Uncle Josh that is, and Bryce said it more than once when his uncle was in town last week and went with me to baby-sit.
After 2 ½ hours of ball tossing, motorcycle riding, raisin eating, circle drawing ...
guinea pig holding, wrestling, tickling, book reading and more, Bryce wore himself out enough for a nap.
He wasn't the only one.
Video clips: Hallway Speedway HERE.What Happened to Your Circle? HERE and Go Dog Go is HERE.
Last week I got an email from Gary, who blogs at Coffee Muses, telling me that my Asheville potter son Josh Copus is featured in the Artist Spotlight of the latest issue of Our State magazine. I hadn't seen it yet and neither had Josh, but we got our hands on one quick.
"I got a real kick when I turned the page and saw the picture and thought wow, I know that guy...and we've never met!" wrote Gary, a Loose Leaf Notes reader whose been reading my ongoing posts documenting Josh's work.
The title refers to the lifetime supply of wild clay that Josh and another potter dug from a Leicester County farmer's field not fit for growing tobacco. 
The writer of the piece, Alli Marshall, did a masterful job of weaving together the highlights of Josh's ceramics career in the past five years: The founding of Clayspace, the working studio and gallery that Josh founded in the River Arts District of Asheville; His UNC of Asheville BFA Building Community graduate show that featured a giant wall of 1,000 hand-built bricks with the word COMMUNITY on them, ceramics exhibits and performance art; The Windgate Fellowship grant he was awarded that allowed him to buy property in the country where he built The Community Temple, a large noborigami climbing chamber kiln; The 3 week immersion Carolina Kiln Build that Josh hosted on his property, where 12 potters from around the country built two kilns; even the incorporation of one of Josh's Community bricks incorporated into the wall at the Wedge Brewery, where a beer (Community Porter) is named after Josh and where Josh is a weekend bartender. 
The magazine Our State is to North Carolina what Blue Ridge Country is to Virginia. The article is broken up into 3 sections: Building Kilns, Studio Strolls, and Community Firepower, which are accompanied large colorful photos.
In the closing paragraph Josh talks about the downtown Clayspace studio and gallery, saying, "This place is a huge part of my identity. I like the activity and the interaction." Marshall writes, and I get chills, "While much of the integral interaction is with the other Co-op ceramists, Copus is quick to include the outside community - tourists, art enthusiasts, serious collectors, and curious passersby 
- when chalking up important connections. "The reason people need this" - he nods to the handmade coffee mug almost always in his grip - "is the same reason they need to get out in nature or visit a farm. To reconnect. When people come here, they get to meet the artists; they like that. I'm in here being as real as I can because people are buying a part of my life."
~ To read more about Josh's potter's adventures click HERE and scroll.
~ More journeys on the Yellow Brick Road as traveled by "He Gets a Kick Out of Bricks" Josh Copus
3 kilns, 2 sheds, 1 studio, and a woodfire pizza oven (pictured) just for fun; that's some of the latest structural inventory on my Asheville potter son Josh's property in Madison County and doesn't take into account the Airstream porch, composting outhouse, outdoor bath, and garden on the other side of the creek.
10 potters, 3 weeks, 2 woodfire teachers, and 1 neighbor's guesthouse; that's some of the stats from the Carolina Kiln Build, a residential immersion woodfire kiln building workshop held on Josh's property last summer and led by Josh and another Clayspace potter.
Two kilns, The Land Shark and The Burrow, were built for different purposes and added to the compound's large Noborigama chambered climbing kiln that Josh built in 2007.
Towards the end of the 3 week kiln building workshop, one of the potters was having a hard time, so Josh came up with the idea of staging an awards ceremony for her. By the end of the build Josh had presented each potter with a signed Community Brick, along with a short tribute speech, citing their unique (funny and serious) contributions to the team. (Learn more about the Community Bricks HERE.
One kiln build potter wrote an article about the build that was published in The Log, an international publication for woodfirers that's produced in Ireland and the same publication that printed Josh's "Building Community" story a couple of years before.
The article in The Log led to Josh being invited to be a guest panelist at a groundbreaking international Wood-firing Conference in Germany next year, where he'll be telling his story and presenting a paper. While in Europe, he'll also be traveling to La Born France, famous for its wild clay and pottery communities.
