The Porta Pottery Gallery
installation at Trinosophes, Detroit, MI ~ May-October 2022
*Now open in garden at Ceramics School*
Honor system galleries are a common fixture of folk potteries, often by the road, inviting patrons to browse and buy their wares unattended.
The economics of cutting out the middleman by being both the artist and gallery owner are exceedingly logical when making pottery, because profit margins are often quite small and things which are too expensive are not likely to be used or affordable to folks who might aspire to use such things; traditional galleries often exasperate either or both of these issues. Of course there are many potential limitations to presenting your art where you live and work, and the obvious workaround in contemporary life is for artists to show and sell their works themselves online, and that path has indeed made the reality of being designer/ manufacturer/ distributor significantly more feasible, but the algorithm’s expectations of branding and following trends run counter to my being.
I had wanted to create an honor system gallery since learning many years ago that Warren Mackenzie, a sort of godfather character in the history of American studio pottery, had one in which he sold works so cheaply that his practice could be understood as the performance of being a potter, distributing his pottery with an evangelistic fervor about the significance of infusing daily life with beauty.
Placing an honor system gallery within a gallery felt like a dynamic action because it celebrated the vernacular form and invited its consideration as an immersive and participatory installation which was built on a kind of radical trust which is the antithesis of contemporary sales gallery experiences.
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The Porta Pottery Gallery features works by both myself and Virginia Torrence was first installed at Trinosophes in Detroit. It is now installed and open in our garden at Ceramics School in Hamtramck, MI.