This interview was conducted at John Glick's home and studio in Farmington Hills, Michigan. John has established a series of workspaces in which to create, reflect and invent. His studio, while replete with potter's wheels, extruders and kilns, also includes a number of auxiliary rooms. There is the "landscape lounge", a comfortable space with windows, ledges, chairs, books, easels and a drawing table. In this enclosed area, John displays and reflects upon numerous examples of his new work, specifically the wall pieces which are the primary subject of this article. We talked, surrounded by the work, and often paused to move pieces, identify imagery and patterns, and compare early and later examples of his newest direction. At the end of one day, I remained among the work and source materials to examine John's sketchbooks, which revealed the breadth of his imagination and the whimsy and delight of his explorations. Our discussion also led us through John's machine shop, where John makes his own tools. We passed through his showroom, storeroom, photographic enclave, and remained for a time in an attic space which marks the evolution of John's career. John has preserved his own history in this room, which contains the first pot that he ever made as well as chronologically organized examples of dinnerware, covered boxes and experimental pieces from various stages of his career. The interview began in the landscape lounge, where John and I first discussed the origin of his recent endeavors.

S: You have quite a setup here.

J: When I first started to do this work, I realized that I didn't want to go about it in a crowded, complex environment surrounded by pots and commissions and everything else. I wanted to create a space for it. So I gradually began to acquire equipment, and find a way to make room for sandblasting. At first I did only a few studies, and as the environment progressed, the trickle of the work increased. I've hardly gotten used to the space and the ideas I'm trying to pursue.

S: How do you feel about the development of these wall pieces in the context of your functional work?

J: Because the wall pieces mean to be totally uninvolved with function, the disposition towards drawing and painting, which has surfaced at other times in my career, comes forth most strongly. There are certain familiar patterns in my work that originated elsewhere and then show up in the wall panels, perhaps approaches that have developed with my functional pieces. There's a base of technical understanding and a familiar image vocabulary that developed in the context of roundness which is expanding with the flat forms. On the wall panels I am interested in using the clay surface like any other painting or drawing surface. I think very little about this work as either ceramic or sculpture. The forms seem pretty anonymous, and may simply provide me with a tablet. I spend a lot of time thinking in terms of painting, considering the masses of color, the various somber or light areas, and then re-glazing or refiring. Add to that the masking and sandblasting processes, which give these eroded surfaces...sometimes I consider pieces for a long time and then go after them again. Some of them never seem to be resolved.

S: The imagery on these panels is suggestive of landscapes, seascapes even. You have moved away from the decorative quality of the functional surfaces, but not necessarily in a more literal way...

J: I think of this imagery as much more impressionistic. When I draw, I often do fast, gestural sketches that I feel very strongly and then do in two minutes or less. I don't try to copy them in the work, but that approach is reflected in the landscapes. Often I'm aiming for a feeling, the suggestion of a turbulent sky, a storm that conveys the weight of the precipitation to come.

S: Are there any specific nature influences that you think of as you're working? Your sketchbooks are full of clouds and water and waves and trees, even some flower drawings.

J: Sometimes I feel as if I am depicting experiences. I was in California once over Christmas, in 1989, on the coast near Santa Cruz. I remember one day vividly. It was late afternoon, and the sky literally started to drop tendrils or lines of clouds. It wasn't a storm so much as an unusual weather phenomenon that caused the clouds to drop these "ropes" from dozens of different places. They weren't light shafts, those lines that sometimes come out of clouds and somehow look fake or cartoon-like; these things were just dripping out of the clouds down to the sea. It was an incredibly eerie horizon. I think a lot of what I'm doing currently has been influenced by that one day.

S: Your sketchbooks also contain some figurative imagery, some people. You mentioned that you sometimes use yourself, your face, or the things that are familiar to you, even your cats, as source material.

J: It would be easy to allow myself to become very complacent with landscape thinking and rule out the use of figure, so I'm trying to irritate myself by keeping notes and drawings on that subject. Figures do sometimes come to mind. About four years ago, I worked with a hypnotist who was very sensitive to the creative process, and had worked with artists before, some of whom had experienced artist's block and were unable to pursue their work. She used a process of reinforcement through self-hypnosis which I think I use to some degree, although probably not too consciously now. I find it interesting that this work has emerged since then, because before I was doing nothing literal with my functional pieces except the occasional reference to floral imagery. That, however, was influenced also by my admiration for Japanese ceramics and the floral marks on that ware. After working with the hypnotist, I felt a freedom to draw all sorts of things, to give myself suggestions that might be incorporated in the work.