Note: Scroll HERE for more Asheville Potter Son news.
Besides eating Thanksgiving turkey at a Zephyr Farm potluck, we played a rousing game of Taboo.
We lined up in the kitchen at Amy, Rowan, and Zeph's house for Vietnamese pho soup. One beautiful bowl of pho begged to be photographed.
We visited six hands of the Sixteen Hands Studio Tour at Donna Polseno and Rick Hensley's homestead and pottery gallery on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Donna's work was recently shown at Roanoke's Taubman museum, including the piece pictured here, Irretrievable Losses, in which the broken pot is part of the composition. Donna's displays are works of art within works of art.
My son potter Josh Copus, the newest Sixteen Hands member, was in town from Asheville showing his latest work at Rick and Donna's. He and Donna were set up in the old farm storage building that Rick recently renovated into a gallery. There was a spread of food and beer from Floyd's Shooting Creek microbrewery to partake. Enthusiastic pottery lovers were warmed by the toasty wood stove as they mingled and shopped for prize pieces.
Josh's big jar pots made for an impressive display on the newly built deck by the outside fire pit.
Later, we were uplifted by breaths of fresh air and lovely views as we opened a window into Josh's life by looking at his latest collage journal. (Insert singing Love is All you Need from the Across the Universe musical movie that we watched with friends on Thanksgiving night HERE.)
At some point during the long Thanksgiving season and after a long day we enticed Bryce to join us for a series of family photos (minus Josh who came too late for this one) and gave thanks for the shots he managed to sit still for.
1. Bedrock
2. A Goatee?
3. Sun ripe
4. The Potter is in
5. Walking off into the sunset
Post Notes: Taken from last weekend's visit to my son Josh's Carolina Kiln Build. Pictures and video clips of that are HERE.
This is the Carolina Kiln Build team twelve days into the build, taken five days ago. It consists of ten potters from all over the country and two facilitators (Josh Copus, center, and Eric Knoche, far left), living and working together in a three week intensive workshop, building two woodfire kilns on my son Josh Copus's property in Madison County, North Carolina.
Coffee is good.
Worker bees around the honey hive?
The best laid plans.
It takes many hands.
Lunch in dining hall at Josh’s Airstream Compound.
This is the part where Joe and I give away the plot to the new movie District 9 and a lot of hands went up when Joe asked who was going to go home and build their own kiln after the 3 week workshop.
Katy and Steve, potters from Austin, Texas, laying brick.
Post notes: See the two kilns, the Burrow and the Land Shark, up close with an explanation by Josh about each kiln HERE and HERE. Click and scroll HERE for more Asheville Potter pictures and stories.
A month with a trackhoe on two acres of land in rural Madison County brings a whole new meaning to the term "rock and roll." My son Josh (pictured on the left below) said he started feeling that the industrial strength excavating machine was an extension of his body and admitted to feeling god-like moving so many huge boulders around.
It had been a year since I last visited Josh's property, home of the 3 chambered Noborigama kiln The Community Temple. Although the site reflected the work of the twelve Carolina Kiln Build potters currently in the midst of building two new kilns, the new landscape taking shape was evident in the rock retaining walls, the labyrinth of stone stairways and walkways, and an open grassy terrace overlooking the kiln and studio.
Down at Josh's living space by the creek, a stone walkway away from the kilns and studio, I was surprised to see a raised bed vegetable garden and sunflowers starting to bend. There were balloons and neon silly string hanging from the Airstream's porch rafters where the group had recently celebrated the 31st birthday of Eric Knoche, who is co-facilitating the workshop with Josh.
Around back, an outdoor tub tucked into the woods next to the composting outhouse now stands as an invitation to a peaceful pause. With the creek water running and clay pots set around the stone pedestal wall that holds up the tub, it brings to mind an ancient bathing ceremony fit for the Buddha himself.
Post note: Photos of the Carolina Kiln Build and the new anagama kilns, the Burrow and the Land Shark, will be posted on Friday. A first video tease of Josh showing Joe the two new kilns twelve days into the three week build is HERE.
