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pottery

    MEET THE MAKER

    A Seeker Finds His Way With Clay

    The tides inspire Steve Kemp’s pottery projects

    By

    Photos by Robert S Johnson

    When Steve Kemp, who set up his Orleans pottery studio 45 years ago, first started working with clay, he asked Harry Holl to be his teacher. Holl turned him down — though Kemp would eventually find his way to an apprenticeship at Holl’s storied Scargo Pottery.

    Steve Kemp’s wheel rarely stops. Here he builds the base of a pitcher while talking with a visitor.

    Kemp was born not far from Cape Cod, at the Quonset Point Naval Air Station in North Kingstown, R.I. But he didn’t see the Cape until he was in college. He had a summer job in 1973 harvesting cranberries just off Cape in Carver. And after graduating from the University of Florida at Gainesville with an art degree, what else was there to do but pick up cranberrying again? He found a place to live in West Barnstable.

    “I ask a lot of this body; this stuff is heavy,” says Kemp, doing what’s called spiral wedging. “I’m using my body more than my arms, my hands. That’s what I learned from Harry.”

    In his spare time, Kemp explored what he calls “pre-pottery-making.” One day, he ran out of clay and was advised to go see “the potter on the hill.” Following a path into the pines behind Scargo Lake in Dennis, he says, “I couldn’t believe what I had just walked into.” There was a potter, throwing on a wheel, surrounded by “glorious pots, deeply sculpted vessels, cubist wall plaques.”

    Perfecting the pitcher’s shape and thickness.

    He had found Harry Holl in his outdoor studio. “I was a seeker, trying to figure out who I was and what I should do, and this was it,” Kemp says. He asked Holl then and there if he could apprentice with him. “I don’t have time for that,” Holl told him. He would take on only a skilled potter.

    Delicately, Kemp pinches a pouring spout.

    So, Kemp went back to Florida, began a graduate assistantship at his alma mater, and set out to take every pottery class possible. He fell in love with Linda McNeill in Florida, but she was from Marshfield, and eventually the pair found their way back to the Cape. This time, Holl said yes to taking Kemp on.

    Cutting the pot off the wheel with a string.

    Working at Scargo, Kemp’s biggest concern was losing his own style. When you’re apprenticing, he says, in essence you have to “become one” with the master. “You learn what they know, and then you hope you can break free of that influence, take what he gave you, make it your own,” says Kemp.

    “This is an important piece to me,” Kemp says. He sculpted it after his wife, Linda, died in 2021. Its inspiration came during a walk on the beach, where Kemp saw a rock with piece broken away, the rest left balanced precariously.

    It took years, he says, to develop his own style. How? “In feeling,” Kemp says. Harry’s muse was the figure, he says, whereas for Kemp it was nature.

    Potter Steve Kemp makes casts of the ripples left on the sand at low tide. He makes plaques, bowls, and sculptures from the designs that emerge.

    In recent years, Kemp has found a muse in the ripples left on the tidal flats at low tide. Working with their endless patterns helped draw him back into the shop after Linda died in 2021. Early in the morning, he has been known to go out with a few helpers, a wooden frame, and plaster and make a cast of the ripples. He rolls a clay slab over the casting, works it into the grooves, and flips it, picking up exactly what’s on the flats. “You see there is a seaworm there,” he points out.

    A triptych of ripples Kemp made after a visit to the National Quilt Museum. The patterns there, he says, made him think about how what he sees on the flats is repeated in the sand, the surface of the water, and the sky.

    “Today, when I’m on the wheel and I’m making a pitcher,” he says, “I can remember the demonstration Harry gave me, remember that whole dialogue in my mind as I’m working, and then I find my hands doing something of mine instead.”

    Where does inspiration come from — his head, his hands, or his heart? “Damned if I know,” the potter says.

    CERAMICS

    How Truro’s Isabel Souza Cultivates a Life in Art

    Her pottery grows out of her personal story

    By

    “The Cape is where I want to be as an artist,” says ceramicist Isabel Souza. “The direction of my art is very influenced by my roots and my family history in Truro and Provincetown. It just makes sense for me to be here.”

    Isabel Souza, a ceramic artist from Truro, is building a successful pottery business with an emphasis on simple designs and community. (Photo Susannah Elisabeth Fulcher)

    Souza returned to her hometown of Truro after graduating from Syracuse University’s ceramics program, with a minor in business, in 2018. At age 23, she already has her own pottery studio and is making her mark with recent collections at local businesses, including Truro Vineyards, and custom work for private clients.

