ARTIST STATEMENT
The years of apprenticeship I completed, first with Matt Jones and then Mark Hewitt, were formative in a way no other experience in my life has been. The apprenticeship provided a boundary I could grow within and push against, providing structure, challenge, and support in just the right balance. That container was just what I needed.
I felt like I was on the frayed end of a thin thread that stretched back thousands of years. I was part of some sacred order of potters across time and space who made work in larger numbers with the exactitude and skill that only comes from production throwing. I loved being part of that larger tradition, even though I often felt like an interloper.
There was a madness to it all. We didn’t need to throw like that, we had invented machines to make lots of pots if we needed them, but to hunch over a wheel filling a 6 foot board with mugs felt honest and good and a little defiant.
Now I don’t spend much time on a potter’s wheel. I have a factory and in it we make more pots in a day than I would make in three years. We provide good jobs and good wages and still make beautiful pots, and that also feels defiant.
ARTIST BIO
Alex Matisse moved to the South to attend Guilford College but dropped out after a year to pursue an apprenticeship with Jones and then Hewitt. After three years of apprenticeship, he founded East Fork Pottery outside Asheville, NC, where he built a large wood kiln and workshop. In 2013 he was joined by Johnston's apprentice, John Vigeland, and together with Matisse's wife, Connie, they launched a line of gas-fired dinnerware. The line caught on and the three eventually moved their growing business to Asheville and sold the original site of East Fork to finance the company's expansion into industrial manufacturing. Today East Fork employs 115 people and produces upwards of 500,000 pieces of pottery a year.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/08/style/east-fork-pottery.html
The individual pieces of pottery that are on display in the Thrown Together exhibition from Alex Matisse come from his private collection and are not for sale.
NEW East Fork pots like the ones in the stacks of pots - mugs, bowls, etc. - are available for purchase at https://www.eastfork.com.
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