“We both [with Alixandra Kolesky MacKenzie] got into ceramics, you might say, by the back door. Looking back on it, I think this was a very good thing.” ThinkingMightDoorsGood ThingsVery GoodLooking BackBack DoorsCeramics 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
“Hilda Reiss was the head of the Everyday Art Gallery. Hilda Reiss came from Germany, had trained at the original Bauhaus in Germany, and her training inspired her to think of anything that she liked as art.” ThinkingArtTrainingOriginalsInspiredEverydayGermanyGalleryArt Galleries 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
“When you're young, you think you can do anything, and we thought.” ThinkingYoungCan Do Author:Warren MacKenzie
“Our main inspiration [with Alix MacKenzie], I think, came from the Field Museum of Natural History, because they had pieces which were selected not for art content but for their relationship to the anthropological history of mankind.” ThinkingArtInspirationNaturalPiecesMankindFieldsMuseumsSelectedNatural HistoryMuseum Of Natural History Author:Warren MacKenzie
“In looking at these pots at the Field Museum, Alix [MacKenzie] and I both came to a conclusion individually but also collectively that the pots that really interested us were the pots that people had used in their everyday life, and we began to think - I mean, whether it was ancient Greece or Africa or Europe or wherever, the pots that people had used in their homes were the ones that excited us.” PeopleThinkingMeanHomeUsedFieldsEuropeEverydayAncientExcitedConclusionMuseumsPotEveryday LifeGreeceAncient Greece Author:Warren MacKenzie
“We thought [with Alix MacKenzie], if those are the kinds of pots from every culture that interest us, why would we think that it should be any different in mid-North America 20th century? And we decided then that our work would center around that sort of utilitarian pottery, and that's what I've done ever since.” IfsThinkingShouldKindDifferentDoneAmericaCultureInterestCenturyDecidedPot20th CenturyNorth AmericaPotteryUtilitarian Author:Warren MacKenzie
“This is something which I think I have been able to communicate to both people I have taught and people that have purchased our work since that time, that they all say, it's so nice to have these pots with us all the time and to eat out of them and be in direct contact with them in our homes.” PeopleThinkingHas BeensHomeAbleNiceTaughtDirectCommunicateContactPot Author:Warren MacKenzie
“Remember, this is back in the '40s, and the idea of a museum being a place where interested people could come in direct contact with works hadn't arrived on the scene yet. That, I think, I first ran into at the Freer Gallery in Washington, D.C., where a man named Marty [Martin] Amt decided that he really felt his job - part of his job, as an assistant [to the] director was to make the collection available to interested people.” PeopleThinkingMenFirstsIdeasJobsRememberFeltSceneDirectorsDirectDecidedAvailableContactRanCollectionsMuseumsGalleryAssistantsMarty Author:Warren MacKenzie
“If you didn't know what you were trying to do, [Robert von Neumann] wouldn't say a word. He would just turn and walk away. So you very quickly learned to think that you'd better be attempting to do something in that painting class.” IfsThinkingKnowsTryingTurnsWalksClassPaintingAttemptingVon Neumann Author:Warren MacKenzie
“Those two teachers [Kathleen Blackshear and Robert von Neumann] were just fantastic, I thought. They never directed you in a single direction, but they just encouraged you to think for yourself.” ThinkingTwoTeacherFantasticThink For YourselfVon Neumann Author:Warren MacKenzie
“We were more fortunate than most, because [Bernard] Leach had been in America on a lecture tour in 1950, and we made arrangements to travel from America back to England with him on the same boat. It was a very slow boat. I think it took us about seven days to cross the Atlantic.” ThinkingMadeAmericaCrossesEnglandSevenBoatFortunateArrangementsLecturesSeven Days Author:Warren MacKenzie
“When we worked at the pottery, we did learn to make pots, that is, the physical act of making the pot. We learned to control clay, to put it where you want it and not just wherever it wanted to go, and that was valuable. At the end of about six months, though, I think if that was all we had, we may have been inclined to leave because the workshop did not challenge us so much as living with [Bernard] Leach did.” IfsThinkingWantMayHas BeensEndsWantedChallengesMonthsSixValuablePotSix MonthsClayWorkshopsPottery Author:Warren MacKenzie
