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A Short Talk with Fredi

How did era pet started?

When | was a kid [| tock a pottery class at
acommunity centre, around grade 3. |
was one of those mudpie type of kids. Tn
high school i really got excited by wheel
throwing and spent lors of time doing
that. I was hooked. | always loved
working with clay, but working on the
wheel was just magic. | persisted at it
until ] had mastered it and thar led me
into all the other chings like glazing and
firing. Technical stutf is what gets me
excited!

“pe MEWET Cray Been Wow WoTkENg,
lve never actually seen you working, do your
freces start oo the wheel?

A lot of chem are combinations of slab
huile and chrown forms. | use che wheel
now as a tool to make certain forms that ]
can't make any other way. And [ really
love throwing, it's such a Zen experience,
really quite meditative. [ don’t think of
miself as a thrower's thrower, even

though the work [ looked at when £ was
starting out was the work of Bernard
Leach, Michael Cardew and other
craditional English functional potters. |
think their pots have formal qualities of
elegance and my own stress on volume
comes from looking ac thetr pors way back
then.

When you buy a pat, whar does it tend to be
Ihr!

[ chink [ look for somerhing thar really
expresses the softness and plasticiry of
clay. [ usually get pieces that are wood or
soda Gred, ] like the interaction between
the fire and che clay, When [ lock at my
awn work's evolution, ic has become more
precise and controlled, so [ really admire
looseness and softmess in other people's
work.

Around [00 wou aid @ series using an pron
ats the model Was there a particular iron in
OUT lifer?

Ne, [ was just looking at the form. |
started making these butrerdishes in Nova
Scotia and there was a relationship

berween the beac shape: ad the ino
shape. T looked tor the sense of moving
forward thar both objects have.

At heart, ma production porter. [ did
spend two summers working for
production porters and [ made thousands
and thousands of cups. [ discovered form
chrowh making things many, mary times.
| work in series, bur only 10 objeces ata
Gr. [e's a practical ching to do, because
the first one is dry enowgh to work on by
the time you're finished making the Last
one. With teapots espectally, | make 3 or
4 ar atime which allows me many
variations cn the berm. There are so
many different elements to put rogether in
ateapor. | ao back co chem all che time.
There is so much potential in the form to

work with, to express gesture and
character.

Fredt Rahn is cermently teaching at ECLAD,
wording in her all-tos-urban studio and
spends her weekends working on her dream
cottage i the woods onan unnamed island
full of happy potters.

Karen Qpas.

~*~

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