Human Made Wild
by Jason Walker
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Dear Jason, Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you about your ceramics and your artistic achievements. You have called home some of the most beautiful places in the US and that list includes Washington State, California, Montana, etc.. Is this an example of your dedication to a specific lifestyle with a direct impact on your places of work or quite the opposite? I have been fortunate in my life to have lived in some wonderful places. I was born in Idaho and currently have been living in Hawaii. I am an artist first and foremost, and I have dedicated my life to following this path. I have lived where opportunity has presented itself. |
Photo: courtesy of the artist |
In 2009, you were awarded an NCECA International Residency Fellowship for a residency in Vallauris, France. What can you say about that experience?
The residency in France was a wonderful experience. It is a small intimate residency. There, I experimented with different clays and forms while immersed in a part of France where Picasso painted most if his earthenware ceramic pieces.
What do you think of your journey as an artist knowing that you have achieved considerable recognition with the inclusion of your works in major collections such as the Fine Art Museum of San Francisco: de Young, the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and the Arizona State University Art Museum, Ceramic Research Center, Tempe, Arizona?
I feel honored and very fortunate to be included in the collections such as the Carnegie and the San Francisco museum. As an artist, to be included in museums is a goal one always wants to achieve. I have many people to thank for making this happen.
For your series, Mechanized Life, you have showcased a jackrabbit, a desert frog, a seagull. Did you have a special meaning in mind for the animals and birds depicted in this series?
For the Mechanized Life series, I borrowed a phrase from John Muir. In speaking out to have Yosemite set aside as a National Park, Muir stated something to the effect that, human beings need wilderness and places such as Yosemite in order to have a place to escape the “Mechanized Life of civilization”.
The Jackrabbit, the frog and the seagull are animals I experienced on an outing in the desert of southern Utah specifically to gather images to bring back to the studio to play with. I like the rabbit for its fecund quality. For example, where you see one there is usual another, and where there are two there are usually about twenty. Frogs, as I understand, scientifically speaking are an indicator species. They are amphibians – skin breathers. Thus, they are very susceptible to change in their environment. Frogs are generally a sign of a healthy ecosystem. Where I grew up in Idaho, we had seagulls. They always seemed a bit out of place, yet there they were hundreds of miles from the sea. Like a seagull in the desert, I like to take objects and images and put them in a new context in hopes to change the way one perceives them.
The residency in France was a wonderful experience. It is a small intimate residency. There, I experimented with different clays and forms while immersed in a part of France where Picasso painted most if his earthenware ceramic pieces.
What do you think of your journey as an artist knowing that you have achieved considerable recognition with the inclusion of your works in major collections such as the Fine Art Museum of San Francisco: de Young, the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and the Arizona State University Art Museum, Ceramic Research Center, Tempe, Arizona?
I feel honored and very fortunate to be included in the collections such as the Carnegie and the San Francisco museum. As an artist, to be included in museums is a goal one always wants to achieve. I have many people to thank for making this happen.
For your series, Mechanized Life, you have showcased a jackrabbit, a desert frog, a seagull. Did you have a special meaning in mind for the animals and birds depicted in this series?
For the Mechanized Life series, I borrowed a phrase from John Muir. In speaking out to have Yosemite set aside as a National Park, Muir stated something to the effect that, human beings need wilderness and places such as Yosemite in order to have a place to escape the “Mechanized Life of civilization”.
The Jackrabbit, the frog and the seagull are animals I experienced on an outing in the desert of southern Utah specifically to gather images to bring back to the studio to play with. I like the rabbit for its fecund quality. For example, where you see one there is usual another, and where there are two there are usually about twenty. Frogs, as I understand, scientifically speaking are an indicator species. They are amphibians – skin breathers. Thus, they are very susceptible to change in their environment. Frogs are generally a sign of a healthy ecosystem. Where I grew up in Idaho, we had seagulls. They always seemed a bit out of place, yet there they were hundreds of miles from the sea. Like a seagull in the desert, I like to take objects and images and put them in a new context in hopes to change the way one perceives them.
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Did you intentionally start out to carve your own path as a ceramics artist whose marvelous works reflect on mankind’s relationship with nature and how that may Manifest Destiny? Or did you go through a trial and error phase until you found your niche?
Life is trial and error. Yes, I had to explore many directions until I sort of found a focus in my ideas and form in which to communicate those ideas. I read. Currently I am intrigued with the work of Neil Postman, Alva Noe, Stephen Pinker, Anjan Chatterjee and Dennis Dutton.
Human Made Wild – this series is it more about what man does in order to survive or to command or is it a way to expose strength or lack thereof?
Human Made Wild is a series about the dichotomy between Culture and Nature.
The way we perceive nature speaks volumes about the way we perceive ourselves and what it means to be human at this precise moment in history. A place that embodies our most ideal perception of nature is wilderness. Speaking of wilderness William Cronon wrote, “For Americans wilderness stands as the last remaining place where civilization, that all too human disease, has not fully infected the earth. It is an island in the polluted sea of urban-industrial modernity, the one place we can turn for escape from our own too-muchness.”
