Body of Clay, Soul of Fire: Richard Bresnahan and the Saint John's Pottery

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Richard Bresnahan is a preeminent American potter and an ambassador for the natural environment. Reared on a farm in North Dakota, he graduated from Saint Johns University in Collegeville, Minnesota, and apprenticed as a potter in Japan. Returning to Saint Johns, where he is an artist in residence, he built a massive wood-burning kiln, which, with its innovative flame flues and water channels, dwarfs all other North American kilns. By digging his own clay, using local seeds and hulls as glazing materials, ...

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More About This Book

Overview

 

Richard Bresnahan is a preeminent American potter and an ambassador for the natural environment. Reared on a farm in North Dakota, he graduated from Saint Johns University in Collegeville, Minnesota, and apprenticed as a potter in Japan. Returning to Saint Johns, where he is an artist in residence, he built a massive wood-burning kiln, which, with its innovative flame flues and water channels, dwarfs all other North American kilns. By digging his own clay, using local seeds and hulls as glazing materials, and firing with deadfall, Bresnahan also practices a brand of environmentalism worthy of his Benedictine surroundings.

Author Matthew Welch is curator of Japanese and Korean art at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. As a Fulbright scholar at Kyoto University in the 1980s, he developed an abiding passion for traditional Asian ceramics. “Body of Clay, Soul of Fire” resulted from an ongoing dialogue about pottery between Bresnahan and Welch over the past ten years.
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Editorial Reviews

Library Journal
The work produced by prominent North Dakota-born potter Bresnahan is an expressive and original synthesis of centuries-old craft and a truly modern aesthetic. Apprenticed to Nakazato Takashi, an innovative 13th-generation Karatsu-style potter, Bresnahan discovered much about the intersection of pottery and other traditional art forms (e.g., the tea ceremony), which is evident in his work. Welch (curator of Japanese and Korean art, Minneapolis Institute of Arts) illustrates the potter's compelling story with a mixture of journal notes, recent interviews, and full-color photographs of pottery by Bresnahan and by some of his friends and mentors. The book also features schematic drawings of Bresnahan's extraordinary kiln, based on the traditional noborigama kiln but containing many radical design innovations. The potter's annual seven-day-long firing produces an original and expressive style of earthy, organic forms with warm, unusual colors. Bresnahan has long been supported by St. John's College and Abbey in Minnesota, from his early years as a student to his current status as artist-in-residence. The book describes how his commitment to ecology, local materials, and collective labor and the pottery's contribution to the self-sustainability of the abbey's Benedictine monks have blossomed into a highly regarded and vital community asset. Artists, historians, and collectors of every medium will appreciate the beautiful organic forms and surfaces of Bresnahan's work. For academic and large public libraries. John Andrew McQuigg, Minneapolis Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781890434458
  • Publisher: Afton Historical Society Press
  • Publication date: 2/1/2002
  • Pages: 232
  • Product dimensions: 9.58 (w) x 11.36 (h) x 1.10 (d)

Table of Contents

Foreword 11
Acknowledgments 14
Chapter I Taking Shape 19
Chapter II A Stranger in a Strange Land 79
Chapter III Body and Soul 109
Chapter IV An Unlikely Teacher 143
Chapter V The Artful Life 179
Appendices 215
The Takigama Kiln 216
The Johanna Kiln 218
Ten-Day Firing Schedule 220
Signature and Seals 224
Exhibition History and Collections 225
Apprentices and Visiting Artists 226
Selected Bibliography 228
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