Jacksonville Review – October 2023
Clayfolk presents its Annual Fall Pottery Show the first weekend in November at the Medford Armory, located at 1701 S Pacific Highway on November 3, 4, and 5. As the region’s largest all-ceramic show, it features an amazing variety of ceramic wares, from functional dinnerware to collectible ceramic sculpture. Admission is always FREE and so are the demonstrations of “throwing pots” and other amazing fabrication techniques.
Glenn Burris will be showing his function and sculpture pieces at the upcoming show. Glenn received an undergraduate degree in Art from Pepperdine University and an MA and MFA in Ceramics from the University of Iowa in 1973. His goal was to become a teacher, but he soon found the making of things from clay way more fun than teaching. In the late 1970s, he and his wife, Jean moved to rural Linn County, set up a home and studio, and began showing and selling at local and national shows, thus launching a 50-year career as a studio potter.
I first met Glenn and Jean in the early 1980s at the Pacific States Craft Fair held at Ft. Mason in San Francisco, California. Juried by the American Craft Council, it showcased makers of fine craft in an exciting venue to a national wholesale and retail audience. His work, thrown on the kick wheel or from hand-built slabs of soft porcelain, was glazed with his own formulations, fired to cone 10 in a reduction kiln, presented many possibilities of color and texture.
Buyers not only loved Glenn’s work, but also felt a kinship with Glenn’s philosophy to stand against our post-industrial, post-computerized society which has replaced the personal handmade item with plastic bags, tin cans and Styrofoam—with great loss to the human spirit. The role of the potter today is to fill the need for handmade in everyday life, as both an item of beauty as well as of utility.
Along the way, Glenn and Jean raised three fine sons and paid off their home and studio on a potter’s income, fully integrating their lives with craft as art, infused with spirit, devoted to the deeply personal item made by hand in the quite isolation of the studio. By including Glenn’s work in your everyday life, be it in the kitchen, when dining, or as wall sculpture, one enjoys the touch of the handmade item. After 50 years at the wheel, I asked Glenn his feelings about continuing “after the age of retirement” and his response was, “Why quit when one has developed the touch of the master, his own creative space, the safe and perfectly equipped studio?!” I could not agree more with Glenn and look forward to meeting him and 70 other creative potters at the Fall Clayfolk Show.
Article by Nancy Y. Adams, Clay Artist, www.nancyadams.net.