S: You said that you trust your instincts more now. How do you know when your instinct is speaking, and how do you get it out? Is it ever hidden in other voices and pressures?

J: Immediately I have an impression of 1000 little incidents over many years where I felt an urge to do something, and I mean not get a drink of water. I get motivated to make something, and that motivation just feels right. It may come from a sketch, or from listening to music but it ends up forming an idea. You just know that if you're going to get up in the morning you're going to do it. I trust those feelings, even if they don't produce really good work right away. Certainly everything isn't going to work based on instinct, but it's all the power I need to launch certain ideas, and I'm sure that it's kept a very lively attitude in the studio. There are those little nuclear parts of each day--they are filled with such excitement that the unwelcome phone call, or the pot the cat knocked over, and the not so stimulating firing--these don't matter so much in the light of the desire to make a new series of forms and pieces. And with that comes the knowledge that all of the solutions that worked before are not necessarily going to work again, but there will be some new ones waiting and what will they be?

S: When you go back and work on functional forms now, do you feel the influence of the l andscape imagery creeping in? Do you have the sense that the functional surfaces are changing dramatically or will do so?

J: Some people have suggested that it would be amazing if I could incorporate the landscape imagery here on my functional pieces. So far I have disagreed. I'm not avoiding it, but I haven't the least temptation to explore any of these images on a plate.

S: Do you feel that you have a different attitude when dealing with the flat surface, as opposed to one that might be interrupted by circular throwing marks or distinctions between internal and external areas?

J: Yes, my approach is different, and your reference to the potter's wheel may be potent and useful for this discussion. Most of the surface treatment I give things on the wheel nullifies the throwing marks. I rib the surfaces to make them smooth out of a habit that began when I became involved with calligraphy and color fields, as well as color washes. The throwing marks simply got in the way. They caused a ridged response to the tools, the brushes would skip, there wasn't a continuity of line, and after the firing, you would observe the ridges as light reflections which I found to be contrary to the imagery. There was a conflict inherent in that choice, actually, because the throwing process naturally involves marks that I am aware of and enjoy. But I wanted the imagery to predominate, and the type of form I'm working on at any given time always influences the placement of imagery. For example, when I'm glazing and decorating a dinner set, most of the imagery begins with the slip at the potter's wheel after the clay-shaping is done. I'm usually working with 3-4 different slips and the imagery begins to develop right there, often in a non-symmetrical manner. In the glazing process a sense of mystery evolves; I have some sense of where the marks are on the surface of the clay but they get hidden as the layers begin to build up. Lately, since I've become so involved with glaze manipulation using wax resist and colored waxes, I've counseled myself not to do anything significant with the slips. I may put a solid background on, but I try not to manipulate the slip at all, so it's this big, blank canvas with virtually no marks on it. That is a marked contrast to what I've been doing for years, when I've been presented with a very strong impression just after the bisque firing. I work on these new pieces flat in the wet clay stage, with heavy slip application, and anything beyond that is done with overlapping glazes, and in some cases, sand-blasting to cut back through the layers. I should say that I've never been a person who's had trouble with the relationship between making and glazing or painting. I've never felt a divorce there. I've loved the glazing, maybe sometimes more than the making, and that's been one reason that I've moved to image-making that isn't only decorative.

S: In some of your earlier work, there was much more attention paid to geometric patterning with evidence of stamping techniques. Are you still using those techniques or have you moved away from them?

J: That earlier work betrayed a lot of Oribe influence. Oribe ware was one of the single greatest influences on my decoration beginnings, as were Japanese, Chinese, and Korean decorations in general. But in this flat work, the pieces are just painterly, and have become explorations of color, mass and line. I think my love of blue, tan, gold and brown, however, began with Oriental wares and that influence still feels important to me.

S: You use an extruder to create these tablets. Once a piece comes away from that tool, do you then distort the edges and soften them, perhaps even following certain marks made by the extruder already?

