During late July of 1999, Critical Ceramics spoke with Mark Burns during his guest artist gig at the Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts. The summer air was hot, the work was hot, and as you’ll read, Mark’s words were oh—so—hot!

Mark Burns: It’s interesting with the number of ceramic publications out there, people tend to make the same comments: that there never really has been any critical thinking about ceramics. In fact, people reject critical thinking out of hand — they want glaze recipes instead!

I think American Ceramics was founded on a useful idea — they wanted to foster critical commentary and thinking about ceramics as an art medium. When the first started out, they seemed fresh about their approach. Stimulating thought. However, the magazine was so uneven. Then, suddenly, it was the same twenty people. Every time you turned around there was somebody on the cover that you’d seen a thousand times. American Ceramics faltered in their premise. I don’t know if it was because the people who read American Ceramics didn’t want to see artists that weren’t established. Maybe the readers wanted to see their folk heroes or people whose work they’d followed for years. So, the establishment quickly dominated American Ceramics.

Critical Ceramics: Well, we don’t have that problem. Hardly anyone reads Critical Ceramics, yet! However, in terms of only talking to the already established, am I making a mistake talking to you right now?

MB: I’m a cult figure! There’s a big difference. I like to point this out at every given opportunity. Someone like Peter Voulkos is established. If I’m established, I became so through traditional means like chairing NCECA. For many, many years, I relished that maverick status.

CC: What made you change your mind?

MB: You know that term, “sunshine patriot”? That’s when during the Revolutionary War so long as the sun was shining and conditions were ideal, the guy was willing to fight for the cause, but when it rained he stayed inside. I’ve often thought of that term because I still relish that cult or maverick status because it means that you don’t have to adhere to a template. As an academic, I have to be one of the dedicated troops. I owe it to my students to be a conduit to something much bigger.

Ceramics doesn’t have six degrees of separation; it has something like two. When I took the UNLV job, I had to be able to point my students at what it is you’d like them to be connected to which is other people who like the material, think about it, and all that. So, as a teacher, I can’t hang around on the fringes.

CC: Even as an example of a different way to do things?

MB: I’m not talking about artistically. I’m talking from a practical standpoint. A real world point of view in which you can make the most wacked stuff you want, but part of making that stuff is not only taking responsibility for it, but if you want to show it, you want to have discourse with other people about it.

I’ve learned things through this process, too. A lot of this had to do with the fact that my emergence was pretty early on. Because I came into ceramics literally through the back door, I viewed object making with clay the same as I would with paper mach� or Lego’s or Lincoln Logs. I didn’t have all the baggage that went with it — a point of view about the material; there’s not a Zen bone in my body. I felt distanced from all of that. And because the kind of work I wanted to make — images I thought were useful to me seemed so out of sync. Of course, now things are wide open, but at the time, it was wasn’t and even though I was surrounded by west coast Funk, I felt uneasy. I was suspicious.

CC: You were suspicious? Or people were suspicious of you?

MB: It worked both ways. There was probably equal enmity on both sides at times. I thought, “you know, if one more person pushes Bernard Leach in my face or waves the invisible rule book, �oh, you can’t do that’...”

It’s not a tug of war. It’s a pushing match. My suspicions were that I was supposed to be put into a template. There was some kind of yardstick that was used to measure ceramic artists. I just wanted to be an artist.

I started as an illustrator and I found that I could use this material to draw in space. It was as simple as that. So, therefore, I could see everything from the front, side, and back, exploring illustration through space. This was outside the communal norm.

CC: How did you, or perhaps the ceramic community, reach an understanding of the other?

MB: Time. Time is a great equalizer. At some point there is peace made, as uneasy though it might be. Since grad school, things have become less sharply divided. Visionary teachers like Howard Kottler and Patty Warashina were already pushing the envelope. They made it a little easier for the next group. Although there was still a lot of suspicion. People are afraid of new ways.

CC: New ways?

MB: Having caught the end of the Funk movements, making figurative work, narrative images and being committed to it, then there was a period of time when those things weren’t fashionable. The vessel made a huge come back. A lot of people who were making figurative work, stopped.

CC: Don’t you think it’s come back around?

