Slightly Off Center

So the farm I grew up on in Wisconsin has red granite bedrock. Over geologic time, it's eroded into a sticky red clay subsoil. So you could say my roots have been in clay for a very long time.

I didn't set out to be a potter. I was going to be an animator, or a cartoonist, or a commercial artist. I was a terrible pottery student--took me well into my second semester to finally master centering. Meanwhile, I worked as an editorial cartoonist for the local diocesan weekly newspaper, and as a graphic artist, first for my college publicity office, then at a local four-color printer. But I kept coming back to clay.

I bought my first wheel and kiln from a student in the art history class I was teaching as a sabbatical replacement. It wasn't a practical set of tools--an 18-inch electric kiln sized for firing dolls' heads, and a home-brew kickwheel with pipe frame, concrete flywheel and bright orange tractor seat. I spent all my evenings and weekends in the college pottery studio, trading glaze mixing and kiln loading for studio space.

I probably would have stayed there in La Crosse, working my way up to art director and throwing pots in my spare time, but for my friend Susie. She was another post-college potter, haunting the studio in her spare time, and she took a summer workshop at Tuscarora Pottery School. She signed up
for two weeks, wound up staying the entire summer, came back raving about the experience. So the next summer, I signed up.

Tuscarora literally changed my life. The school is located in an abandoned mining town in the central Nevada desert. There were only two students, daily demonstrations, and no distractions. In two weeks, we were able to make, dry, glaze and fill the entire waste-oil fired kiln. I'd never had that kind of concentrated studio time before, and came back from my two weeks off from the print shop inspired and energized.
And then I got laid off. It was only for a week, I took vacation time to cover, but I also took time to reevaluate where I wanted to be in my life, and to research graduate schools. I wound up applying to six--three close in, including the University of Minnesota, three further afield, Maryland, Arizona, Oregon. Arizona sent a form rejection letter with a rubber stamp signature. Minnesota wasn't accepting new grads that year, Warren Mackenzie was on sabbatical. Oregon... said yes.

Graduate school was all the best stuff, but magnified. Unstructured time, unfettered studio access. I fiddled around, trying to find my path, made some wildly un-functional pots, then stumbled on a theme that really resonated. I was taking a class from a professor who was very into dream imagery. I don't remember mine, much (unless they're really scary anxiety dreams), but thought it might be fun to work with childhood memories. Stripped down, with all the layers of adult revision and editing removed, I had a simple story, six pages of rubber-stamped text and pinched figure illustration. And people kept coming into my studio to peek under the plastic and read the latest installment.

I'd been a children's storyteller on radio in Wisconsin, as well as a graphic artist, and those "story tiles" combined the two interests with clay. They became the basis of my thesis work, culminating in an expanded version featuring my brother and me, my Dad with a calf on his shoulders, and a life-sized ceramic cow.

Graduate school doesn't really prepare you for real life.

I thought I was going to be a college professor. Shot slides, paid my College Art Association dues, read the Chronicle of Higher Education wants ads religiously. I sent out applications, so many slides. I got one bite through the CAA--a summer arts camp in Connecticut that saw the combination of clay and kids stories and flew me out for two summers. I don't remember how I heard the Craft Center was hiring a Resident Potter--it may have been as simple as being next door at the Cultural Forum office organizing the Willamette Valley Folk Festival. In any event, it was a godsend, a chance to stay in clay. Paid teaching time, a small stipend, keys to the studio, and all the recycled clay and glazes I could eat.

It wasn't really a living, more a part-time job. So I washed dishes for a week at the Red Lion, before my ankle went out. Answered phones for Harry & David one holiday season. And then I got introduced to Will.
Will Mattox of Slippery Bank Pottery was less a potter than a pottery entrepreneur. He had a little factory out west of Junction City with a team of women doing slip-casting, glazing and firing, while he did the throwing and the more elaborate decorating. He had two vans, which he'd load up with pots every summer. He'd do the top-tier western art shows; his kids worked their way through college taking the other van out to second-tier shows.

When I met him, he'd just signed a contract with a mail order catalog to supply hummingbird feeders, and needed help keeping up with demand. A college friend referred me, and soon I was throwing nine dozen hummingbird feeders a week. Over the next two years, I made hummers, mugs, French butter dishes, egg separators, luminaria, mini-pie plates, basically everything under a pound-and-a-half in his product line. At one point I was making 240 spoon rests a week (and will never make another). When I wasn't throwing, I was re-casting his slip molds (made from Pyrex casseroles with the logo ground off). I got a thorough grounding in production pottery, with pay. And then he laid me off.

I'm beginning to see a theme here.

It was just after Christmas, 1992. I had three months to make pots and build a display. My friend Kathy had a Saturday Market booth she was willing to share. And Off Center Ceramics was born.

It was rough, at first. There were weeks we got skunked, weeks we sold seven dollars and owed Market ten (plus ten percent). But things got better. A big change came when I changed my decorating. I'd been painting on pots since Tuscarora, mostly floral patterns; now I started painting animals, hens and roosters first, then elephants, otters, bunnies. People kept suggesting new patterns; I kept saying "Oh, that sounds fun." (At this point, there's over a hundred in my repertoire.) It helped that for the first five years, I was still teaching at the Craft Center.

It was also at the Craft Center that I started sculpting again. I'd given up on story tiles after grad school--just couldn't summon the necessary child-like optimism in those lean days. But I got inspired one day by a scrap of clay leaking out of the extruder. The ruffled edge looked like fabric, so I made it into a scarf on the head of an old woman (who was also a teapot). I used the same slab-sculpting techniques I'd invented for my thesis work, and also started incorporating the same interest in storytelling. Pieces were frequently inspired by books I'd read, or songs I played on my KLCC radio show. I showed and sold regularly through the Alder Gallery until it closed, and I still try to find time for at least one sculpture a year for the gallery at Clay Fest.

It's been sixteen years since I left the Craft Center, and a lot has happened since then. I joined Club Mud, a pottery co-op based at Maude Kerns Art Center. We bought a house in 2000, chosen in part because it had room for floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, but mostly because I could convert the family
room addition into a home studio. I now do all my work through bisque at home, though I still glaze fire at Club Mud. (I bough a used gas kiln over a decade ago, but have yet to have found the time and space to reassemble it.) I started going to out-of-town art fairs, at one point doing as many as six to eight a year. I picked up a few galleries, most of whom approached me at shows.

I'm traveling a lot less these days. When the lockdown lifted in 2020, my Saturday Market sales doubled, and have stayed high ever since. I've been able to cut my road shows down to three, a much more manageable number as Denise and I get older.

I'll keep doing retail fairs though, because of the connections I've made--I've become the family potter to a lot of folks over these 30 years. In the last few, I've found a new audience: college students starting to furnish their first apartments, drawn by a combination of relatable animal imagery and reasonable prices.

I turn 65 years old this October. It's been a long ceramic
journey, but I'm in no hurry to retire. I'm eager to see where it takes me next.

Frank Gosar

May, 2024