Maureen Williams-Levy
Potter
Artist Statement
In the words of Bernard Leach:
To me the greatest thing is to live beauty in our daily life and to crowd every moment with things of beauty. It is then and only then that the art of the people as a whole is endowed with its richest significance……
These pots of beauty that Leech speaks about are non-individualistic, made honestly for everyday use. They are simple, unassuming and restrained, displaying what St Francis of Assisi advocated, the virtue of the nobleness of "Holy Poverty", profound, unassuming and quiet.
For me as a potter, inspiration comes from the simplicity and beauty of Japan's Mingei or traditional folk craft pottery distinguished by its creators' low social status and humble intentions and their mastery of material and technique through constant repetition.
In the words of Soetsu Yanagi the beauty of Mingei is the beauty of 'naturalness and health', spontaneous and unconscious, filled with vigour arising out of a devotion to function and truth to material.
The Mishima or inlay and brush Hakeme of Korea are genuine folk craft, which transcend individualist beauty.
As Yanagi explains, the Hakeme of the Korean potter, master of the irregular, is the innate expression of harmony born of innocence, in pursuit of the natural, with no fear of the ugly.
The inexhaustible beauty of the Korean pots was the direct manifestation of life lived by their makers, displaying the essential rhythms of human existence in its most unadorned form. These pots pulsate life recalling the natural rhythms of the wind that blows, the streams that flow and the clouds that rise.
Korean pots are true to their material. The maker remains hidden, trusting all to his materials and tools. The pots are free, untrammelled in their vitality without desire to create beauty. The rapid process of repetition is inductive of forgetfulness of the self, of transcending the self, where in the end, the work 'makes itself.'
The art of the Korean Hakeme pottery solves the mystery of imperfection. The whole process of throwing, turning, decorating, glazing and firing partake of easygoing naturalness, rough and beautiful and imperfect. Korean pots live in the world of unconscious 'thusness'. There is no attachment to the perfect or the imperfect. Whatever is, is.
It is the humble on whom heaven's grace falls in full measure. In this sense, Hakeme-Mishima is a typical example of work that depends on grace.
As Yanagi relates, few methods of decorating pots are as free, for in their flowing naturalness the imagination of the beholder is greatly stirred. Patterns of dreams are evoked. The viewer becomes the artist. With the freedom of brush, he too becomes free; he beholds the Kingdom of Beauty.
The late Japanese scholar-potter Fujio Koyama had humble praise for Korean wares when he stated:
The quietness and subtlety of Korean pottery are said to show the quintessence of the oriental spirit; its quiet elegance, simplicity of form and style have been compared with the profound and exalted spirit of Zen Buddhism; it gives rise to the feeling of loneliness from which a mysterious fascination springs.
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