The Wedge Microbrewery in Asheville reminds me of an ice cream parlor. At the soda fountain-like bar people sit and sample flavors before deciding on a favorite, before bartenders pour glass tumblers of amber gold and cocoa brown with frothy cream-like tops.
Light and dark beers, like vanilla and chocolate, have names like Iron Rail, Oatmeal Stout, Belgium Abbey, and Golem. Malt and hops, porter and ale. There's even a raspberry and chocolate flavored stout on tap.
Inside there's music, peanuts, and neighborly conversation. Outside you can get a table under a tree in the metal sculpture garden and watch the trains go by.
Post note: Our trip to Asheville for the Carolina Kiln Build on my son Josh's property in Madison County began with a visit to The Wedge, a tasting brew pub where Josh (pictured above) tends bar on weekends. It's in the River Arts District, in the same building as Clayspace, the Pottery Coop and Gallery District that Josh founded. More pictures from my last trip to the Wedge when I actually got drunk because I was caught off guard by the high alcohol content of some of the beers is HERE.
This morning I woke up to a rooster going off like a Big Ben clock tower. Will it crow 6 times for 6 a.m. and then 7 for 7 a.m. and 8 for 8 a.m.?
On the top of a mountain in a dormitory room in a guest house full of pottery and art, overlooking the French Broad River, I remembered my dream. I flunked a question on a questionnaire: What have you done different? Hey, I just woke up on a mountain top near Asheville in a dormitory room with five sleeping men. Doesn’t that count?
Note: More coming soon on our weekend adventures at the Carolina Kiln Build, a woodfire kiln building workshop my son Josh and his Clayspace mate Eric are hosting on Josh’s property in Madison County, North Carolina.
My Son is a Potter
My Cupboard Runneth Over
My Heart and My Tea Cups are Full
The kiln was our language and we all came to speak it fluently. ~ Josh Copus
Recently when talking on the phone to my Asheville potter son Josh, he spoke enthusiastically about watching blades of new grass grow. I thought it was a reference to his stopping to take time to smell the roses and was glad that his workload was lightening.
A week later I spoke with him again and began our conversation by joking, ‘how’s that grass?’ He answered in all seriousness about how well it was doing. The next day I read an update about work at his Marshall County property, home of the three-tiered Community Temple woodfire kiln that Josh built:
Combining the heavy machinery with ingenuity, grit, and pure determination, I was able complete my goal of being able to plant some grass by this spring. It’s springtime now and the grass is growing.
For four years I’ve been blogging about everything from Josh’s wild clay dig, His BFA Building Community show, the building of the Community Temple, and his gorilla suit escapades – with blog titles like Josh of All Trades, He Gets a Kick out of Bricks, Clayspace Potters Strike it Rich and The First Annual Pot Party.
Now he’s the blogger, writing firsthand in preparation for the Carolina Kiln Build to be held on his property in August. The blog will be a collective one, documenting a three week kiln building workshop, in which eight potters will be selected to live on site and immerse themselves in kiln building in a rural mountain setting. It’s modeled after a similar type of extended workshop that Josh attended at the Hurricane Mountain Center for Earth Arts in Keene, New York, one that shaped his life as a potter.
He writes about his hopes for the Carolina Kiln Build: The idea of working closely with other artists, fully immersing yourself in the project, eating and drinking together, swimming in rivers, creating lasting memories and funny stories for years to come is what this thing is about.
There’s more than grass growing on the property.
Along with fellow Clayspace (the potter’s coop that Josh founded) member Eric Knoche, Josh will be heading up the construction of two Anagama type wood-burning kilns. One will be a large simple tube, built with a flat floor to accommodate firing larger work and the other will be an egg shape climbing Anagama buried in a hillside, the CKB press release says.
Josh writes on the blog: Eric and I both learned how to build kilns by actually building kilns and we believe that there is really no substitute the type of education that occurs when you are working with bricks and mortar … We saw this as opportunity to build momentum and add energy to the work we have already begun. We wanted to form new friendships and continue contributing to the ceramics community. Those were just some of the ideas behind the Carolina Kiln Build.
May the ceramics community and studio potter model continue to grow strong, like the new grass on Josh’s property.
