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Vince Palacios | Episode 986

Vince Palacios has been working in the field of ceramic art since 1988. Vince received his Masters of Ceramic Art from Alfred University. Vince now serves as Professor of the Ceramics Department at El Camino College in Torrance California. Vince has developed a unique approach to the use of raw glass and ceramic materials as a means of crafting narratives addressing geological process, pyroclastic interaction, and heat/chemical reactions.

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Rothko said something like, If people think I am just putting colors together they are missing the point. I am trying to communicate the big ideas…birth, love, life, death. When you say you are trying to communicate a bigger idea is that what you are saying? An idea that is being stirred behind and is not overtly said but is being stirred from within? 

Yes, absolutely. I love that way of speaking, something really large. Passion, exuberance, I love the poetic notion of those larger themes. Absolutely, that’s what I am striving for.

Does that mean that your art when it speaks that it needs to have an audience? Like when you are making you are thinking of an audience?

Wow, no I am not. I am not an narcissist and I am not a hedonist. I am the audience. I feel in that moment a representation of human kind and that we are all very unique and different there are commonalities and if I am responding and I am looking for that voice or that soul or that person that responds the way that I respond. So I guess my audience is yeah that, there’s something I am thinking but it’s not very specific. Really I am the audience in the moment.

When you are doing something as mechanical as a potter’s wheel and then you add all the changes, the add ons, is it important to know the rules of good skill, high quality craftmanship, and to know that you can break them? First start with the skills and then be willing to break the rules? 

I believe that personally. That’s not a very fashionable view right now. Inexperience is really honored right now because they feel like craft will get in they way, I don’t believe that. Craft is like any other tool that if used correctly is going to have profound effect on your work. So I want to have the ability to be able to throw fifty pounds of clay and throw with precision. But I’m not hung up on it. It’s simply a tool or a means to a greater end.

Back to what you said earlier, How do you balance the audience of one but yet wanting an audience of the gallery?

So listen, it’s a reality, our human egos want recognition, we want acknowledgment, I want to make money from my work. And I don’t mean this in a crass way, I want to be an important artist. So the goal is to sell the work. That is the ultimate goal. But I don’t want to make work that sells. I want to make work and hope that it sells.

Book

Dune by Frank Herbert

Contact

Instagram: @vincepalaciosart