Stephen Rodriguez
Stephen Kobasa Photo
Bowl, double curve shape, 2011, Shino-slip glaze with applied wood ash and black wash brushwork.
A studio is a disarray that lets the artist work. You don’t see what matters to the making of paintings or drawings or sculpture in a room that has had all the evidence of its real function erased. When an artist assures me in advance of a studio visit that the place will be made neat, I am always dismayed. If I can’t see the mess, I will miss something important about the objects that it was a consequence of.
Stephen Kobasa Photo
Large shouldered vase, 2011, Combined Shino-slip and fireclay glazes,with applied wood ash.
And so, I am always at ease with the apparent shambles of Stephen Rodriguez’ pottery. For as long as I have known his work, even before my first intrusion into his workshop some three years ago, there are still surprises of splendor in every corner. Among the unfinished pots, clay dust, plastic tubs and kiln bricks, a single glazed surface makes conversation with the light, then another, and another. There is what I can only describe as a demand to lift up each piece and mimic the artist’s fingers moving across the shape of it. It is the one gesture that comes closest to gratitude.
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I have one of Stephen Rodguez's pieces! It is an exceptionally fine pitcher form, somehow both delicate and robust at the same time---a difficult and unusual accomplishment---sugared with a lovely and varying glaze. (I adore well-made pottery pitchers, and without being too eccentric in design, this one is truly different.)
Happy to see his name here. After getting this pitcher, I already added him to the potters whose work I follow. I will be looking for more of his work, and he certainly deserves the exposure.