Potter Adam Silverman of Atwater Ceramics for Heath hasbeen cooking up a new, quite brilliant project here in TX.
He's taken clay from the construction site of the
Kimbell Art Museum's new expansion, designed by Renzo Piano,
to use toward some beautiful end. He's not sure what just yet.
In all, Silverman harvested close to 8,000
pounds of clay from various stages of the excavation
process and he has been working with each of the
five types to find out how they will perform when
wheel-thrown, slip-cast or hand-built. So far, the clay
that Silverman has enjoyed working with most is the
deep-reddish clay that he harvested from tree roots
at the very beginning of his project and from the very
bottom of the excavation pit. He’s thrown a number of
pots and has also started forming bricks, which brings
him full circle to Louis Kahn, who believed fervently
in honoring the nature of building materials and
famously told his students to listen to those materials:
“You say to brick,‘What do you want, brick?’”
Silverman is listening to the clay as he continues
to explore ways to work with it. from here
follow Adam's project, Reverse Archaeology, here
(thanks for the tip, Joslyn)