Post notes: Check out the introductions and participant details on the Carolina Kiln Build blog HERE. For more photos and stories on Josh click and scroll down HERE.
Sometimes on weekends my Asheville potter son Josh buses tables at a restaurant named Table. As a working artist with school loans, he's learned to make a living in a variety of ways and has become what I call a "Josh of all trades."
In one recent week he transported a load of brick seconds 400 miles on Monday, was hired by a friend to haul sod around in a trailer on Tuesday, did a pottery demonstration and a slide show lecture at Haywood Tech (one of the places he went to school) on Wednesday, volunteered his time teaching 3 classes at the Madison County Middle School on Thursday, made pottery and manned the gallery at the Clayspace Coop he founded on Friday, and bused tables at the Table for Valentine's Day (one of the busiest days of the year for restaurants) on Saturday. 
A few days later he called from the road while making his sixth trip home from the brick plant down south where he's been hauling seconds to his Madison County property. He fired off these stats: 6 trips, 4 pallets a trip, and 400 miles each way.
Bricks are made in kilns made of bricks. As a potter who wood fires in kilns made of bricks Josh values and uses a lot of them. He's handmade his own on occasion but these plant seconds are firebricks in a quantity that Josh could never hand produce. After six trips back and forth to the plant, he now has enough (and then some) to build two new kilns on his Community temple compound to compliment the 3 chamber Noborigama kiln. Why so many kilns?
Every type of kiln creates a different product, Josh says, and a smaller one is needed for smaller firings. Josh and one his Clayspace mates are planning to build two different shaped single chamber kilns this summer and teach an immersion kiln building workshop as they do. 
Eight students will be chosen by letters of intent and informal interview. There will be a nominal fee for lodging, but the workshop will be free, Josh said, adding, "I want people like me five years ago to come to this workshop."
"What an opportunity. I bet you wish you came across something like that when you were starting out," I said.
"I did. That's why I'm doing it," he answered.
Post notes: Read "He Gets a Kick out of Bricks" for background to this post. Photos above are of Josh at the Brick Plant and him building a treadle wheel. Read more about the summer kiln building workshop, dubbed The Carolina Kiln Build HERE.
My Asheville potter son, Josh Copus, is a self-confessed brick geek. He collects found bricks, recycles old bricks, makes his own bricks, and builds wood fire kilns with bricks.
It’s been more than three years since he harvested a lifetime supply of clay from a tobacco farmer’s field, and more than two years since his UNCA thesis show that featured his wild clay pottery and several art installations made from his handcrafted bricks.
Now, in what Josh calls “a defining moment,” he has manifested an infinite supply of bricks, more than enough to build a couple more wood fire kilns on his Marshall County Community Temple compound, a three acre property that already houses the three-tiered Noborigama climbing kiln that Josh built. 
Because of the Noborigama kiln, the property has already begun to be a destination for potters from all over the country.
A friend put Josh in touch with one of the owners of a major brick plant down south. Josh had just finished visiting the plant and was hauling a truckload of seconds (bricks slightly under company standards) back north to his property when he phoned me. “It’s an absolute goldmine, a shinning pile of light,” he said with excitement.
Describing the plant operation, he said, “The volume and operation is hard to fathom.” Twenty-four hours a day bricks of every shape and size you can dream up are made on train cars and fired in a train kiln the length of a football field, he explained.
Josh’s enthusiasm was contagious, as he expressed his liberating sense of support, gratefulness for having had the opportunity to talk shop with a fellow brick geek at the plant, and appreciation for the alignment that allowed the fortuitous turn of events. 
His respect for the tradition of bricks was apparent.
“Nothing would have happened without bricks,” he said. I remembered the BFA show, the theme of which grew from a found clay pipe (power), a clay vessel (food) and a brick (shelter), and his12 foot tall and 20 foot wide brick wall that demonstrated the strength of a collective with the word INDIVIDUAL stamped on each one. Other bricks stamped with the word COMMUNITY continued the theme and reflected the name of the show, “Building Community.”
I thought about the role that clay has played in civilization, and then about the Industrial Revolution as Josh explained that the plant makes bricks that can withstand the high temperatures of furnaces.
