Meet The Potter
Gil Grimmett
What is your name? Gil Grimmett
How long have you been a Member of The Potters’ Studio? I’ve been at the Potter’s Studio since December 2019.
What is your everyday occupation? I’m the COLAB teacher at Prospect Sierra. COLAB is short for Constructivist Learning Laboratory (A term coined by Seymour Papert, a mathematician, computer scientist and educator). The COLAB is a space where children learn to problem solve with their hands and minds while learning to use and explore the possibilities of creation with a wide variety of tools and materials. They construct objects out of clay, wood, cardboard among other things. In addition they learn basic engineering, coding, and robotics concepts blended with art and social justice.
When did you start working with clay? I’ve used a wide variety of tools and materials to craft forms in three dimensions since I was a little child, including sticks and mud, wet beach sand and buckets, Play Doh, plasticine, snow, etc ... all clay-like materials that are both additive and reductive. I began working with clay around this time as well, but more formally during my senior year of high school.
How would you describe your work? I primarily create figurative ceramic sculptures. I make busts, masks, torsos and full-body structures, maps, and pots. I use the term structure intentionally to refer to the process of creating one of these pieces, and the underlying support structures that need to be built in order to support the heavy weight of the material as the piece increases in size and height. I use clay to explore the expressive potential of the human face. In addition, I created a series of masks, each a rough self-portrait with different expressions. This particular series was inspired by personal stories, identity, and social justice.
What was the first memorable clay piece you created? I think my first truly memorable piece was a bust of a Mengbetu woman that I sculpted back in college nearly 30 years ago. It was my first attempt at figurative sculpture and it was the largest piece I had ever committed to that point. On top of that it was an engineering challenge for me as I had to build it hollow with slabs of clay scored and slipped together. Then it needed to be dried slowly and ultimately fired.
Did your parents influence your art when you were growing up? My experience of art as a child was mostly supported by my Aunt Gloria and Uncle Brent, who had a home in Washington DC’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. My Aunt Gloria used to work for the foreign service in Nigeria and traveled back and forth between the US and Africa a lot. Her home was literally filled from floor to ceiling with sculpture: wooden, ceramic, ivory, and metal. This is where we spent much of the summer when I was little kid, and some of my earliest memories were spent playing among these objects (much larger than I was at the time). In fact, one of the artists whose work was among her collection would become my ceramics professor at Hampton University. He was a sculptor out of Ghana named Ampofo-Anti. Much of what I know about hand building forms, I learned from him.
Can you tell us about your time teaching in Japan, and its effect on your work? The Days of Giru-sensei were epic! However, the immediate effect moving to Japan had on my work was dormancy. Although I was 27 years old at the time living there, I was like a baby suddenly thrust into the world – confused, disoriented and unable to put it into words. There I was walking down the street, completely illiterate and unable to express my frustrations or desires.
So I at first had a lot of work to do with learning the language, acclimating to the culture and finding my voice, Through a friend, I eventually found my way to a pottery studio in Shizuoka Prefecture that sits atop a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Between the home of the sensei and his studio was a gorgeous bridge spanning a deep ravine. My friend negotiated the use of his studio and a lesson from the sensei in making a Japanese tea cup in exchange for us chopping wood to feed the Anagama kiln. It was there I also learned about the concept of kintsugi, the art of bringing attention to cracks and blemishes through the careful application of gold leaf over the break.
Your work makes strong statements about your cultural background. Can you tell us about one of your favorite pieces from the collection you’ve been building? I seek to create work that is inspired by the radiant tapestry of blood coursing through my veins. For example, the pieces I am currently working on are part of a series of sculptures of women with long necks, inspired both by the African derivative work of Modigliani as well as the long neck female ancestor spirit sculpture from the Baule people that inspired his style. 7% of my DNA comes from the region of Cote D’Ivoire, where this work was created. I seek to create objects that show the beauty, the power and resilience of black people. The long neck signifies positive attributes like honor, pride, and esteem, representing a person of high social standing and moral character, often seen as a sign of beauty and good health within the culture. Essentially, an elongated neck is a visual marker of inner virtue and positive qualities.
Can you talk about the gallery shows you’ve participated in, both past and present? My first gallery appearance was at the RUSH Gallery in Brooklyn, NY. The show displayed all of my Abolitionist Busts, and was very well received. I sold two pieces, school groups would visit and programming was created around the work. I had several shows after that in Brooklyn.
How has teaching children at a STEM school influenced your creativity in clay work? It has influenced both the content and process of my work. For example, when I was a fourth-grade teacher at Packer, I taught a unit of study about important changemakers of the Civil War: Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, John Brown, Denmark Vesey and Abraham Lincoln. Inspired by that unit, I created a series of life-sized busts of each of these individuals. All of which were made of stoneware, burnished, scored and fired to Cone 6. Additionally, working as a STEM teacher has exposed me to a wide variety of digital and mechanical tools that will soon allow me to explore a new level of art making. I’m working with Arduino-powered, motion sensors and Servo motors to create kinesthetic ceramic sculptures that are responsive to external stimulus.
Who are some artists you admire? Ironically, as someone so averse to glazing in my own work, I highly admire the work of a lot of painters, specifically those artists who specialize in figurative work: Kehinde Wiley is at the top of that list! I have so much respect and appreciation for his skill. Kerry James Marshall is another painter I love who specializes in the black figure. He uses very dark pigments to achieve chromatic blackness challenging the idea of blackness as a social construct. Kara Walker is also out there pushing the envelope, creating work that is steeped in blackness. Her installation piece at the Domino sugar factory in Brooklyn back in 2014 still haunts me to this day. And lastly, I am a huge fan of the ceramic sculpture work in Christina Cordova, a Puerto Rican artist at Penland, North Carolina. Her figurative work is simply spellbinding, and varies in scale from miniatures to larger than life.
What’s the most indispensable item in your studio/workspace? The wooden armatures I have built to support the work while I’m building. Without these I could not work.
What’s the most inspiring thing you’ve seen, read, watched, or listened to recently?
Meow Wolf in Denver, an experiential art space.
As an artist and educator, what is an important piece of advice you can share? Be bold in your pursuits and don’t be afraid to challenge yourself.
Interview article and photography by Inhae Lee