Our ideas of wilderness and nature are conceived from our ‘own too-muchness’. Thus, I have come to realize my own appreciation for nature has come from the culture of which I belong, because all we think and perceive, or think we know, is constructed and mediated through signs – or language. Ultimately, ideas of nature and/or wilderness are human constructs ever changing through human cultures at different moments in history. It is time to rethink our perceptions of nature, culture, wilderness and civilization, and perhaps we may once again reinstate our own naturalness and one day find balance between the planet and ourselves. In doing so we may come to a better realization of what it means to be human at this present time.
Stacking a Skyline - What city skyline have you seen to be stacked up in the most harmonious way with surrounding nature?
Stacking a Skyline is a piece within the ‘Human Made Wild’ series. I do not have an answer for which skyline or city might be built in accordance with nature.
When I made this piece, my first-born daughter was about one and one half year old. We were sitting in the front room of the house, and I was watching her entertain herself with some small wooden blocks. She set one down upright, and proceeded to place another block on top of it. The second block balanced perfectly on top of the first, and as it did so she turned to look at me with an expression as though she had just invented something completely new. I did not teach her to do this. She learned it of her own volition.
And just like children love to learn, adults love to learn. Humans love to learn, and we will continue to do so to our betterment or to our detriment.
In this piece the bear becomes an anthropomorphized symbol of human, and wild or nature. On the bear is painted a city skyline as the stacked blocks are meant to represent, and speak metaphorically of civilization or culture. On the back of the bear is painted a cairn - a stack of rocks that point out the direction to follow on a hiking trail. Yet here it is a bit ambiguous as to which direction the cairn is pointing us in. Do we follow it off the cliff, or is it guiding us away from peril. It becomes the symbol for our innate desire to figure things out or learn. And like the ambiguity of the cairn it has yet to be determined if our learning will be our saving grace or our undoing.
What other art forms and hobbies do you dedicate time to in order to satisfy your curiosity and look for inspiration?
Other hobbies include, guitar, mountain biking, swimming, fly fishing, hiking, cooking. I do not see these other activities as a separate part of my life though. Being an artist is choosing a lifestyle not just a career or an occupation. The things I do outside the studio help to inform the things I do inside the studio.
Life is trial and error. Yes, I had to explore many directions until I sort of found a focus in my ideas and form in which to communicate those ideas. I read. Currently I am intrigued with the work of Neil Postman, Alva Noe, Stephen Pinker, Anjan Chatterjee and Dennis Dutton.
Human Made Wild – this series is it more about what man does in order to survive or to command or is it a way to expose strength or lack thereof?
Human Made Wild is a series about the dichotomy between Culture and Nature.
The way we perceive nature speaks volumes about the way we perceive ourselves and what it means to be human at this precise moment in history. A place that embodies our most ideal perception of nature is wilderness. Speaking of wilderness William Cronon wrote, “For Americans wilderness stands as the last remaining place where civilization, that all too human disease, has not fully infected the earth. It is an island in the polluted sea of urban-industrial modernity, the one place we can turn for escape from our own too-muchness.”
Our ideas of wilderness and nature are conceived from our ‘own too-muchness’. Thus, I have come to realize my own appreciation for nature has come from the culture of which I belong, because all we think and perceive, or think we know, is constructed and mediated through signs – or language. Ultimately, ideas of nature and/or wilderness are human constructs ever changing through human cultures at different moments in history. It is time to rethink our perceptions of nature, culture, wilderness and civilization, and perhaps we may once again reinstate our own naturalness and one day find balance between the planet and ourselves. In doing so we may come to a better realization of what it means to be human at this present time.
Stacking a Skyline - What city skyline have you seen to be stacked up in the most harmonious way with surrounding nature?
Stacking a Skyline is a piece within the ‘Human Made Wild’ series. I do not have an answer for which skyline or city might be built in accordance with nature.
When I made this piece, my first-born daughter was about one and one half year old. We were sitting in the front room of the house, and I was watching her entertain herself with some small wooden blocks. She set one down upright, and proceeded to place another block on top of it. The second block balanced perfectly on top of the first, and as it did so she turned to look at me with an expression as though she had just invented something completely new. I did not teach her to do this. She learned it of her own volition.
And just like children love to learn, adults love to learn. Humans love to learn, and we will continue to do so to our betterment or to our detriment.
In this piece the bear becomes an anthropomorphized symbol of human, and wild or nature. On the bear is painted a city skyline as the stacked blocks are meant to represent, and speak metaphorically of civilization or culture. On the back of the bear is painted a cairn - a stack of rocks that point out the direction to follow on a hiking trail. Yet here it is a bit ambiguous as to which direction the cairn is pointing us in. Do we follow it off the cliff, or is it guiding us away from peril. It becomes the symbol for our innate desire to figure things out or learn. And like the ambiguity of the cairn it has yet to be determined if our learning will be our saving grace or our undoing.
What other art forms and hobbies do you dedicate time to in order to satisfy your curiosity and look for inspiration?
Other hobbies include, guitar, mountain biking, swimming, fly fishing, hiking, cooking. I do not see these other activities as a separate part of my life though. Being an artist is choosing a lifestyle not just a career or an occupation. The things I do outside the studio help to inform the things I do inside the studio.