They supply an aluminum smelting ore company and other industrial refractory plants, like those for making steel.
I jotted notes as he talked. His knowledge of clay and firing began to go over my head. Soon he was sounding like an alchemist/chemist using phrases like “melting points relative to partial size…” and words like “flux.”
“When they write the book, this will be a whole chapter,” Josh said with the excitement of a chocolate loving kid who had just visited the Willie Wonka factory. As far as he was concerned the cargo he was hauling could have been bricks of gold, or the gold at the end of a rainbow, payday for a few years of non-stop hard work.
Post Note: Click and scroll down HERE for archived stories and photos recording Josh’s career as potter, kiln builder, and ClaySpace Coop founder.
1. I'm working on a story about Floyd's 16 Hands Studio Tour for the next issue of The Compass, a local visitor's guide. This year was the 10th anniversary of the event and my Asheville potter son Josh was a visiting guest artist. It was an honor for him to be invited to participate and a homecoming too, since he grew up here in Floyd. He knows most of the Sixteen Hand members and has great respect for them.
2. Josh is the founder of Asheville's Clayspace Coop and the builder of the Community Temple, a three tiered woodfiring kiln on his property in Marshall, North Carolina. His artist statement for the 16 Hands show reads: I was raised in Floyd County, Virginia, and the experience of growing up in this close- knit community of farmers and artisans has been the single greatest influence of my life. My inclusion in the 16 hands fall studio tour is a homecoming for me. I am excited by the opportunity to share my growth as an artist since leaving home with the community that nurtured my creative spirit for so many years.
3. At one time there really were sixteen hands, those of the eight members. Some members moved away and twelve hands remain, working together to host the bi-yearly self-guided studio tour. Floyd members are Rick Hensley and Donna Polseno, Ellen Shankin and Brad Warstler, and Silvie Granatelli; all potters except Brad who is a woodworker. Stacy Snyder, another set of hands from Blacksburg, is a potter. Each studio site hosts a visiting guest artist. Josh was hosted at Rick and Donna's and showed his work beside Donna's (above), which made for some exciting contrasts.
4. It's hard to believe that this was my first year to take the tour, although I've been familiar with each Floyd member's work and know them and their children as part of the Floyd community. I'm enough of a Floyd Countian that I didn't need to use the fold-out brochure map provided, but I did need, in some cases, to ask about directions, and I was happy to see that the route was marked with 16 Hands arrow signs. As a tour-goer, I enjoyed the hot herb tea and cookie conversations about politics, how each member found Floyd, and catching up on family news as much as I enjoyed perusing the showrooms of masterful functional and sculpture ceramics, along with Brad's fine woodworking (all of which I hope to write more about in The Compass story.)
5. The Sixteen Hands artists are renowned and together they represent volumes of credentials, honors, and teaching experience, which can be reviewed on their webpage HERE. Over the years their hard work has paid off and their country studios have become destinations. When they open to the public twice a year, collectors and art lovers take advantage of it. Except for Sunday when the county was hit with sleet and ice, this year's tour was well attended.
6. I never got to talk to Rick but did spend some time getting lost in the mandala patterns of his porcelain bowls and platters. I caught a glimpse of him once in his back yard with chimney sweep tool in his hand. The chimney had backed up and was forcing smoke into the house, his apprentice's girlfriend told me. Such is the character of a country Studio Art Tour, I thought.
7. Kent McGlaughlin (on the left), a North Carolinian guest potter at Silvie's place, thought I wasn't tall enough to be Josh's mother. Kent was teaching at Penland School of Crafts the same time Josh was in May. He recalled one evening when an unanswered question prompted Josh to pick up the phone, saying "My mother might know the answer." None of us could remember what the question or answer was but we all agreed I was Josh's Millionaire life-line that night. It was fun to meet Kent (who Josh calls Chet) in person.
8. Between Asheville's recent River Arts District Studio Tour and the Sixteen Hands show, Josh has had a great month, and he still has his Clayspace Annual Holiday Show coming up. He says, "It isn't about selling objects. People want an experience ... and meaning." Most who buy Josh's pots make a connection with him personally. When they learn that he works with locally dug wild clay and that his pottery is woodfired in a hand built kiln, most are able to feel the relationship between that and the finished product, pots that look born from the ground, guided by hand and transformed by the elements.
