.
♪
But they have to look good
sitting--
a nice, midcentury home
or a modern home.
I mean,
that's the real challenge
for me now, I feel,
is the pots
fit into a broader context
of the world,
not just be suited
for a country cottage.
[orchestration thickens]
♪
But every once in a while,
it's kind of nice
to come back to an older form.
♪
There's an elegance
to a pitcher
that I don't really
wanna mess with.
Instead, it's just a slow
refinement of the form.
[oboe leads piano]
♪
I mean, they had to make
a lot of these.
They had to be
very proficient,
but they still added
a little bit of themselves
into each one.
They still had the touch
of the maker.
♪
The technique
that I use to decorate pots
is called slip trailing,
and it's an old technique.
You can see it
all over the world
in all different
pottery traditions,
and it's something I express
a little of myself in that,
and that's certainly
what people
seem to recognize me for
is my slip trailing.
♪
I grew up with both
my mother and father,
practicing artists.
As long as I can remember,
they were
in their studios working.
That is what I saw,
so to be an artist,
nobody would raise
an eyebrow at it.
It was like the doctor's son
going to med school.
♪
Being up here every day,
it turns into a juggling act.
♪
[sloshing]
Certain ones need to be
attended to at certain times,
and they need to be decorated.
These need to be glazed,
and these need to be trimmed.
Watching the racks
fill up with pots,
it's really fantastic.
♪
Hah, hah!
What'd you ruin?
I erased it, and--
Well, you can just
turn this into a leaf.
But I tried
to do that,
and then it looked
ridiculous--heh!
[sizzling]
[indistinct talking]
(man)
Connie and I met
in Madison County
at a farmers' market
in the bottom
of the old roller rink
in Mars Hill...
and she worked
for a goat dairy
in northern Madison County.
She was selling goat cheese.
We spent that first winter
driving back and forth
on these snowy roads--
it was the craziest winter
that we've had in years--
through two feet of snow.
She's watched this go
from an old tobacco field
to what it is today
and been part of that change.
She's really hugely important.
[horns and drums lead]
Our year
is broken into cycles,
and right now,
I've fired the kiln
four times,
so that's
four different cycles.
As I'm making the pots,
I sort of have an idea of,
in my head, where they're
gonna go in the kiln.
[off-screen]
Let's come over
towards me just a hair.
That's good.
It's OK;
it's OK.
[voice-over]
It's a puzzle
to fit them all in.
[harp leads]
[off-screen]
I think the short,
fat one, yeah--
bring--
bring me that one.
[voice-over]
For the most part,
pots farther back
in the kiln
have more decoration,
more glaze.
♪
The farther you are
in the front of the kiln,
the more ash and salt the pots
are gonna have on them
because the hottest part
of the kiln is in the front,
so they don't need
as much surface decoration,
but the form is important,
but then,
the form will interact
with the ash deposit
that the flame
will put on them.
So that relies on the fire
to do all of the work.
♪
Well, that's the most intense
moment because you've got
two or three months
of work behind you,
and you load it into the kiln,
and then, you sorta
step back away from it.
[wood snapping]
There is an element
of serendipity and chance
that you have in that process
that doesn't exist in many
other artistic processes.
[strings hold high note]
I still have control,
but there's certainly
a lotta things
that are happening in the kiln
that you don't have
control over.
[bells lead
as arrangement swells]
[fire crackling]
♪
[sustained violin chord]
I think,
in my situation,
I had to kind of run away
to find myself.
[piano melody emerges]
So, my family history,
if we wanna talk
about my family history...
is Henri Matisse, um,
the painter,
who had some children,
one of whom was Pierre,
who's my grandfather.
I grew up
with this stuff around me.
I mean, it was just
an everyday part of our lives.
We never talked about Henri.
It was always sort of
a great elephant in the room.
There's a--
a power behind it that, um--
that certainly
doesn't go away,
and every time
you walk through an exhibit,
it always kinda
leaves me speechless
because what--
what do you do in that wake
when that's always behind you?
[fire crackling]
There are times when it feels
like the shadow
that's cast by those figures
is kind of too broad to ever
get out from underneath...
[oboe leads]
but nothing that, I think,
putting your head down
and getting to work
won't resolve.
♪
And being here
sort of pushed me forward
to make the best work
that I can make.
It didn't really matter
what my last name was
because people
started to recognize me
for what I was doing.
♪
[fire roaring]
So this is the third
and final day of the firing.
[machine humming]
[off-screen]
It's good.
Enough.
[machine ceases]
Right now, we're at top
temperature in the front.
The clay is mature;
it's done.
We're just building up
ash deposits on the clay,
building up the character
of the clay body.
Right now, Josh is stoking,
and the door's open,
so the temperature's dropping.
As he stokes,
it'll take a minute.
There's always a lag.
And as it's catching,
right in the beginning,
the kiln
will go into reduction,
meaning there's too much fuel
and not enough oxygen,
but as that fuel
starts to burn,
then we'll see
the temperature
start to go up,
as it is.
And this kiln
is very responsive.
It also depends
on the wood you're burning.
This wood is mostly pine
and poplar,
and it's been drying
for about three months,
so it's really dry.
It's ready to burn.
So after a stoke
in the front,
you'll see a huge flame
coming out the chimney.
Once that flame
comes back into the chimney,
then, you know,
the atmosphere--
it's kind of cleared up
in there--
the back is ready for a stoke.
OK, go ahead?
(Matisse)
Yup.
[voice-over]
It's important in the back
because that's where
all the glazed ware is.
It's important
to get temperature
so the glazes will melt,
and I formulate my glazes
to be a little stiffer
because this kiln gets so hot,
and you need it
to be really hot
to get that temperature
in the back.
[piano leads
calm orchestration]
♪
Once in a while,
towards the end of a firing,
I'll pull out a cup or
something small from the front.
♪
I'm never actually
in love with the pots
that I pull out
because a lot happens
from the time you stop firing
to the time
they come out of the kiln.
What it does give me
is a sense of how much ash
and how much salt
I have on the pots.
This has
a pretty thin shino on it,
which has gotten a little
darker in the reduction--
the heat in the front,
that I would like
a little more ash on this pot,
so I'll probably
just keep goin'
for another hour or two.
[oboe leads]
♪
I had this sort of notion
of wanting
to go into the woods
and come out and--
and have this skill...
♪
and have something to--
to offer the world.
I wanted to create a place
that would eventually
have its own energy
and attract other people.
It is doing that.
It is opening itself up.
The evolution is very slow.
♪
You're not gonna
hit a point one day
and wake up,
and suddenly,
you're there;
you've arrived.
I have to work at it.
[bells and piano lead]
♪