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Anja Bartels | Episode 532
Originally from Hamburg, Germany, stencil artist Anja Bartels discovered pottery making while living in an intentional community in Virginia. Passion ignited, Anja returned home to study in the German Ceramics Guild, which honed her skills in a way much different from the typical experience in American art schools. With a strong focus on craftsmanship and technical skill, Guild training provided Anja with the groundwork for making a quality product paired with the practical experience of working with a master potter for three years. The apprentices must engage in all aspects of the business, including marketing, sales, accounting, and production.
Anja’s nautically themed porcelain employs several different techniques including slip trailing, sgraffito (a technique where underglaze is painted onto greenware and a design is carved back through, revealing the clay body underneath), poured and sprayed glazes, and a unique resist technique used in the making of her beautiful urchin bowls. These bowls are thrown and trimmed on the wheel, then several thousand small slip-trailed spikes are applied using a surgical bulb while she listens to audiobooks about shipwrecks. Anja’s personal aesthetic and process are consistent and highly developed, reflecting her upbringing in a port town and her love of ships and the ocean. It is as if her pieces were born in the sea.
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You said about once a month you have a burst of creativity.
That’s right.
Does that bother you that you only get it once a month?
No,not at all. Because I am so busy keeping up with my inventory. On my website you can see and on my Instagram I have wave patterns and tentacle patterns so that keeps me plenty busy. I might be busy carving fifty mugs with a wave pattern and then when inspiration hits I might work on a bigger piece or a newer piece. But I have this constant stream of mugs going that I need to just keep up with and keep decorating. So I am plenty busy and when I have ideas I either try them out right away or I might even write it down on a piece of paper or draw something and save it until I am ready to play with that idea.
How do you know it is time to chase down a new idea?
When I feel like I need to expand my inventory. Do you ever get that idea where you don’t have enough variety in your body of work? So recently I started playing with teapots. I was thinking I should have a really good teapot in my repertoire, in my inventory, so I put my focus on that. I came up with two. One with the wave pattern and golden ships and the other is an octopus teapot with the octopus sitting on top, so it turns a knob into the head of the octopus and the tentacles wrap around the body of the teapot. That is something I did consciously, I wanted to have a couple of really bad ass teapots that I could sell to people. So I just went down a rabbit hole of fun and unique teapot ideas.
As a production potter how much time do you devote to playing with clay?
Not enough probably. I feel like there can always be more because that is where ideas come from and that’s where you can really develop your work. So that I am still struggling with. Finding the balance between playing and trying out new shapes, new idea, new surface decorations, and keeping up with production. That is always a challenge. And my friends have challenged me on that too. They have told me I should play more. But the pressure is on as this is my only source of income so I really have to put the time in.
Why become a maker in the United States instead of Germany?
Oh, I love that question! I think it is easier here. I love Americans and I love Asheville. In Germany, if you listen to the first part of the interview, you heard me talk about all the different laws and regulations in Germany. When I was over there people were like, Pottery is a job? You can actually do that? And here people are like, Oh, yeah, my mom is a potter too. It is much more common here. Americans say, Those mugs are so pretty, you should make a living, let me give you my money. People are so positive here and so encouraging and so excitable and Germans are really different. Germans are much more concerned about where the money is going to come from and whether you can really pull it off. So I find the Spirit here is much more encouraging of artists and especially of clay artists.
Do you feel like the skill levels are different between the two countries?
Yes, I do, because everybody who is a potter in Germany and there is not a whole lot of them, it is a lot, lot less than here, but they all went through proper training, so the quality is probably really good but the variety is just not there. And yo have excellent potters here and you have also questionable potters here. But you have hundreds maybe thousands of people here, You went to NCECA, wasn’t that incredible? There were 65 hundred people or something. That would never happen in Germany. There would be like two dozen for the whole country. I love that about America, it is so inclusive. There is definitely a sense of community here. As far as I know, out of my class, I was the only one who pursued a career in ceramics.
Do you think the apprenticeship program hinders variety because of the nature of making one person’s work?
Yeah, I think you have a point. It took me years to even break free from making my master’s forms because it is muscle memory, right. It was so in my fingers I couldn’t help but make her forms. And I know the person she studied with and she makes his forms, so it just gets passed down. So yeah, I think you are right, it does hinder variety,for sure.
I’m curious about what you love. What do you love about Germany and what do you love about the United States?
I love that! What a good question. I love German beer. I love the public transit in Germany. And what I love about America is the people. The spirit of the people and the way Americans are so positive. Even when things are hard they always try to find a way to look at the bright side. For me as an artists they are so encouraging. Americans are really communicative and they love talking to strangers and meeting people. Which is really fun when you are an artist and you are doing a show. It is just so heart warming to live in this country and meet all these wonderful people that encourage me to keep doing what I am doing.
Book
Amazing Glaze by Gabriel Kline
Contact
Instagram: @porcelainanja