Saturday, January 31, 2009

Pot-making in black-and-white






The Cape Cod Potters' show opening at the end of this month (Feb. 27; come on down!) at the Cape Cod Museum of Art will be a wide-ranging exhibit of more than 300 pots and other claywork. Worth coming to the Cape to see.
I've been tasked with putting together about 10 black-and-white images as a wall-mounted photo essay to help add a bit of process to the show. I'm still coming up with the images, but here are a few of them, mostly made at my pottery and some of my friends' places. The hands sanding the bisqueware belong to me, photographed by my photographer friend Casey Atkins.
Gail Turner (who actually reads this blog; and I will hear from her after she reads this) is a fine Cape Cod potter who lives and fires in Brewster and sells at her shop in Dennis on Route 6A. Gail is the indefatigable moving force behind this show. Dan Finnegan, our potting and blogging friend from Fredericksburg, Va., and the juror of the show, is shown here during a workshop on the Cape.

4 comments:

Tracey Broome said...

These are so great. Since I actually live with a professional photographer, I should get him to shoot some images like this for my studio. I hope you put some of these up in your studio. I'm envious of those large vases, I have started the large vase quest, arghhhhh.

Hollis Engley said...

Hi, Tracey. I like the small, intimate, hands-on details of studio work. Or, I like photographing it. You should get him to do that. The large vases were made at a "big pot" workshop at Bob Compton's studio in Vermont. Only one of those is mine, and I think that one didn't survive the workshop. Look up his website. He's a nice guy.

Paul Jessop said...

Black and white photos of pottery look so good, they just do.

Does anyone know why ?

Hollis Engley said...

Something about the forms, I think. I was just at a friend's house, printing all of the images for this show. I kept thinking "book cover" as they came out. But, maybe that's just my own photo-ego resurfacing after several years.