MB: Oh, yeah. The pendulum always swings back. It seems to go on ten year cycles. All through those periods there were a lot of people that made figurative work had a closet full of Duncan glazes. They stopped for a number of reasons. For example, if they had to make a living [from their work]. If the marketplace said, “vessels are really hot right now.” There was a big resurgence in traditional firing practices — pit firing, wood firing, and all that stuff — so people went and did that possibly to tie into a market. Then there were people like me who doggedly pursued this thing. Since I never thought that I could make a living from my work, I didn’t have to try to regroup in some way. I kept right on doing it anyway.

Persistence of vision is a really interesting thing. To pursue very doggedly for twenty seven years a consistent body of work. You know about 10 years ago I started glazing again, but nobody noticed. I did it mostly because when you teach, it’s a really bad thing to say, “do as I say, but not as I do.” No one paid any attention because the pieces had that same painted look. In all my years of teaching, it’s very infrequent that somebody asks me a technical question. They didn’t ask it of me because they didn’t expect it of me.

CC: So, are you saying that we’re not as observant or questioning we could be?

MB: You know that game of “telegraph” where you whisper a story in each other’s ears? When the whisper gets to the other end it has little relation to the original source material...

CC: But you began by saying that there’s only two degrees of separation.

MB: Hmmm. That’s a conundrum. Maybe it happens because people want it to. People form really strong opinions about other people based on their work. Those opinions stick. It goes like, “if the work is provocative, outside the norm, untoward, then the artist may be all of those things.” But don’t listen to me everyone knows I’m crazy...

CC: Ah — hah! So, you’re the font of all ceramic rumors, “everyone knows I’m crazy.” It’s not so far a leap to say, “You know what? I heard that Mark Burns had some serious psychological problems... he was committed... and now they let him out.”

MB: Yeah, okay. But then how have I ever had time to make all of this work?

Persistence of vision — handling material in a responsible manner — understanding your subject matter takes a long time and people have a lot of respect for that, that you would try that hard, even if they don’t particularly like the work.

CC: So that when you use acrylic paint it’s clearly a decision.

MB: Sure. It always has been. The decisions have never been based on expediency, but rather on art making decisions. The materials fit the idea. That’s the way I’ll always come to it. The material is not an end in itself. I think for a lot of people it is — “it’s the clayness of it.” That’s not how my brain works.

CC: You’re much more a tune to the mainstream of art — idea first, not material or craft process first?

MB: Sure. That way of talking upsets a lot of people. Everyone wants to be thought of as an artist. Your statement can seem very elitist.

CC: That it is a craft versus art argument?

MB: Yeah, “you craft people just pick up this stuff and push it around and something happens because you’re really crazy about it.”

The response is, “just because I don’t have blue printed, completely thought out ideas doesn’t mean I’m not an artist.”

My personal approach to making is very cold. Very analytical. It’s like a machine. Others like the humanist, the Zen part of it. It speaks to them and they speak to it. If I thought about a particular piece in the right way, the conclusion that appears should look like the thing I first thought of in my head.

CC: Wow. A very industrial approach. How’d that come about?

MB: I started working for one of the great art restoration houses in Philadelphia. I worked as a master modeler. I did that for many years, handling all the objects I was told not to look at when I was in school! Dresden shepardesses and Hummels

One day, I thought, “this is really interesting. The vast majority of ceramic usage in the world is industrialized.” It’s not very often that one walks into the studio and says, “you know, I really want to make a toilet.” But the toilet is the biggest, commonest, ceramic thing most of us see everyday! So, the studio experience is kind of a rarefied atmosphere. It represents something like one tenth [of the ceramic universe].

CC: Is that any different than, say, painting?

MB: Not at all. But I think that the awareness has changed. For me, I started seeing all this stuff in the restoration business that I’d never considered as an artist. Foremost, it was a business. So, for each broken George Ohr, I was assigned X number of minutes to fix it. I fixed broken Voulkos’, Warashina’s. One day, I walked in and my boss said, “there’s a really odd thing sitting on your table...” It was one of mine! Here I was trying to be completely objective. There was a piece of tape on it that said “ten minutes.” I couldn’t even work on my own piece in an artistic manner, otherwise we’d loose money.

