Connecting you with the University of Missouri’s innovative research and creative activityWhen Pottery Bolsters the Spirit
A visit with Bede Clarke, Professor of Art
“Never set out to do mediocre work”
Topics:
create_process
pottery
In all his years of making ceramics, Clarke declares, he never set out to do mediocre work. Creative work, he believes, “is what drives the artist to despair and to exhilaration.” Clarke recalls that while apprenticing with Karl Christiansen, the master instilled in him the idea that one never really arrives as an artist: “you’ll never get to the point where you do everything correctly and there is no more to learn, no more to grow.” Learning to make good pots requires nothing short of a lifetime of practice. “There is always more you don’t know,” Clarke adds. “There is always, hopefully, better work to come.”