by: Erin Morrison
The CU Potters Club has been in the Champaign area for 50 years. They are celebrating with a ceramic show full of pieces made by current and former members. It is named the “Clay and Fire” show, and it is currently in the Art Coop’s gallery space in the Lincoln Square Mall in Urbana. The exhibition was opened with a reception on Feb. 9 and will stay in the space through March 7.
The president of the CU Potters Club, Geoffrey Bant, said that there are currently about 45 members in the club and originally, if they wanted to, they were all allowed to submit up to three pieces for the show. But due to such high interest, the submission number was lowered down to two pieces per person.
Bant also said everything was designed by the members of the club including flyers and posters. Bant teaches pottery for the Champaign Park District and said Parkland students will often come to him on campus because they recognize him as their first ceramics teacher.
The day after the reception, there was a well-attended speech given by Parkland College Professor of Art, Chris Berti, at the Champaign Public Library; the talk was titled“The Poetics of Clay: Past and Present.”
“The speech was a discussion about ceramics from a historic perspective, it was a historic survey of ceramics from the past going back several thousand years as well as a contemporary survey of contemporary ceramics. So, what I did was, I selected certain works that I felt were representative from a variety of different cultures using a variety of different clay forming techniques with a variety of surfaces on each form,” Berti told the Prospectus.
The talk also included ceramics that tell a story. “I also talked about forms which were narrative, so they were ceramics that were more sculptural, they could have been figurative, you know, incorporated things like human figures and animal figures but many of them were animated to tell a story,” Berti said. “In the case of ancient ceramics, they were a narrative to make a myth from their culture come alive or maybe make a guardian become incarnate; they could become buried with the deceased from that culture.”
Berti mentioned that the deceased could be buried with these objects and that as people used the ceramics, the art could bring culture to life. He also said that ceramicists today will often look at historic pottery as a starting point for their own works.
Bant called Berti the “recognized authority in town” on ceramics and called Parkland the “center of pottery and center of clay knowledge” of the Champaign Urbana area. Bant said that the Potters Club will often refer people to Parkland to take classes on pottery since one of the requirements to join the club is to have had at least one pottery class under their belts. Bant said at least half of the club’s members are taking or have taken classes at Parkland.
The Potters Club has their own space in town where members can go and make as many ceramics that they want. There is clay available there and members can have their pieces glazed and fired. Members range from high school age through people in their 80s. The club does not have a gallery show every year, but every year they have a fundraiser at the Silver Creek restaurant. People who attend the fundraiser can purchase a handmade bowl.
For more information about the CU Potters Club, please see the CU Potters Club website.
