I love looking at ancient clay pots and appreciate the sense of history and process that many of them embody. I'm inspired by them to create objects that reflect the process involved in their making. My pots aren't thrown on a wheel - I build each of them from coils of clay pinched together. Then, I carefully scrape the surface smooth and gently nudge the form into something that pleases my eye and my soul. How their curves and surfaces feel ( and make me feel ) are just as important as how they look. Sometimes I add a bit of color to the surface, sometimes and incised line filled with clay slip. The quiet and meditative forming process results in a "blank canvas" on which the primitive fire can make its mark.

After an initial firing in an electric kiln, my pots are packed into metal cans with combinations of charcoal, pine straw, wood shavings and newspaper surrounding them. Then, I light the can on fire and it burns as quickly as the wind allows. Random patterns of carbon deposits cover the surface of the pots and remain as evidence of the firing process. The process - that's what I like. And it startles me sometimes that something of me comes through in that process.

I remember making mud pies ( as most kids do ) and the pleasure that came from turning a glob of nothing into "something", a thick ( albeit unappetizing ) pancake-looking pie. I was surprised when it was pointed out to me that it wasn't really a pie, edible, but just mud. And it probably was "just mud". But the idea, the challenge of turning mud into "something" stuck with me. Making a pot from a lump of clay might not be difficult for me now, but making a really good pot continues to be my challenge. I hope that I come close to meeting that challenge every now and then - it's a utopian journey !

This may sound a bit hokey, but when the pots in this show talk to me, they say "Welcome Home". Several years ago I stepped away from my clay studio for a few semesters of graduate school, but over the past year or so I've started showing my pots again. I'm glad that the need to play in the mud has reasserted itself, nudged me back into the studio, and resulted in the group of pots, my first major show in a while. Though it may have been pushed aside very now and then, that driving need remains an important and persistent force in my live.

I'm excited about putting my pots beside Paul's wonderful paintings for this show. I hope that the glimpse of his spirit that shines in his work is complemented by the "something of me" that makes my pots mine. Enormous and eternal thanks the Linwood for his superb job as a "middle-man" in putting this show together !

I was born in New York and grew up in North Carolina. Following a childhood of various art-related activities, I eventually earned a BFA in Ceramics ( with a minor in painting ) from East Carolina University. After maintaining my own clay studio and working in a gallery in Creedmore, NC for most of the 1980's and early 90's, I decided to go back to graduate school at UNC-Chapel Hill to study Art History. I worked on an MA for a few years, but the clay has called me back. I discovered that, while I enjoy reading and writing about art, there's something stronger in me that needs to make clay objects.

- Jim Lux, 1999

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