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Kevin Keane | Episode 996
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What attitude about clay did you adopt that you didn’t have when you left on your trip but by the time you got back it was your attitude?
Yes, I suppose that whole journey that I went on was very much an eternal one and the clay is very actively therapeutic ad really totally giving myself to clay it was all I talked about for six months, and still is. This really allowed me this space to process all these other things that were going on in my life and so the attitude that I have had and still have is a very, very deep respect. I feel like on a fundamental level, an atomic level the therapeutic and meditative power of clay, which for me has been one of the great gifts to my life to have this exposure to this thing has been extraordinary.
What skill are you most thankful to have found on this journey?
What skill am I most thankful to have found on this journey? This is hard. It’s a trite answer for a pottery podcast but the skill of throwing which is so synonymous with clay and with pottery and actually in a low key way is something a lot of potters don’t do. There’s so much hand building and that skill of throwing and particularly throwing big. I am a big guy. I am six foot eight and I love to throw big.
What was one of the things about Moroccan ceramics or work ethics that stood out the most to you?
Yeah, Morocco is a unique place. I suppose what stands out most is the Medina, the central part of the city. It has tiny, well quite large, winding little streets that have all these market shops and they are selling stuff all day and ceramics is a huge part of that. You are walking through these medinas, these bazaars, and these shops with pots on pots on pots just stacked up. Thousands of pots, big and small and bazaar and beautifully decorated pots. Sold for nothing, super, super cheap.
Where was your favorite clay experience?
In Southern Spain I spent a week with a British potter and her partner and they’ve got this farm in the middle of nowhere. She is a very well respected potter in the area and she has a studio and I went there. She is a production potter. An old school production potter. For a week it was just me and her in the studio and she was teaching me one on one. She asked me, Are you here because you want to have fun with clay or do you want to learn how to throw? And I said that I wanted to learn how to throw and she treated me like a hard core apprentice for eight days.
On your journey what was your favorite piece to have made?
I was in Scotland with a friend of mine and we were staying in this farm house. We had travelled intending to visit this famous Buddhist monastery and we had intended to just sleep at this farm and go to the monastery every day but when we arrived it turned out that this woman had a glass and ceramic studio in her back garden. Incredible! So we ended up going to the monastery I think, once and spent all day in the studio for a week. And she works with porcelain, it was my first time using porcelain. She makes these amazing face molds and I made one of those pieces with her and I have it upstairs and it’s very meaningful to me.
Book
The Creative Act by Rick Rubin
Contact
Instagram: @kevinkeaneclay