Kevin Kauffman, local potter, has reemerged on the Morgantown art scene. Working with clay on-and-off for about 25 years, the past few years he took a hiatus from selling his pottery while working full time as a nurse.
The organic flowing textures and combinations of natural tones of glazes of his wares caught my eye at WVU’s Mountaineer Week craft show.
Kevin told me his love of and skill in his craft started when he took a college elective pottery class.
“I thought, ‘yeah that would be cool.’ And I ended up adding it to my major,” Kevin said. Signing up for the class on a whim led to a passion.
Kevin has practiced a variety of techniques over the years, including making his own kilns and working in raku technique, which involves firing pieces very fast — in and out of the heat.
This can create really interesting effects, but Kevin pointed to a drawback — raku pieces are not food safe. These days, Kevin mostly uses an electric kiln.
A technique he has been enjoying lately is using slip trailing: coating his works and then drawing into slip (layer of liquid clay).
“I just have an idea of the general idea of the shape I want to make,” he said. Once he makes the body of the pieces, he applies slip and draws (after first practicing in a sketch pad) onto the mugs, tumblers and other pieces.
“I just started really carving more into the pieces. I’m definitely influenced by nature. I like to sketch, I like to draw, and usually I’m drawing some sort of animal or plant,” Kevin said. “I picture luna moths that I like, so I sketch those out and put them on the pieces — or birds, I’m a big birder.”
While there are plenty of successes with pottery, Kevin said, “things can go sideways at any point.” Sometimes he makes an error in a hands-on phase of the work. He mentioned recently he was really in the zone of making and attaching handles, only to realize he’d attached one upside down to a mug.
Still, he will set out the funky mug for sale, because it might strike someone’s fancy.
Mishaps can happen later in the process. He made goblets with thin stems and they collapsed into each other during firing. “Oh what a tragedy, I’m going to smash them all!” he thought when he opened the kiln and saw them.
But after a friend convinced him not to smash them, someone from a winery saw the fused goblets and bought them as a display piece for their business.
For a little over a year, Kevin has been creating clay works (both according to plan and of such happy accidents) at a local artists co-op. “My work is part of Nampara Arts Cooperative,” he said. He rents a cottage on the artist-owned property in Morgantown alongside other artists and works with them in a shared studio.
“It’s basically a full-fledged arts studio,” Kevin said, including local artist Jamie Lester’s sculpture studio, a metal working shop, wheels and kilns and other equipment.
“We are all making our own work at the same time,” Kevin said. “It’s nice to see someone else working, because it kind of makes you want to work.”
To see Kevin’s pottery, contact him directly (via Facebook) or stop by the Morgantown Art Party downtown on High Street during its holiday art sale Dec. 11.
ALDONA BIRD is a journalist, exploring possibilities of local productivity and sustainable living in Preston County.
TWEET @DominionPostWV
