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That [silk-screen process experience] carried over when I returned from the Army and took more graphic classes at the Institute. And Alix [MacKenzie] and I actually began to produce a line of textiles, which had silk-screen patterns on them.

Warren MacKenzie

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Warren MacKenzie
Age: 94 †
Born: 1924
Born: February 16
Died: 2018
Died: December 31
Artist
Ceramicist
Kansas City
Missouri
Warren Mackenzie
Warren Mac Kenzie
Produce
Carried
Alix
Lines
Screen
Mackenzie
Class
Screens
Textiles
Actually
Patterns
Silk
Process
Began
Returned
Experience
Army
Institute
Line
Graphic
Took
Classes

More quotes by Warren MacKenzie

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I got drafted into the army and by pure chance was pushed into a silk-screen shop at this camp where I was, because they could not get training posters fast enough out of a central source in Washington, D.C. So they set up their own shop to print training posters: how to dismantle a machine gun, etc.
Warren MacKenzie
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We [me and my wife] went back to St. Paul, worked for a year - again, I guess I would have to admit now, doing a rather shaky job of teaching people - but at the end of that year we returned to England and worked in the [Bernard] Leach Pottery for two and a half years.
Warren MacKenzie
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When I was in school in the Art Institute, we had several problems during the course of the time we were taking ceramic classes where we had to do a sculptural piece. And when I say a sculptural piece, it's nothing like what we conceive of now as a sculptural piece.
Warren MacKenzie
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I started to do silk-screen in the early days of my painting training, due to a woman who taught art history at the institute, Kathleen Blackshear. She was interested in silk screen and taught a class that I took.
Warren MacKenzie
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[Bernard Leach] talked about painting, but we never talked about ceramics in that evening. But at the end of the evening he said to us, Well, he said, I've changed my mind, and if you want, you can come back a year from now and apprentice in the workshop.
Warren MacKenzie
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Since your time is your main involvement here - I mean, the clay doesn't cost very much. Even the glaze and the firing doesn't cost a great deal. But your time is the cost, and if you can keep your time to a minimum and still come out with the results you want, that means the pots can be sold for an economic price.
Warren MacKenzie
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I was a very hard-edged geometric painter, strongly influenced by [Piet] Mondrian and [Theo] van Doesburg and that sort of thing.
Warren MacKenzie
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The interesting thing was we never talked about pottery. Bernard [Leach] talked about social issues he talked about the world political situation, he talked about the economy, he talked about all kinds of things.
Warren MacKenzie
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We stayed on at the Institute [Chicago called the School of Design] because that was - I don't know, you start at one place and you stay there, I guess. Inertia takes over.
Warren MacKenzie
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We moved up here [to St.Paul with my wife] and started to teach, we very quickly found out we were not equipped either to teach or to run our own pottery, and so we decided that we had to have further training.
Warren MacKenzie
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We were living with Bernard [Leach] in his home. He had a fantastic collection of early English and Japanese and Chinese and Korean pots and German pots, contemporary English work as well. And we had access to this collection.
Warren MacKenzie
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So I very quickly stopped almost all decoration. I was interested in the three-dimensional form of the pots, but my decoration was nonexistent.
Warren MacKenzie
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We benefited from living with [Bernard] Leach, because suddenly all of his friends became our acquaintances.
Warren MacKenzie
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Alix [MacKenzie] was a looser, more linear painter, dealing with amoebic forms, let's say, close to [Joan] Miró as opposed to my more static exploration of space.
Warren MacKenzie
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There was a school in Chicago called the School of Design. This was started by [Laszló] Moholy-Nagy, and it was a wonderful school, but we [with Alix MacKenzie] didn't go to that school. We did have friends who went to that school and we would visit there often, and I'm sure it pushed me in my painting direction very strongly just by association.
Warren MacKenzie
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Hilda Reiss was the head of the Everyday Art Gallery. Hilda Reiss came from Germany, had trained at the original Bauhaus in Germany, and her training inspired her to think of anything that she liked as art.
Warren MacKenzie
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I'm striving to make things which are the most exciting things I can make that will fit in people's homes. And in that respect, working on the wheel is economically about the only answer I know, because one can, as Leach said, make 50 pots in a day. You can make 100 pots in a day. A really good potter can make 400 pots in a day.
Warren MacKenzie
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I took a number of graphic courses, lithography and etching and wood engraving [at Art Institute]. And particularly as I got more and more into ceramics, I thought, life drawing doesn't have anything to do with ceramics.
Warren MacKenzie
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Living with [Bernard] Leach, who thought about pottery 24 hours a day, was a fantastic experience, and we really began to get inside his mind and understand what had motivated him to work all his life as a potter.
Warren MacKenzie
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We both [with Alixandra Kolesky MacKenzie] got into ceramics, you might say, by the back door. Looking back on it, I think this was a very good thing.
Warren MacKenzie