J: I'm not trying to say very much about the tool in these pieces. I use the extruder for purposes of expediency. The subject matter and imagery seems to feel a bit more at home with a softened tablet than with a rigid, perfect, four square environment. Those in the steel frames are probably more comforting to the viewer, or even the maker in this case. Once you set things into a frame they really become a universal symbol for "picture." I want to keep experimenting with both forms, exploring ideas about containing or not containing. S: In some of your pieces, you have played quite a bit with this notion of framing. In one diptych you have incorporated a dark, painted frame within and as a part of the piece. In some others you have created only partial frames, and in a number of others you have interrupted the borders with pieces of wood. Can you talk a bit more about these varied approaches? J: Many of the pieces that you are referring to are here for my eyes only, as constant irritants. The one with the partial frame is here because I have an inkling that there is something important in that idea that should be pushed further. The big diptych with the dark sides has a kind of window effect and I like the idea that it contains itself. I think what I'm drawn to, more and more, are framed pieces with increasingly complex elements. Perhaps stepped edges, more elaborate frames, or frames that encourage some sense of environment, maybe of wood and steel for example. Right now the simple steel frames seem the least obtrusive, but they form a definition around the piece that is quite different from a piece where the free edge of the clay floats on the wall.

S: Your decision to make diptychs seems to imply both an interruption and a continuance. Some of your diptychs are presented so close together that the space between them emphasizes the manner in which the imagery continues across the two pieces.

J: I am aware of the frame as an issue for some painters, the non-existent or the very present frame and the notion of containment continues to be an issue for me. Before these wall pieces I did a lot with rectangles and squares, especially in my tray forms. There's always a question as to what containment lends a piece and what breaking away from it does. One of the instinctive responses that I have is to refuse to allow an edge to dominate the movement within a piece. The lines in plates most often flow to and beyond the edge and border, and on the wall panels, they very rarely respect the edge. The steel-framed ones that define containment the most for me may seem finite, but even with those the motion seems to flow past the frame; it doesn't block a continuation of the imagery.

S: Are you thinking of movement out of the frame too? You have made some drawings of free-standing stacked pieces...

J: I have drawn ten years worth of ideas and haven't approached many of them yet because of the newness of this phase of work. This feels like a very fertile time, and I'm really tempted to do many things. My sketchbooks are so valuable as places to save ideas, to capture them for future use when there is time to think about them. I'm not sure what's going to happen when the pieces become free-standing, but it will be the first time that you can walk up to and around them. Some of the drawings you saw indicated that the pieces would be staged so that you saw them in perspective. While a free-standing landscape approach would appear to be a branching and turning from the wall pieces, I think I should do it so that I can go back and forth between the two extremes. On the one hand the flatness and the wall orientation and on the other the table or floor orientation. Perhaps they will complement eachother so that I can see both in a new light.

S: Might the idea of a series of free-standing pieces also involve more narrative intent?

J: Absolutely. Different views could incorporate different concepts or senses: a night/day opposition, a passing of time from one side to another, those will be interesting issues to think about especially since I've rarely thought about concept in my work before. Concept in making a functional pot yes, but not concept which questions whether or not these pieces will be emotionally evocative, and how they will affect people as they move, say from a storm/day scene on one side, to a bright, calm and peaceful scene on the other?

S: Something else about this notion of free-standing is that it takes you back to the three- dimensionality of a pot or towards sculpture.

J: Yes, and I've just begun to make the tentative steps by making a clay panel that has a relatively flat central portion and side wings which swing into the viewer's space. The frame will thus cast shadows back onto the piece. S: Are you interested in playing with how the shadows are going to cast light?

J: Yes, and I have to learn more about that. Those that I've drawn actually may have 4-5" of depth. They are meant to come forward quite a bit.

S: So they could have wings like the sides of three-paneled Gothic altarpieces.

J: Those altarpieces have probably been a subconscious influence. Even though the subject matter was radically different, that they could close or in some cases were portable is fascinating to me. I was influenced early on by reliquary boxes and bronze vessels from China, and it doesn't strike me as surprising that other religious artifacts would be influential.

S: What about the wooden inclusions? They come across almost as question marks, and I'm wondering how you make the decisions about their placement, shape and material.

