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| FORSIDE | GALLERI | INFO | 2011 | CV | BIOGRAFI | LOOK AROUND |
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Biography
About my work At times the throwing is still central to me, but today I choose the technique which will serve a certain expression. My work has become one long exploration, during which I continuously return to the same themes because they challenge me in new ways. Often I seem to end up in a clash between the expressive and the organic at one hand and the concrete and geometrical on the other hand. For some the choice is a matter of course, for me it is a source of constant concern, consideration and inspiration. To explore the rules of geometry in increasingly simplified expressions is to discipline yourself in relation to the material, while the swift fingerprint, the raw and physical moulding of the material and the quick line, is to surrender to the material. When I have satisfied myself with the black glazes, I have to indulge in colour. And when I have been working with contrived and controlled movements in precise and tight expressions I have to move, and then I find a refuge when I stretch, mash or wedged the clay. Finally I surrender my work to the Raku firing’s wild and forceful metamorphosis, when I with an open mind must give in to the final result and learn to see in new ways. The road from the crafting traditions to the individual expression is long
As a little girl I attended the Catholic School in Næstved. It was situated at the top of the Kähler hill, and when you pressed your nose against the window at the end of the long dark corridor, you could see the sheep on the green hills behind the Kähler Ceramic factory. One time my class had a tour, and I remember standing at eye level in front of a pottery wheel, where one of the routined throwers were working. I almost got sucked into the rotation of the clay on the wheel. Later we went down to the painting room and saw the ladies handle the horn with the slips. It was a fascinating experience.
When my grandfather had a year left of his apprenticeship he gave up, because there was no future in the craft. When he was 80 years old he made a bet with Niels Kähler that he could still throw a pot – and he won the bet. Later the factory became an integral part of my father’s childhood, because the family lived right next door. He had his pieces burned at the factory, and saw how Jens Thirslund decorated and burned his lustreglazes. It was pure alchemy to my 14 years old father, and now he also wanted to be a potter. But there was still no future in the craft, so he became a painter apprentice with his father, and later graduated as a painter from the art academy in Copenhagen. Kähler’s pieces were everywhere in our everyday lives, out and about as well as at home. The junket bowls at kitchen tables, herring jars with star handles, tile-topped tables in the living rooms in the family homes all over town. Ashtrays, umbrella holders, fruit bowls, teapots, vases – everywhere was ceramics of the highest quality, but I never thought about it. When I started at Vestbirk Music School I thought that I would become a musician, so it was just for fun that I tried to throw at the school’s ceramic workshop. When I told my father that I wanted to be a potter, I found out for the first time that my grandfather had been a potter apprentice. P.S. Krøyer’s painting gives a good impression of the communal life and shared rhythm that pervades the manufacturing of ceramics in the workshop. It has definitely not been the intention that individual apprentices or potters should leave a personal mark on the clay. Therefore you saw yourself merely as a craftsman, and that was also how it was when I had served my apprenticeship in 1976. Apprenticeship
After 1½ years at Sønderborg Craftsman School followed 2½ years placement at a pottery. The day began, as for all other tradesmen at 7 o’clock, and when it was over I had been at the potters wheel all day, and had produced around 130 butterjars just like the ones I made the day before, and last week. All to achieve the routine which allowed me to handle the clay with perfect precision and with a speed, which first and foremost could put food on the table for a journeyman. To learn to set aside your own needs and follow a daily routine at the workshop did not have much to do with creativity, but had more to do with discipline and adjustment, with stamina and willpower. So naturally it was a victory and a joy finally to complete my apprenticeship. Nevertheless, it soon turned out that I had got a qualification, which did not match the needs and demands of the time. The import of cheap ceramic from abroad was already thriving, and ceramic factories closed down one after another. This meant that the only way to survive when you worked with ceramics was to find your very own personal expression. However, I did manage to find a job and when I after a year as journeymann at Tromborg Ceramic in Horsens, got into Academy of Art in Århus, I was well taught in the traditions of the craft. The first thing I did was to fasten my measuring set-up to my potterywheel, so that I could make sure all my things were the same! I was ridiculed! But it was nevertheless the beginning to understand the huge challenge in the Japanese potter Hamada’s clever statement about finding your own expression: “It takes 10 years to become a good thrower and 20 years to forget it again”. For decades potters and pottery was replaced by the good and solid Danish handicraft and today, where ceramic artists exchange ideas, materials and experiences across borders and continents, it is all about finding your own path through the excess of options available to us when we are searching for our own personal artistic expression. Thus, the line between art and handicraft is becoming increasingly blurred.
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