I started out as a painter - I'm a failed painter. A lot of people have
come into ceramics and into the craft world generally as sort of refugees
from the world of the so-called "Fine Arts'' and into the world of
Crafts. In my case, when I became involved with pottery I found quite
a sense of release init. I felt that more of my skills and more of my
abilities were drawn into the work than had been the case when I was
painting. Of course, when you're a potter you have to be a bricklayer
and pipe-fitter. I found I had a little talent in all these things, and even
a little talent in business (not much). One of the things that really
attracted me into ceramics was the very pragmatic one of making a
living. Iwas seeking an independent way of existing - some way that I
could live and still make use of my talents, such as they were, and my
interest in art. It did work out that way for me - I did support myself
through pottery for quite a while. I found it a very exhausting, but on
the whole, rewarding kind of experience. When I got a little deeper
into pottery, I began to sense more dimensions to it, more angles,
more things there that I hadn't known were there, and I came to
realize that my training in art had been awfully one-sided. I studied
History of Art at the University of Chicago. Our teachers never men-
tioned the so-called "every-day arts". They never mentioned the
Primitive Arts or the Arts of the Craftsman. We studied Renaissance
Art and we studied all the different phases of art, but this other thing
was entirely neglected - and that's all wrong, isn't it? The idea that
art only involves Painting and Sculpture, that it is centered on the kind
of Art that was developed in our culture since the Renaissance, is a
terribly one-sided view of what art really is, in my opinion.

As I studied pottery more and more, I came to the surprising discovery
that a teabowl, a Japanese teabowl, is as great a thing as Michael-
angelo's "Last Judgement". That idea might be incomprehensible to a
lot of people. They'd say ''How could that be? Here Michaelangelo
presented this vast panorama of such importance, whereas the teabow]
is dealing with something so unimportant. Just the idea of a little bowl".
But that's not right. The sensibility in both these forms can be equally
human, and I think, equally significant. I don't want to pump up the
Crafts as against the Arts - that's silly. But I do want to talk a little
bit about the idea of there being no sensible division between these
things. I don't think there is any sensible line where the two are
divided.