J: I've drawn what appear to be successful pieces with wood inclusions. I like the idea of extra elements projecting away from these pieces, and when I think of what those elements might be, almost inevitably they occur to me in wood. Perhaps as divisions, even as a sort of post-firing assemblage that re-states the elementality, the qualities of land. I thought that there were elemental things at work when I felt the urge to use wood, literally and figuratively. I want to convey a sense of natural forces in these pieces, and the wood seems to be a part of that. If you're out a storm, you feel it, you smell it, you hear it, you see it, you're a part of it. I didn't want to literally draw trees bending in the wind, and I think that's where the wooden pieces came in.

S: How are you treating the wood?

J: I'm burning it first, just before it's attached. Then I use a wire brush on it, and apply linseed oil which I rub in until the whole piece feels warm.

S: So the wood really goes through a sort of weathering process itself, almost like its own firing.

J: Yes, in a way. You can sandblast wood, and I have done so and thought that I would do more of it. But I found that I didn't really like the process or the result at all, so I haven't pursued it.

S: You have expressed interest in using not only wood, but gold leaf or acrylics as well. Do you feel constrained by ceramic traditions to remain true to the purity or consistency of your materials?

J: If anybody was ever blinded to other options by the force of what they thought was a traditional approach I would certainly stand at the head of that line. I was very reluctant to refire pieces early on, even if they would have obviously benefited from a successful refiring. I finally took encouragement from one of my former assistants, who asked why I wasn't repainting and refiring the pieces. It's as if I had been waiting for someone to give me permission! I have the gold leaf, I've had it for a year. I got it when I was preparing for this body of landscape pieces, and I envisioned that I would want it. Since then I've backed off a little bit out of apprehension, not of adding a new material, but because my menu of approaches seems to be overloaded right now. I think it may sneak back in as an option, if I feel I can do it with an honorable acknowledgment of its role in the overall piece so that it isn't an excuse in itself just to have gold leaf. That wouldn't be adequate, any more than the attempts to include wood could be good enough just because it's a new material and therefore has merit. I don't think the wood additions are very well- realized, so I'm hesitant to rush just now at gold leaf which seems to be potentially more risky. My suspicion is that I won't treat it very predictably when it comes, if it finally comes. Adding another material like acrylic probably isn't as surprising or as unlikely to me now as it might once have been, because the doors seem to be much wider open about combining materials than they have been for me at any time past. Looking back on my schooling, I realize that I've always wanted to combine materials. There was a period where I did electroforming on clay, and worked with a plating tank to make some elaborate, funky, sculptural vessel forms with very fussy electroforming and deposits of copper. I took a blacksmithing class once and I set up a forge, which I haven't used very much over the years, but at the time I made some efforts at steel and wood handle additions for some pots. I'm finally feeling more comfortable in these sorts of combinations.

S: Do you have a clear sense of how your interest in the landscape has evolved?

J: I would have a little trouble picking out why landscape feels so meaningful to me just now. The functional pot has been a very good vehicle to explore decoration and people have often found images of their own in my surfaces. They would say do you see the animal imagery in this piece, or do you see the landscape, and they would turn a pot around and show these things to me, which were never intentional at all on my part. I often wonder whether comments like that reinforced my interest in landscape painting, which I have never really studied. I have looked a lot, increasingly in the last ten years and more so in the last five years, at painters and printmakers who deal with the natural environment.

S: Anybody in particular?

J: Alfred Leslie, Anselm Kiefer, Japanese and Chinese scroll paintings. I have found Ukio-E Japanese woodblock prints particularly inspiring because they often refer to only a segment of the landscape--narrow in scope and sometimes even a vertical section of a view. I also have a book on Joseph Mallord William Turner which was given to me by one of my assistants and when I looked at the close ups, I had this incredible feeling of connectedness with his work. I was just stunned by it.

S: You have a book on Alfred Leslie which includes some of his watercolors. There is an i ncredible sense of mood in his work, and it is his depiction of light, or the time of day, or a kind of mist or dawn, that emphasizes this mood so that it almost comes across as an emotion. They are quiet, seemingly solitary, and that quality seems to appear in some of your landscapes. Not the reddest ones, which remind me more of volcanoes, competing natural forces, eruptions, but the ones where there are delicate outlines, muted colors, softer shapes. Leslie's work is so ethereal-his washes make the colors and masses bleed and melt together. You talk a lot about light/dark and mass/line in your sketchbooks, and the drama that is apparent in Leslie's work can be seen in yours.