“We became more familiar with [Bernard Leach], and with this familiarity came, I wouldn't say contempt, but certainly an awareness that everything that he said was not necessarily what we were thinking. That doesn't mean it was wrong, but Leach was a person out of a different generation.” ThinkingMeanPersonsSaidDifferentGenerationsAwarenessFamiliarContemptFamiliarityDifferent Generations Author:Warren MacKenzie
“In fact, [Bernard Leach] was several generations removed from us. At that time we were there, I think Alix [MacKenzie] and I were 26 and 28, and Leach was about 63, and we thought he was a very old man. I used to always want to help him up the stairs in the house for fear he'd fall. Actually, he was in excellent condition and lived to be much, much older than we ever expected.” ThinkingMenWantFactsHelpingUsedFallHouseGenerationsConditionsExpectedExcellentOld ManStairs Author:Warren MacKenzie
“We never had a catalogue; we never said we were going to duplicate these pots this year and next year and the year after that and so forth. We did make many pots which were repeated, but we allowed them to change and to grow as we changed and grew, and I think that was the big difference. And that's all right; we were working for ourselves. We didn't have anybody we had to pay.” ThinkingYearsSaidBigsNextGrowsDifferencesPayChangedGrewPotNext YearCataloguesDuplicate 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 [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
“I think back to some of the pots we made when we first started our pottery, and they were pretty awful pots. We thought at the time they were good; they were the best we could make, but our thinking was so elemental that the pots had that quality also, and so they don't have a richness about them which I look for in my work today. Whether I achieve it all the time, that's another question, because I don't think a person can produce at top level 100 percent of the time.” ThinkingFirstsLooksPersonsMadeTodayLevelsQualityAchieveProducePercentAwfulPotRichnessElementalsPottery Author:Warren MacKenzie
“Bernard [Leach] knew Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, Terry Frost, Peter Lanyon, Johnny Wells. I can think of a number of people that we met there just because we were living with Bernard. Some of them became our friends, particularly the younger artists, but we were privileged to at least meet and talk with the older artists also. And they would come to dinner, and we would simply be included in the conversation, which was quite fascinating.” PeopleThinkingWellsI CanArtistNumbersMetsConversationDinnerFascinatingPeterPrivilegedFrostBarbaraNicholson Author:Warren MacKenzie
“Friends of Bernard's [Leach] came to visit, and when we went to London, we were given introductions to people like Lucie Rie, Hans Coper, Richard Batram. All these people were, let's say, made available to us by a friendship with Leach. In addition there was a potter's group - what was it called? I think it was called the Cornish Potters Society, but I'm not sure of that. Anyway, they had meetings and we would go with Leach to these meetings and meet other potters, and they would have programs where they would discuss pottery and people would interchange ideas.” PeopleThinkingMadeIdeasGivenGroupsProgramMeetingsAvailableLondonNot SureIntroductionPottersPotteryInterchange Author:Warren MacKenzie
“Things happen very quickly and they have to happen quickly in order to have vitality, which I think is essentially part of a good pot. But in addition it means that you can explore an idea and change it and then change it and then change it; I don't mean by changing the one pot, but you make one pot then you make another that's related to that; you make another - you can make 50 pots in a day and none of them are going to be carbon copies of any other, but they'll all be related because there's something going through your mind about the form on that particular day.” ThinkingMindMeanIdeasHappensFormOrderParticularThings HappenRelatedCopiesPotCarbonVitality Author:Warren MacKenzie
“Here is this ability to explore ideas, but with minute changes, and then look at the results. Often you get so excited about what you're doing that you think, "Oh, wow, this is just great." And you look at it a week later and you realize you'd been excited by the act of creation, but what you've created is not really exciting when you look at it in cold blood. And so that, to me, is a valuable lesson also.” ThinkingLooksIdeasRealizingAbilityResultsBloodWeekMinutesCreationColdLessonsExcitingExcitedValuableWowValuable Lessons Author:Warren MacKenzie