ARTS & CULTURE
There is no better way to spend a warm spring day than walking through the Hill Country amidst a plethora of Texas Wildflowers and lush trees, listening to live music and browsing the offerings of and having a friendly chat with local potters. The annual Dirt Dauber Festival held on May 18 and 19 was spearheaded by Eye of the Dog Art Center co-owners Billy Ray and Beverly Mangham. It had more than 50 Texas clay artists selling their work, a full lineup of live music and live artist demonstrations. The event was held on the 12acre Eye of the Dog campus, located at 405 Valley View West Rd.
The offerings on site were plentiful, and each artist had their own unique style. The array of talent was impressive, making it difficult to stay on budget.
Courtney Segrest’s booth was filled with pieces both large and small that incorporated chain link and chain mail techniques using clay instead of metal. Some of the pieces were large and super technical, while others were smaller vessels that incorporated chain details.
“I'm really inspired by tactility, so I make a lot of goods that have fidgets to them or malleable components to them,” Segrest said. “I mostly try to make happy objects to make people excited and kind of calm them down too.”
Chris Long had wheel thrown pieces with various textures, geometric shapes and bright pops of color meant to give the user a “sensory experience.” Long said a lot of the pieces are inspired by the process itself.
“It all comes down to how it’s going to feel and how it’s going to function over anything,” Long said. “I’m very into it being an experience to use one of the pieces.”
Berkeley Beauchot is a woodworker that incorporates handmade clay tiles into furniture pieces with Western design elements.
“I really became interested in the tile because of the collage elements,” Beauchot said. “I'm really inspired by the landscape in Texas. I was born and raised here, and I love the state. So I take a lot of the color tones and the palettes that I use from the land.”
Jamie Wade is “enamored by life” and takes inspiration from all living things.
“I like to take little bits, different pockets of living things and mix them together and create new interpretations. I think we're all strange and interesting creatures,” Wade said. “I like to disarm people with my work and maybe get them out of their judgment head and into a state of curiosity.”
Jess Wade primarily sculpts figures and pulls from the “collective unconscious” to create his pieces.
“Most of the people that I sculpt, I end up meeting in the world somewhere,” Wade said. “So I just kind of pull from that ether and make people.”
Jess gave an example of a woman who purchased one of his sculptures and told him that it reminded her of her ex husband, so she planned to take it home and smash it. As upsetting as one can imagine that might be, his outlook of the situation was surprisingly positive.
“I've had my time with this piece. I got what I needed from it, and now, it's not mine anymore,” Wade said, adding that it was a lesson in the selling process and letting go. “If it serves a purpose for you then it was a success.”
Camille Nicole Francis is inspired by nature and “creepy, witchy things,” and creates ceramic pieces for the sheer joy of the process. Francis particularly enjoys making ceramic frogs that are intricate and adorable in a variety of colors, patterns and sizes “I don't know why I started making frogs. I can't remember. I was on my couch, and I was making frog pipes. And then I just kept making frogs, and I don't know why,” Francis said. “I don't really do a lot of professional selling of art. Most of the money I make here at Eye of the Dog I spend here being an open studio member at Eye of the Dog.”
All of the potters had unique introductions to the craft.
Initially, Segrest hated ceramics when she took her first course in it, but during her second class she fell in love.
“I ended up changing my major during my senior year,” Segrest said. ”And I still graduated on time.”
Long started taking ceramics classes in highschool, and after moving to Austin, took both ceramic and graphic design courses. After making friends with the professors, it was apparent that the ceramic instructors had a higher overall level of life satisfaction than the graphic design teachers did.
“That's very telling,” Long said.
Beauchot has a best friend that is a ceramicist with a studio next door and just started “playing around” with clay.
“I used to own an art studio in Austin,” Beauchot said, adding a statement that was shocking for the expert level of the tilework. “I’ve only been doing the tile and focusing on a line for a year.”
When choosing a major in college, Jamie Wade wanted to do a little bit of everything.
“In ceramics you can do trompe l'oeil — fooling the eye, and I can make things that look like bronze, and I can make things that look like wood. And I can make things that look like, well, anything I want them to,” Wade said, adding that she believes ceramics may be one of the more difficult materials to work with. “I think that’s what keeps me in it. That challenge is always there.”
Jess Wade initially had more of a painting background, but the Texas clay community was so open and supportive and encouraged him to try his hand at ceramics.
“So I just started making stuff in clay because this clay community is so great [that] I just want to be a part of this,” Wade said. “Since they accepted me so blanketly, I was just like, ‘alright I’ll make stuff out of clay too.’” Initially, Francis took a ceramics course, but said she wasn’t very good at it.
“I got really obsessed, so I just kept taking classes back to back,” Francis said. “And then eventually, the beginner classes got kind of repetitive and boring. So I emailed Billy Rae, and I was like, ‘hey, can I go to the studio?’ And I would just hang out.”
The artists had varying reasons for their love of molding clay.
Segrest loves the cycle and repetition of wheel throwing — throw the clay, mold the shape, start another piece while letting it harden for the incorporation of details, repeat.
“That's really what drew me into it,” Segrest said.
Working with clay allows Long to stay present, attentive and curious.
“The process is really fun and teaches you a lot of patience by chasing down your ideas,” Long said. “It makes you a better problem solver.“ Beauchot loves everything about working with clay.
“You can just really lose track of time,” Beauchot said. “I love all of the different processes.”
Jamie Wade likes that with ceramics, and art as a whole, there are endless opportunities to problem solve. She is also intrigued by the fact that there are infinite variables that can alter a piece, which leads to one-of-akind creations.
“One thing changes, everything changes. The mine that the clay comes out of ten feet over might have a slightly different chemical composition. The same thing with the ingredients in our glaze recipe. And then I try to never make the same piece twice. Again, going back to life and us all being individuals, us all being strange and interesting creatures,” Wade said. “We should all have things that are uniquely special and not the exact carbon copy that 800 other people have.”
Jamie commented that previous to dipping his toes into ceramics, Jess would always say that clay makers are incredibly brave.
“He has a strong painting background,” Jamie said of her husband. “And he's like, ‘if I had to put my paintings in the oven and just hope they come out all right, I probably wouldn't be a painter.’” Francis appreciates the freedom of form that comes from working with clay, and there are parts of the clay curing process that the potter finds equally appealing.
“I like things that are three dimensional,” Francis said. “I'm also kind of a pyromaniac like I feel like a lot of us are. So I really love firing, and like handling things in the fire.”
Go to eyeofthedogartcenter. com to learn more about the center and their classes to discover the appeal of clay for oneself.
