What about an act or a piece of art makes it both worth doing and worthy of an audience? The act of creation on its own doesn’t warrant blind adoration, nor does an appreciative audience make something worth doing. For Rick Hintze, prolonged engagement with clay has garnered a following who find value in the thought and curiosity marked in the production of his pieces.
“Pottery is a lot like music,” says Rick. “If you have a shape that you want to make, you can consider it like a phrase in music. You can play that over and over, beginning to end, in different ways. The pitch, the volume, the embouchure, whatever instrument you’re playing, there are all these little variations that evoke different feelings. Pottery, I think, instead of the perfect surface, the same thing can happen. It’s not that one is better than the other; it’s just what you’re interested in. An observer can sense the making of it.”
Rick’s poetic take on what touch can do to a piece translates to his foundational utilitarian pieces. “When I started, I was just really interested in functional pots. Teapots, bowls, mugs, casseroles, that kind of thing. And glazes. It was a very traditional kind of way to get into clay in the early ’70s.”
Over the ensuing years, Rick gained all the knowledge one does exploring an obsession, eventually discovering who he is as a ceramicist. “Michael Cardew, the English potter, said there are three kinds of potters. There’s a mud and water person. There’s a chemist. And there’s the person who likes fire.” Rick might do it all, but he’s definitely a mud and water guy, which speaks more to what brings Rick to his studio day in and day out. Though the kiln and glazing are important to him, it’s the different ways of forming and shaping the clay he finds most inspiring.
His proficiency in form evolved in 1989, when Rick worked as a production potter for Rockdale Union Stoneware in Cambridge, Wisconsin. “That was a very good educational experience. Those pots were based on early American shapes, nice shapes, but you had to make lots and lots of them. The repetition of throwing large numbers of the same piece built skills and a sense of touch. Again, you could compare it to music—the only way to pick up skills and become familiar with a particular piece is lots of practice. You establish a kind of memory in your hands and fingers.”
In 1991, Rick took a job teaching ceramics, sculpture, and art history at Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where he taught for 10 years until moving to Wisconsin. Before the move, he and his partner, Susan Messer, a professor in the University of Wisconsin–Whitewater art department, bought a building in Johnson Creek to serve as studio space for the two of them. Rick took an early retirement from teaching and opened the studio for business in the fall of 2002, selling his work from his gallery as well as a couple of galleries in the region and at local and national shows.
“From 2005 to 2008, I also tried wholesaling. I went to the Buyers Market of American Craft show in Philadelphia and took orders that I then went back to the studio to make and ship to various places around the country. It seemed to start off well, but that market was declining. I decided to give it up and try to get into better retail craft shows. Finally, in 2013, I did the Smithsonian and Philadelphia Museum of Art craft shows as well as the Saint Louis Art Show, Cherry Creek in Denver, and the American Craft Exposition in Evanston. It was a great experience, but when I added up what it cost, what I made, and how much time it took, I decided it wasn’t worth pursuing.”
In Rick’s transition to retail craft shows, he made a conscious shift in 2009 to start producing hand-built vessels along with his functional pieces. “I always admired much of the pottery from other cultures, especially Neolithic Chinese, pre-Columbian, and African coil pots. I had gone to see For Hearth and Altar, an exhibition of African pottery at the Art Institute of Chicago, and was deeply impressed with the presence those pots seemed to possess. It was very inspiring.”
Resulting from that inspiration are the largest pieces in Rick’s studio, the burnt-ochre pots, which stand out amongst his utilitarian pieces. “I found a combination of wood ash and kaolin clay. It reacts with the iron and clay body as well as the iron stain I applied to the surface, which varies from a deep-rust to a cornmeal-yellow color that seemed to fit the expression I wanted to achieve with these pieces.”
Recently, Rick has been using three or four pieces to create modest-sized works that would normally be thrown in one piece. “What intrigues me about it is that the resulting form has a spontaneity and irregularity that could not be achieved if it was made in one piece. Of course, the form as a whole also has to have some interest for this to work.”
Looking at Rick’s past pieces, interpretations of everyday objects that are either enlarged or brought down in scale to become something obscurely familiar, like an axe head or grain silo, his fascination with shape has been constant. Much like how a critical viewer can put together something of who Rick is by looking at his array of mugs, the ponderings of Rick’s mind are on full display through his sculptures. Experiencing the medley of pieces in Rick’s studio, I never really knew where I was in time or space, but I never felt lost. Rick’s work compellingly argues authenticity over perfection, and after just a brief amount of time in his studio, simple things in the world start looking worthy of much greater consideration.
Kyle Jacobson is a writer who thinks everyone should have a favorite coffee mug.
Photographs by the Rick Hintze.