Developing A Makers Philosophy | Harry Levenstein

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Harry Levenstein | Episode 837

Harry Levenstein is a potter currently doing the job in the southern Berkshires of western Massachusetts. Harry is the ceramics lab tech at the Bard University at Simon’s Rock the place he also teaches and maintains his possess studio follow.

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How would you outline a maker’s philosophy?

I guess the 1st thing that comes to brain is values, their values around what the issues that they are building are. Do you mean my philosophy or just in general, a maker’s philosophy?

I would like you to answer whatever way you want to go. I feel that is a great solution to the concern, having a established of values. How is that different from just having a great perform ethic?

I imagine there is a amount of discernment among just acquiring sturdy operate ethic and acquiring powerful values all-around what you are creating.

Do you have a foundational concept that would create your other values off of?

I assume so. I suppose it is fluid maybe and some items spin from sure ideas and go away other individuals powering, when many others spring from people and go away the other people behind. It feels like a fluid detail.

So if you could put it into a single sentence how would you outline your foundational philosophy as a maker?

Woah! What a question. My foundational philosophy, what it usually means to be a maker…I want to say that there has to be some sort of discontentment inside that is the hearth for wanting to keep on to normally test and endeavor to articulate or flesh out or figure out or learn a thing a lot more. If you discover contentment then the research ends, I guess. There’s a interval at the conclusion of that sentence. (laughter)

How does that bleed more than into everyday living outside the house of the studio?

Oh guy, it is so blurry. That line is so blurry. You’re a potter and you know how ripe with metaphor the process is involved in creating pottery, with everyday living, you know. They coincide with life in so a lot of different ways and so it is really hard not to see that in the microcosms of the studio coming out into the day by day existence. You know, struggle, try out once again, conservation, economic climate, natural beauty, humility, all these issues and I truly feel super grateful about that, to have that to floor me. To have that in the studio to ground me in my lifetime outdoors of the studio simply because I don’t know what would have taught me all individuals matters if I didn’t have the studio to do that.

Do you see your philosophy coming in when you are training the next technology?

Guy, educating is difficult. I have figured out so a great deal in this one semester that I have taught the pupils in this article and I variety of arrived in guns-a-blazing, thinking I was going to be this teacher who experienced all this expertise to share and philosophies and values that I maintain in my have and have seriously high anticipations of the children and all this stuff. But I form of seriously rapidly recognized that is not the way and whatsoever manufactured up version of a trainer I imagined I was not…it’s just a built up variation, and what truly is there is very a lot in the works and a do the job in progress with a lot to master.

What’s your favourite kind to make and why?

Well the sincere solution is that it usually is changing. I get fired up about matters and keep excited for awhile and then it switches when I uncover one thing new. But I feel proper now what I have been excited about is this sort that I just contact it jug vase simply because I never definitely know what to simply call it truthfully, and it’s a tall form that could be viewed as a pitcher, it could be found as a vase, it could be just a pot, an object. It has twin deal with technological innovation. So a pulled manage and a strap deal with on the opposite aspect. There’s solid English affect in that jug. But also the double tackle factor arrived from this previous fermenting crock that I observed in an antique shop and I thought it was so amusing to see a pot with a pulled deal with on just one side and a very little strap on the other.