J: It seems ironic to me that we are discussing my work in the context of drawings and paintings. I never had much success as a drawing student in school and was luckily and gratefully absorbed into the bosom of the craft classes. It was fifteen years after graduate school when several former teachers said "you're a painter." My watercolor teacher said "these are watercolors." In school, I was a C+ painting student and I didn't like that feeling of ineptitude. Now I feel that I've been practicing drawing all these years without knowing it. I draw a lot with resist materials, and I find that the lines have become very seductive and in the case of Kiefer, I have been overwhelmed with his expansive approach, a breathtaking attack on the landscape. I realize also that I am looking at this kind of work in order to be influenced by it. I look to the people whose work has great power to move me; it happens when I listen to music, or at a sculpture show and it's not a surprise that I come away stimulated, even during the event, if not shortly afterwards, and feel renewed permission to be a player, meaning a player of unwritten music, of untried ideas, of unforeseen explorations.

S: Kiefer not only seems to be an important influence because of the scale of his work, but perhaps also because of his surfaces and even the aggressive nature of his imagery. I find it interesting that you are sandblasting your wall pieces, because such surface destruction is a divergent approach compared to most of your previous work where building up glazes was of primary concern. Kiefer's pieces sometimes self-destruct, they're not always attached well, sometimes they can't travel because their surfaces may disintegrate, and he means for that to happen--it could be construed as a violent gesture on his part. Do you feel that you've picked up some of that from Kiefer with your sandblasting? That it's not only about going back in to uncover things but to destroy them as well?

J: I wouldn't rule it out. It's a little soon for me to say very much about that particular issue, but it doesn't sound unlikely. I like the unexpected ability to remove color through the sandblasting. Preparing for the reductive side of the process is as exciting as the glazing has been. Mostly, though, I think it relates to the fact that I've never held back trying whatever occurred to me. I don't mean something really extreme, like in the middle of glazing running to a container filled with raw feldspar and throwing ten hands full of material on the glaze surface, just to see what it would do. Maybe I haven't been that impulsive. But I have been rather impulsive about trying combinations of things that observation and practice would show to be very unlikely to produce any good result. Combining three black glazes over each other with wax resist. Realizing that there's nothing in that that says contrast, which is one of the essential elements in building something visual. But what's wrong with three different blacks? Perhaps there's something undiscovered and really quite rich. I suspect the sandblasting is another version of risk-taking because many of the surfaces on the landscape pieces are quite pretty when they come out of the kiln, with very friendly, compatible colorations--why would you want to disturb them? I have some pieces here that show what happens when you just keep going down deeper and deeper and repositioning the masks, and taking some of the old ones off. All the way through the glazes, all the way through the slips underlying those, and then down through the clay. There's so much information there, and I haven't gone back to some of the really rich veins yet and asked more. I keep the pieces out in front of me and I know what will be required to re-negotiate these questions.

S: Have you ever dealt with some of this imagery in other media?

J: In the last few years I've made prints several times and I've tried to use the print materials as glaze and slip. To some extent, it was interesting, and maybe if more efforts were made I would feel more at home with those results. But mostly they have given me new permission in the working of the clay and glaze and the results have surprised me. Actually, these clay forms could be considered prints of a kind.

S: Is this really the first time that you've dealt with landscapes or do you remember precedents that now, looking back, suggest that your work would head in this direction?

J: Actually, in June of 1990 I spent about five weeks at Watershed in Maine, It was a period of very intense work, and I was alone and had no teaching or demonstrating responsibilities. I did a body of work, a series of slab pieces which were impressions of the landscape. They were more elemental than the work I'm engaged in now; I never intended them to go any further, never refired them. They were just little bits of the Maine coast that I felt could be said in clay. There were single panels, diptychs and triptychs that went together, some skyskapes, quick studies with land, sky and earth themes, some even incorporated the barn symbol which pushed them over to the trite side. The experience was very much one of drawing, though in clay, and a lot of the pieces were very corny. Some of them got too literal so that you could see these cameo-like areas of sea, sky, beach. Yet I felt that the landscape was so influential that I should treat it as directly as I could. There were enormous rock formations for example, and at certain places on the beach there was a lot of volcanic rock--the result of upheavals, the evidence of massive forces. I responded to the feeling of movement and massiveness.