    When she began to explore her own family’s history as a student at Nauset Regional High School, she discovered that her great-grandfather Abraham Soares owned a ceramic roof tile factory in Valença do Minho in northern Portugal before emigrating with his wife to the U.S. The couple moved to Truro because there were jobs to be had in Provincetown’s fishing industry. Once settled, Souza’s great-grandmother worked for Ada “Tiny” Worthington, a local seamstress who, in the 1930s, began to use fish nets to create women’s fashion.

    “I feel that creating functional art is in my blood,” Souza says.

    Souza’s great-grandfather was also a passionate gardener, a tradition that still runs deep in her family, which owns Bayberry Gardens & Landscaping in Truro. “The first piece of pottery I ever saw was probably a terra-cotta flowerpot,” Souza says. Being exposed to the many colors and patterns of flowers and plants throughout her life was — and still is — a deep influence on her work. “I am very interested in playing with bright color combinations inspired by nature,” she says. Souza smiles and adds that she and her family “are all turning dirt into beauty.”

    Souza created her Rainbow Mugs during the coronavirus lockdown this past spring. (Photo Isabel Souza)

    She took her first pottery classes at Truro Central School and was smitten. “I found the element of surprise in pottery very exciting,” she says. “You make a piece and glaze it. Then, after it is fired, it looks completely different. It’s such a rewarding process, even now. Each time I get a successful piece out of the kiln, it feels amazing.”

    While she was at the elementary school, Souza won a scholarship at Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill. “I knew I liked clay, but had not tried the potter’s wheel,” she says. “Even though it wasn’t as easy as it looked, I fell in love.”

    Souza continued to take ceramics classes at Castle Hill throughout high school. At Nauset, she also found support and encouragement from her art teacher, Amy Kandall, who has a pottery business. In her senior year, Souza got an internship at Castle Hill, where she worked with then-ceramics director Brian Taylor.

    She chose to go to Syracuse with the plan of starting a pottery business of her own after college. At the school’s study abroad program in Florence, Italy, she learned about sprezzatura, or “the art of effortless mastery,” a business model that has inspired her approach to ceramics. “Italian luxury brands create their goods — clothing, art, sports cars — to appear very simple and effortlessly crafted, though they’re actually very deliberate and focused,” Souza says.

    Another important aspect to the Italian approach, she adds, is story — “the personal story of the artist or craftsperson, the story of the influences on their art, and the story of the material and quality of the item created. All are woven together in a cohesive way as the overall story of the brand.”

    Souza’s Mood Mugs are inspired by the line drawings of Matisse. (Photo Isabel Souza)

    Elegant simplicity and story have since become hallmarks of Souza’s pottery. “I really like simplifying a design so that it can be all that it needs to be without any distraction,” she says. A fan of Matisse, she created a Mood Mug series inspired by Matisse’s gesture or contour drawings. Each mug has a slightly different facial expression, and when seen side by side, they illustrate the variety of human emotion. “The differences between each piece,” Souza says, “are the most fun parts.”

    During the pandemic in the spring, Souza began creating her Rainbow Mugs. “I had just returned from a trip to Costa Rica when the lockdown began,” she says. “My mind was full of the rich colors I saw there, and I wanted to create a series that expressed how we humans are better together, not apart. Each of the mugs on its own expresses just one color, but together they make a rainbow.”

    Working on large projects with local businesses, such as her pottery line at Snowy Owl Coffee Roasters in Brewster, has been meaningful to her. “To get to see people gather and have coffee and conversation over my cups has been amazing,” she says. “We live in a world that is so fast, so busy. Sure, you can opt to buy a mug from T.J. Maxx that is mass-manufactured. What’s so special about pottery is these objects make the user slow down, look, and appreciate that each piece was made individually by the hands of an artist.”

    A TRURO THING

    Kurtzman Nominated For ‘Artists Under the Dome’

    By

    Susan Kurtzman, who owns Jobi Pottery in Truro, with state Sen. Julian Cyr, who nominated Jobi for inclusion in Artists Under the Dome, an annual State House event. “It was thrilling, to be sure,” said Kurtzman of learning a Jobi piece would join the collection featuring representative works from every district. “I selected a green oval platter decorated with black Truro minnows — one of the traditional Jobi designs,” she said. Kurtzman bought Jobi in 2003, bringing some new design ideas to the project, but also determined to carry on the hand-painted, slip-cast style pottery designs first made in 1952 by Joe Colliano and Bill Hastings (thus “Jobi”). The two sold their work from a hot-dog stand next to the lighthouse, Kurtzman said. “They tended bar there, and they hauled Bill’s Hammond organ to the hotel and Joe played piano,” she said. By 1956, their pottery had become a full-time occupation. “It’s a Truro thing,” said Kurtzman. (Photo Nancy Bloom)

    COURSES

    If It’s Thursday, It’s Clay With Paul Wisotzky

    The former Truro Select Board chair fires away

    By

    Paul Wisotzky studio
    Paul Wisotzky gives a tour of his Truro pottery studio, which has three kilns. He’ll be teaching clay at Castle Hill all winter. (Photo Howard Karren)

    “I started taking classes at Castle Hill when I was 15 years old,” Paul Wisotzky says in his comfortable Truro living room. “I’m 57, and now I’m teaching there in the very same studio. It’s a full-circle experience for me.”

