California artist John Mason, one of the leading advocates of ceramics as a fine art, has been engaging in slab construction for more than 50 years, creating modern ceramic totems that can only be fully appreciated in person.
California artist John Mason, one of the leading advocates of ceramics as a fine art, has been engaging in slab construction for more than 50 years, creating modern ceramic totems that can only be fully appreciated in person. Mason’s “Figure” works are the result of rolled, shaped, fired, and glazed slabs of clay positioned meticulously on top of one another in geometric formations. “There was the question of whether it was going to be a unique object or was it going to be a tool with which you explored the possibilities of the material?” Mason says of the many contingencies inherent to the process of slab construction. “Which meant you didn’t necessarily know where you were going or how you were going to get there.… Clay has a tendency when it’s plastic, when it’s mixed up and it’s malleable, it won’t support itself very much. So what do you do to hold it up?… It’s a discovery…it’s not just an exercise.”