An Artist Making Pottery | Kristen Van Patten | Episode 737

Kristen Van Patten | Episode 737

Kristen Van Patten is a multidisciplinary artist living and working in Austin, TX. After receiving his MFA in Painting and Sculpture from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2007, he relocated to Austin in 2010. Kristen work is influenced largely by his interest in Architecture, specifically Modernist and Brutalist architecture from the 1950’s to the mid 1970’s.

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What kind of tool do you use to make the rolling dotting line in your work?

You know those sewing perforating tools that people will use to trace sewing patterns onto a piece of fabric before the stitch it together. I use one of those. I have a few but I have one that I particularly like and one of my projects right now, you won’t see it on any of my pots, but one of my projects that I am kind of gearing up for is making some custom version of those. So it is basically just a wheel that’s got little notches on it or star points on it. But pretty soon I will be making my own customs dotted line tools to be able to put some different rolling dotted line patterns on them.

Why is it important to have a surface design on your cups as a opposed to just being a flat pallet?

That is a good question. And when I did first start getting back into ceramics it was just a flat pallet. I would have just a singular surface. It would be grey, black or something pretty monochrome or a reduced color pallet. But I think I have kind of gotten bored with that and the painted and designer in me has wanted to come out quite a bit more so I started playing around with more surface decoration and design elements to put on them. Also it breaks up the surface. You will notice on most of my pieces there is a t least one mark that goes all the way from top to bottom and that kind of divides the shape into two different surfaces and that is a lot of it, kind of breaking up the planes. And it has gradually gotten more and more complex.

Why do you think people are attracted to surface design?

You know I think that is a question that goes back thousands of years probably. Pottery for example, and I can’t answer it but it is something that potters have been lending themselves to and it is probably something the audience has been more drawn to. You know when potters first started putting patterns or animals on their pots those are the ones that people would buy. And so looking back a couple of thousand years even in history you will find ceramic works that have these various surface decorations on them. I think it is something that the artist probably starts to do to liven things up a bit and it is probably just something special for the audience. They see it as something that sets it apart and it puts more of the artist’s hand on it. I think that is a big part of it, it makes it a little bit more personal to the maker and people like to be able to connect to the maker.

Do you see yourself more as an artist making pottery or as a potter who is artistic?

I definitely see myself more as an artist making pottery. When I think of potter I often think of pottery as in craft. You know, ceramics and pottery especially is still really straddling that line between art and craft and when I think of art I think of brining in outside influences. So taking from the art world, taking from your personal life, taking from your job, whatever it is you did or do outside of pottery or whatever art medium you are working in, that’s utilizing it as an art form.

When you are making do you have the end user in mind or do you have a feel that you are trying to capture?

It is definitely a feel that I am trying to capture. The end user is myself. That is what I fall back on. If I could make everything for myself then I would and I hope that my work and my aesthetic resonates with people enough to where the end user is more than just myself. I don’t know how to put it beyond that but I think that if you are aiming to make work for an audience the work will suffer as a result. So you ultimately have to make work for yourself so it satisfies what you are trying to dial in and hone in on. If you are working in that way, your work will never go stale.

Do you ever feel like you as an artist are not taken seriously because your medium is clay?

I don’t. You know, we were talking earlier about how clay is still kind of in that craft realm, but I think that clay has just as much opportunity to be taken seriously as any other medium. Especially now. In other cultures clay is taken extremely seriously. Potters from Japan for example who are living national treasures. We have never really had that in the United States or in Western cultures so much. But I think within the last ten years clay has started to take on a much more respectable position.