Bill Samuels
Wood-Fire Potter
Artist Statement April 2006
I started my artistic career as a painter with an interest in clay but that gradually gave way to working with clay with an interest in painting. Roughly half of my professional career has been in the studio full time and the other half lecturing full time in education.
My introduction to ceramics was making wood-fired raku pots and in the mid 60s and in 1969 I built my first stoneware wood fired kiln. I have fired with wood ever since. My studio practice centres on the use of raw materials found in the landscape and encompasses a range from traditionally inspired pots to sculpture.
For an artist the work itself is always more eloquent than the written detail and for me these particular works are no exception. This work has been a long time in the thinking and its realization marks the beginning of a whole new direction.
As a potter, a significant aspect of my practice has been a long held fascination with the relationship between the materials, process, and the aesthetic, and in 2000 I relocated my studio from Katoomba to Good Forrest in the Hartley Valley. I insulated the new kiln with the local road base gravel and also used it to cover the earth floor of the chamber. The gravel on the floor of chamber melted during the first firing and that providential accident sent my work in a totally new direction.
Clay is usually the defining element in ceramics, however these works contain no clay and have been made wholly using the gravel from the road leading to my studio, formed and glazed, then fried in the kiln.
The constructed forms reflect my love for pots and their compositional tension is heightened by the contradictions of the material process and balance.