The Georgia Museum of Art is honored to host the exhibition
“Pick of the Kiln: The Work of Michael Simon” through Sept. 8, 2013.
Simon was born and raised in Minnesota, where he attended the
University of Minnesota and studied under the nationally acclaimed potter
Warren MacKenzie. He left for Georgia in 1970—moving into a pottery commune
just outside of Athens called Happy Valley—and received his master of fine arts
degree in ceramics from the University of Georgia in 1981.
Simon used a salt kiln to fire his pots, a technique that creates
a translucent glaze along the pottery and gives it a varying surface. When the
salt is exposed to the high temperatures of the kiln, it releases the gases
chlorine and sodium. The sodium is attracted to the clay pottery and bonds to
it, making a distinctive and beautiful glaze. One of the amazing things about
this technique is that you never know exactly what you are going to get; the
gases move around the kiln, and the surface of each pot varies based on how
much the piece was exposed to the salt’s gases. The process was exciting for
Simon, and he was always eager to see how each load would turn out, saying, “I
had a peek hole, and I could tell how the whole kiln load would turn out based
on looking at that one pot in front of the hole. . . . I never stopped doing
that.” But though this technique remained the same, his art continued subtly to
change and grow over the years.
Starting in the mid-1980s, Simon began to keep one pottery piece
from every kiln load he fired—saving the pick of the kiln, so to speak. During a
tour of the exhibition, Simon spoke about how he chose each pot: “I picked a
pot from each kiln load, not necessarily because it was the best, but because I
wanted to remember it. . . . It was dynamic.” He might base his choice on the
glaze of the pot or a motif that he particularly liked or something else that
caught his eye. Though not always the “best,” the pieces were those that most
accurately represented his shifting views, influences and interests as an
artist. These select pots—the same ones in the exhibition—record Simon’s career
as a potter and show the evolution of his art.
Dale Couch, curator of decorative arts at the museum, said, “It
provides the opportunity to fathom a leading ceramic artist’s view of his own
work as it develops over time. Caroline Maddox (the museum’s director of
development and the curator of the exhibition), in collaboration with Michael,
has selected a body of work that is metaphorically like an archaeological
trench: it simultaneously reveals the chronology of his work and the creative
consciousness of the artist. These are brilliant examples of modern craft.”
Simon’s pottery is functional art—pots that can be used and not
just admired, though each piece’s beauty is great enough to stand on its own. He
says, “I knew that I wanted to make pottery that people could use. . . . There’s
something very touching about that.” He made cups, plates, bowls, teapots and
the like, but he is most known for his outstanding Persian jars.
Though Simon insists that the motifs and designs on his pottery
are only there to complement his ceramic work, each one is gorgeous in its own
right. The images seem simple at first, the pots usually decorated with animals
or geometric figures, but one immediately notices the fluid elegance of the
shape and design; the art is endearing, charming and beautiful. Simon is able
to unite form and pattern to create some of the most amazing and striking
pottery in the United States, and his love for potting shows in every one of
his pieces.
Each pot in the exhibition is a work of art, but the show is not
really about the individual pots. The pieces as a whole represent Simon’s
career in making pottery and how he and his art have evolved. Simon has said, “Change
proceeds slowly and subtly, but the growth carries on and is most satisfying.
The real significance of years of potting can be found in the way one pot leads
to the next. Slow progress comes into view in the development of the work in
total, not in the beauty of any one pot. There is no end.”
