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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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Warren MacKenzie
Age: 94 †
Born: 1924
Born: February 16
Died: 2018
Died: December 31
Artist
Ceramicist
Kansas City
Missouri
Warren Mackenzie
Warren Mac Kenzie
Social
Pottery
Political
Bernard
Thing
Talked
Kind
Kinds
Things
Issues
Never
Economy
World
Situation
Interesting
Leach

More quotes by Warren MacKenzie

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I used to think [Shoji] Hamada never drew, until there was a book by Bernard [Leach] published about his work [Hamada: Potter, Tokyo New York: Harper & Row, 1975] and at the rear of the book were a number of wonderful little sketches, but they were not drawings like Bernard made.
Warren MacKenzie
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We became more familiar with [Bernard Leach], and with this familiarity came, I wouldn't say contempt, but certainly an awareness that everything that he said was not necessarily what we were thinking. That doesn't mean it was wrong, but Leach was a person out of a different generation.
Warren MacKenzie
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Alix [ MacKenzie] had stopped teaching because we had a child and she stayed home to take care of the baby, and I taught.
Warren MacKenzie
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[Sculpturing] didn't stick with me. I never felt I wanted to go on with that.
Warren MacKenzie
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And as far as I know about Alix's [MacKenzie] work, I don't believe she ever did any sculptural work at all. It was always pottery.
Warren MacKenzie
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I thought, oh, I'm going to be a painter. And eventually my family had moved near Chicago, and when I graduated from high school, I went to the Chicago Art Institute, and it was there that I thought, well, now I'm going to be a painter.
Warren MacKenzie
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Bernard [Leach] was making pots which were duplicates of his drawing, and that was a difference of approach, which I think is quite critical to these two men [Leach and Shoji Hamada].
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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It was a wonderful opportunity. And so for two and a half years we lived with [Bernard] Leach.
Warren MacKenzie
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In fact, I believe to a certain extent a person today who starts with just clay, with no drawing and no painting and no figure drawing, still-life drawing, various things, they miss a great deal.
Warren MacKenzie
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In school we did all sorts of things, molds, slab building. We were not very proficient on the wheel because the woman who taught was not proficient on the wheel. And so we learned from her assistant who had learned from her assistant the year before and so on, and that was not very good training.
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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[Shoji] Hamada seldom drew an exact drawing of a pot that he was going to make.
Warren MacKenzie
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At that [childhood] time, of course, if you were involved in art, it was going to be drawing and painting, because that's the only thing that was taught in the schools.
Warren MacKenzie
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In working on a drawing or a painting, one can rework and rework and rework and change ideas until you get it the way you think is right at that time. With clay that's not possible. You either succeed the first time, or you should wad it up and start over again, because you can't mess around with the clay and still have it fresh.
Warren MacKenzie
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Finally if I had a pot that needed decoration, I would hand it to Alix [MacKenzie] and I would say, Can you do something with this? And she'd look at it for a while and then proceed with a brush to embellish the form and enhance the form, and it was wonderful. She could bring the pot to life, whereas if I did it, it was a disaster.
Warren MacKenzie
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It was there that we really first came in contact with the work of Shoji Hamada, who was Bernard's best friend from Japan, who had come from Japan back to England with [Bernard] Leach when Leach was establishing his pottery.
Warren MacKenzie
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When you're young, you think you can do anything, and we thought.
Warren MacKenzie
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I find it really enriching to make pots which people are using and which they come in contact with, not only visually in their homes but tactilely - when they pick them up, when they wash them after dinner, and so on and so forth.
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