“At that [childhood] time, of course, if you were involved in art, it was going to be drawing and painting, because that's the only thing that was taught in the schools.” IfsArtSchoolCoursesChildhoodTaughtPaintingInvolvedDrawingDrawing And Painting Author:Warren MacKenzie
“I went to the Chicago Art Institute, which was the best painting school in the area at that time. And I took painting classes - basic elementary painting classes and drawing classes of all sorts.” ArtSchoolClassPaintingAreasDrawingChicagoInstitute Author:Warren MacKenzie
“In the middle of my second year at school, in 1943, I got drafted into the army, was gone for three years, and when I came back, I tried to get into the painting classes which I wanted, but because of all the returned GIs [the GI Bill], everyone was in school and the classes were all full. So I looked at the catalogue and found that there was a ceramic class offered and that there was space in that. I registered for a ceramic class and some drawing classes.” YearsWantedSchoolThreeFoundSpaceClassGoneMiddlePaintingArmyBillsDrawingThree YearsCataloguesGisCeramics Author:Warren MacKenzie
“In fact, I believe to a certain extent a person today who starts with just clay, with no drawing and no painting and no figure drawing, still-life drawing, various things, they miss a great deal.” BelievePersonsStillsFactsTodayCertainI BelieveDealsMissingFiguresPaintingVariousDrawingClayStill Life Author:Warren MacKenzie
“In working on a drawing or a painting, one can rework and rework and rework and change ideas until you get it the way you think is right at that time. With clay that's not possible. You either succeed the first time, or you should wad it up and start over again, because you can't mess around with the clay and still have it fresh.” ThinkingWayShouldFirstsStillsIdeasPaintingSucceedFirst TimeDrawingMessClayStarting OverRework Author:Warren MacKenzie
“I took a number of graphic courses, lithography and etching and wood engraving [at Art Institute]. And particularly as I got more and more into ceramics, I thought, life drawing doesn't have anything to do with ceramics.” ArtCoursesNumbersWoodsDrawingGraphicInstituteThoughts On LifeCeramicsEtching Author:Warren MacKenzie
“I found out later on that was not true, that life drawing tells you a great deal about rhythm, about the structure of a human being or any animate object, and this could be directly translated into thinking about proportion and accent, rhythm in a pot form.” ThinkingHumansFormFoundHuman BeingsDealsObjectsStructureDrawingRhythmProportionPotAccents Author:Warren MacKenzie
“[Bernard Leach] was an incredible draftsman, and at the end of breakfast time, for instance, he would push his plate back, and he'd pull an old scrap of paper out of his pocket and a little stub of a pencil, and he'd begin to make small drawings, about an inch and a half, two inches tall, of pots that he wanted to make. And they were beautiful drawings. I really wish I'd stolen some of those scraps of paper, because those drawings were exquisite explorations of his ideas of form and volume in a ceramic piece.” LittlesTwoIdeasEndsWantedBeautifulFormWishHalfPiecesPaperIncrediblesDrawingInstancePocketsExplorationTallBreakfastPotInchesPlatesVolumePencilsStolenExquisiteScrapCeramicsDraftsman Author:Warren MacKenzie
“If [Bernard Leach] didn't like the drawing, he'd X it out and do another one and change the form a little bit. And when he was all done, he would stuff these pieces of paper in his pocket and go off to the pottery, and when he wanted to make pots, he would then take these out and he'd begin to produce the pot that he had designed on paper in front of us.” IfsLittlesDoneWantedFormStuffBitsPiecesFrontsProducePaperLittle BitDrawingPocketsPotPottery Author:Warren MacKenzie
“[Shoji] Hamada seldom drew an exact drawing of a pot that he was going to make.” DrawingPot Author:Warren MacKenzie
“I used to think [Shoji] Hamada never drew, until there was a book by Bernard [Leach] published about his work [Hamada: Potter, Tokyo; New York: Harper & Row, 1975] and at the rear of the book were a number of wonderful little sketches, but they were not drawings like Bernard made.” ThinkingLittlesMadeBookUsedNumbersWonderfulNew YorkDrawingPottersTokyoHarper Author:Warren MacKenzie
“Bernard's [Leach] drawings delineated every little accent on the pot, every subtle curve and change of angle and proportion and all.” LittlesDrawingProportionSubtlePotAccentsAngleCurves Author:Warren MacKenzie
“[Shoji] Hamada's [drawings] were little one-line notations of something he wanted to remember about a pot or a piece of furniture or a landscape or something like that, and they were just done very quickly and they had, he thought, no artistic quality. They're not great drawings, but they served to remind him of something he had in his mind, so that when he then went to the studio, that would stick in his mind and he could explore the making of the pot with the clay on the wheel.” MindLittlesDoneWantedRememberLinesQualityPiecesSticksStudiosDrawingArtisticLandscapeWheelsPotFurnitureClayOne Line Author:Warren MacKenzie
“Bernard [Leach] was making pots which were duplicates of his drawing, and that was a difference of approach, which I think is quite critical to these two men [Leach and Shoji Hamada].” ThinkingMenTwoDifferencesApproachCriticalDrawingPotDuplicate Author:Warren MacKenzie