    Along with Chris Watt, Wisotzky is teaching ceramics at Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill throughout the off-season, which Wisotzky calls the “our-season,” for year-rounders like himself. “I teach Thursday morning, and Chris teaches Wednesday morning. The sessions are six weeks. You get three hours a week of instruction, and then open studio time, Monday to Thursday, all for $295. It’s an amazing deal.” (Session II has already started: it began in mid-November and continues through Dec. 19. Session III begins Jan. 8 and runs through Feb. 13. Session IV is Feb. 19 to March 26; Session V, April 1 to May 7.)

    “It’s always mixed-level,” Wisotzky says, meaning beginners are with more experienced potters. “The mix works, because sometimes I’m demonstrating more basic skills and sometimes more advanced skills. Then I go from person to person and help them where they are. I do a lot of one-on-one instruction. I’m going around, wheel to wheel, helping people. It’s teaching and coaching.”

    Blueberry Lane Pottery
    An example of Wisotzky’s Blueberry Lane Pottery, which he creates in Truro. (Photos courtesy Paul Wisotzky)

    Wisotzky, who grew up in Lexington, became a potter relatively late in life. He spent most of his career as a consultant to nonprofits on “organization, program development, and governance,” he says. “I was probably young for having a midlife crisis, in my early 40s, but I thought, I don’t want to do this anymore. I really struggled for a year, thinking, what was I going to do for the rest of my life?”

    He had an epiphany when he was asked what he had hoped to do when he was young. “For me, making pots was my first love,” Wisotzky says. “The clay studio was a refuge from the misery of high school. I really kind of bloomed there.” The follow-up question: why not be a potter? “And it was like, duh,” he says. “It’s interesting that a simple question can change your life if you really listen.”

    He was living in San Francisco at the time and signed up for a course. “I was really scared,” he says. “What if it didn’t work for me? I sat down at the wheel and within 15 minutes I was in heaven.”

    He had some catching up to do. “I created my own clay education at that point,” Wisotzky says. “Apprenticing, taking workshops, eventually assisting master potters in their studios and workshops. And that sort of led me to where I am now.”

    He moved to Truro from San Francisco in 2007. “I always wanted to live here,” he says. “I always felt as if my soul lives in Truro. I feel at home. I feel happy. I feel at peace. When I became a potter, I realized that this was something that I could do in Truro. It was also an opportunity to be closer to my family, to help my brother take care of our failing parents, who had retired here.”

    He launched the Blue Gallery at 389 Commercial St. in Provincetown in 2010. “The reason I opened the gallery is that there’s a lot of great art in Provincetown, but there’s not a lot of fine craft,” Wisotzky says. “I wanted to create a space for great American craft. I loved the gallery, but it was a lot of work running the business and representing 35 artists. It was successful, but I didn’t feel as if I was satisfying my creative soul as much as I needed to.” A couple of years ago he gave it up and now rents the space to East End Books Ptown.

    Wisotzky mugs
    Original mugs from Wisotzky’s Blueberry Lane Pottery. (Photos courtesy Paul Wisotzky)

    Meanwhile, he started to get involved with town government in Truro. “It was a natural progression for me,” Wisotzky says. “Because of my background, I was on committees. I was on the select board from 2013 to 2019. The first time I ran, I was unopposed. The second time it was contested, and I won. I loved being on the select board. It was a great experience. And I loved being chair for three years. It was an honor.”

    These days, Wisotzky devotes himself to Blueberry Lane Pottery, the line of porcelain and stoneware that he fires in atmospheric kilns (as opposed to electric) on his property.

    “I make a living selling pots and teaching pottery,” he says. “And I love teaching.” He also likes to learn. “The learning never stops. To expand my knowledge, to be exposed to other artists, I started doing residencies about three years ago. I’ve been a winter resident at the Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina. I just did a residency in late May at the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Deer Island, Maine. The residencies are freeing — they allow you to focus on something you want to develop for yourself, to hone in on a specific technique. And you can fail. You often learn the most that way.”

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