CC: So, how do you impart some of this eclectic knowledge to your students?

MB: It’s hard because so much of it is experiential. Being there. Doing. I talk to them mostly.

CC: Making a jump, why do you still work in clay?

MB: I guess nobody’s given me another material that I can handle with the same ease. Underneath it all, I’m a traditionalist. I like pushing it around, even thought I’m kind of a robot and I work with the stuff in a clinical kind of way.

CC: Sure. But your mind is not robotic...

MB: No. Not at all. Making a thing is a job, however.

CC: Why not employ machines or other people to help you make?

MB: I want to monkey around with all of it. The couple of times I’ve tried to use assistants, I felt queasy about it. It’s kind of cheating. You’re supposed to do it all.

CC: Do you still feel that way?

MB: Should I admit this? Yeah, I do.

CC: That’s a pretty macho, nineteenth century thing to believe...

MB: It’s all my responsibility. If it’s bad, it’s my fault. There have been plenty of times when I wish I could have taken the pieces back, but it was too late.

CC: Jumping again, what’s the source material for your work?

MB: Oh, in many ways, I don’t look any further than my own back yard. If it isn’t there, I didn’t have it to begin with and I’m certainly not going to go borrowing [ideas]. Our culture is a gold mine of information. I’d rather make bad honest work about my experiences than good dishonest work about somebody elses.

CC: Is there an ideal out there?

MB: You mean slouching towards Bethlehem? No. I’m interested in a lot of things. I’m carrying on a story telling tradition I come by naturally, genetically. Holy grailism. I can’t get involved with that. This isn’t a crusade.

CC: Do you find that you cross between various clay communities? Are there micro-communities within the larger clay community?

MB: Geographically, all the barriers went down a long time ago. I do think that there are still schools of thought. I mean, look at Alfred. Who, with the brief exception of Doug Jeck, in the last thirty years has carried on a figurative tradition there? If that isn’t a stylistic school of thought, I don’t know what is. The vessel tradition is alive and well. They venerate it and they keep it.

CC: To their detriment?

MB: Could be. What does the grad student who wants to make figures do? There’s a struggle. The people they’re learning from are very specific in their views. It’s a question. If you have four people on faculty should they each represent the four points on the ceramic compass? A vessel maker. A figurative person. A low fire person. A high fire person. A glaze wizard. Or do you share a philosophy around a common thought? Around a way to work? And you defend that at all costs because that’s the thing that gives [an educational program] backbone?

CC: Being a one person department, what would you need most from another faculty member?

MB: I’d like to have a) someone twenty years younger and b) a person who made vessels.

CC: So, you like vessels?

MB: Oh, yeah. I’ve left a string of teapots behind me a mile long. I hate it when I get called a teapot maker, though. Here’s an ego thing: I probably make the best narrative teapots in the country. I understand novelty. That’s what I do. What an awful thing to say... there are others. Adrian [Saxe] is that box of Godiva Chocolates and I’m like that pack of Chuckles! They both taste good, but they’re different.

CC: Speaking of different, do you ever have the urge to drop ceramics and just do something like painting?

MB: Sometimes I think I should not do it for a while. Yeah. I’m probably a closet painter. I’m too old to be a rock and roll star. I used to do very elaborate watercolors. Illustrations of the thing I wanted to make. That took too long, so I developed a visual short hand.

CC: Well, not being you, I would like to see that short hand up on the wall with the pieces.

MB: I don’t know if you’d see the jump. I use a a black board. Up on it there are running lists. Part lists. Back to the machine making, some days are just “hand” days. A piece might require two heads, four feet, a car, palm trees, et cetera. Certain parts just don’t get made for weeks. A lot of times, I don’t see the piece until it’s all done. Each one might have three, four, five different clay bodies, low fired pieces, high fired pieces, then all assembled. You hope you’ve got all the shrinkages down! I won’t see the thing completed until the very last minute. My interaction with the work is one thing. Then it goes out there and has a whole other life.

CC: How many end up “keepers”?

MB: I might loose one quarter to one half. I’m a murderous self-critic. Nothing makes me happier than to take a hammer to something. You know your own work so well, you get that vibe, “this thing is a barker...” Those are shoveled off the end of the table and the world has been done yet another service.