S: You also worked in earthenware for the first time there. How did that feel, and is it anything that interests you now?

J: I felt fine with the earthenware, I actually enjoyed it. I found it to be a challenge because it was not only an unfamiliar material but because I only fired it once. I'm not sure, though, if that Watershed work should be considered as anything more than a study. There is so much investigation that I have to do with the stoneware that I'm not even considering switching clay bodies at the moment.

S: Let's go back to your really early training. Did any of your mentors influence you in particular ways that would help you arrive at your current body of work?

J: I think we are all standing on the shoulders of our teachers. Most people I know who find some success in their chosen field are extraordinarily grateful for the things that have gotten them there. The teaching experiences that I went through were colored with all of the tentativeness that any student experiences. Not knowing what you're going through when you're going through it--after all, it's the first time. In undergraduate school with Bill Pitney, I had the ability to reconnect with all of the things that had to do with the craft. I had done clay in highschool, and I enjoyed it, but then I gave it away as a possible option because I was sure that the real world (whatever that is) wouldn't have an artist. In college, I rediscovered clay as a real possibility. That time with Pitney was very buoyant time with very few practicalities attached. I got a lot of play time in the studio and no one said "don't". My wife says I have been blessed, and have had a remarkable number of pivotal experiences along the way in which people were enthusiastic and supportive and helped. They said the right thing or they bought a piece, or they were an influence that challenged. I had a design teacher in undergraduate school who could have either chased me away or challenged me. She essentially took my highschool, artist self and said "yes, you're doing interesting things." She didn't belittle me and didn't compare my work to someone else's who was "better." One day, I was in her design class and I learned that she was an extraordinarily accomplished enamelist--she had studied with Kenneth Bates in Ohio and had gone on to take extensive training. When she showed me her work, I reacted with a wonderful mixture of humiliation and a sense of incredible stimulation. She didn't ever suggest that "you could be this good," she just showed her work to me. It was one of those triggering experiences. At the same time I was in the ceramics class downstairs with Pitney, who was willing to have me as an assistant, and let me run the department technically, and do all of the things that were obvious training for having your own studio (I didn't know this at the time). And then to come away with aspirations, newly fired up, technically better, and walk into Cranbrook and have an environment of ten other students who had been hot shots in their own schools but were suddenly together in a much bigger pond, well, we were more potent because we were a group, trading ideas and thoughts. And of course there was the inscrutable Scandinavian Maija Grotell, who did not teach in any way that I understood teaching to be. She managed to instill in us a fear of not performing to her expectations (though we weren't quite sure what those were). Looking back I can be clear that she didn't want us to stagnate as graduate students. She didn't want us to be self-satisfied, thinking we had arrived because we could pretty well make something that was going to get respect and admiration by some people out there. She helped us realize that being an artist was a constantly evolving journey. She never said that, but she showed constant pictures of animals, leaves, books on nature, photography, things that had to do with the natural world. That was a commonality that showed up in her meandering talks that took place, much like this, sitting in her office. She never said "look at my work, how wonderful it is, someday you'll be that good." She never implied that, though her work was always around, sort of the evidence of a career I suppose. All that I remember is feeling that I was forever reaching, not to please her so much, though probably at times I felt like that, but it was to please myself. She wanted that kind of reaching, and I've referred to it as "what if." I loved her accent; "vat vould happen if you vould..." and she'd go on to say change the form, the glaze, keep it large, take it small. But then, to go even farther back, my gift from Cranbrook was built on the shoulders of a highschool craft teacher, Myrtle Munro, who had a great love of all craft media and taught in an unbiased way. It didn't matter if you loved enamels, jewelry, or clay--everything was fine, and she cared. I still write and communicate with her; she's retired and is living in California. Without her, Bill Pitney, Olga Constantine in design, and also without Phil Fike from Wayne State University...He was my metalsmithing teacher and never said that I had to choose between media. Half of the technical things I apply today I learned with Phil Fike, who let me work in metals and wood and use power tools. Every time I go on an adventure, the one thing I have probably learned is that I won't drown. I'm sure that the suddenness of this work isn't very sudden at all in retrospect, and I'm willing to think of this as a small step because I can't imagine what it will lead me to in the next ten years.