9. And this is the moral of the story and what it's all about in the end: Joe eating lunch in our kitchen using one of Josh's new pasta bowls.
Photos and post note: 1. Josh in front of Rick and Donna's studio. 2. Josh's new work. 3. Donna's work. 4. Sylvie's studio. She's in the center. 5. Ellen's showroom. 6. Rick's showroom. 7. Kent at Sylvie's. 8. Tour sign. 9. Joe's lunch. Watch a video clip of Josh at the Sixteen Hands wrap-up HERE.
Part I of this update is HERE.
The Community Temple Compound isn’t the only thing that was improved upon this year. ClaySpace, the studio coop that Josh started in the Wedge building in the River Arts district of Asheville got some spiffing up. The front entrance has been painted and a new gallery showroom was added to the warehouse space where half a dozen potters throw pots at their workspaces.
Other events in Josh’s life as a studio potter took place this year that didn’t involve building or remodeling. Last May he put in a two month residency at Penland School of Craft as an assistant teacher for a class on woodfiring pottery made with local materials. Although living at Penland pulled him away from ClaySpace and Community Temple projects, the experience was enriching. "The amount of time it takes to test materials is limited, but in the class it was the topic. And you have students available to work for and with you. I honed my big jar making skills. Everyone learns," he said. Near the end of the intensive class, the students trekked out from the Mitchell County school to the Community Temple in Marshall County to see the impressive 3-tiered kiln and to witness the unloading part of the woodfiring process.
The Community Temple was also a destination for potters around the country. A constant flow of them visited the site throughout the summer. “The ceramics’ community is a small world. People keep an eye on each other,” Josh said about the visits.
Building projects, pottery firings, shows, and ClaySpace work aside, Josh was able to spend a freewheeling day with us. We watched the first presidential debate together at the home of one of his friends, visited a nearby Japanese garden, spent some time in downtown Asheville and Marshall, and went out to eat a few times. As we were leaving, he was ready to get back to work. Weed whacking was on the schedule, followed by preparation for the arrival of a Track-hoe, which will be used to fill in the demolition site where the property’s original house was. Materials from the March 2007 demolition were salvaged and used in the building of the kiln shed. The demolition was the first step in arriving to where the site is today.
As we drove away, I thought about how much Josh has accomplished and how much work still needs to be done. I can only imagine what the Community Temple Compound will look after the passing of another year. I can hardly wait to see.
Post Notes: The photos above were all taken at ClaySpace. You can see pictures and read about house demolition in a post titled "The House That Josh Un-built HERE. See a video of the start of the demolition HERE.
It was a year ago last September that my Asheville potter son, Josh Copus, wood-fired the first pots in his newly constructed Community Temple kiln. It’s been that long since I visited the kiln site on the two acre Marshall County property where Josh lives.
The year-old 3-tiered kiln was still hot from its 7th firing when my husband, Joe and I arrived with our truck camper for a weekend visit. It would be two days before the kiln’s full cool down, followed by the unloading of wares. Josh was a little blurry eyed from tending the fire overnight as he showed us around.
The structural changes around the site since last year are many. Most notable is the newly built pottery studio that Joe helped Josh frame in early June. Constructed from salvaged wood, doors and windows, this studio will eventually be the pottery showroom when a larger studio is built. A village green and a house are also a part of future plans.
I’m always amazed by Josh’s self-taught accomplishments and his keen appreciation for and ability to manifest recycled building materials. This time it was his masonry handwork that impressed me most, a stone wall around the studio building, stairway steps built into the hard packed clay dirt around the kiln, and a stone ledge and sitting bench.
He referred to his masonry work as “hardscaping” and explained how many of the bricks and cobblestones used in both projects came from the streets of Asheville, which he collected when city workers dug up a road to build a new sewer line. Old brick stamped with logo words from Josh’s private collection also figured into the work.
There were several newly constructed wooden ware racks around the kiln, staging stations for loading and unloading pots. The blue striped couch from when Josh lived in the warehouse loft apartment at Clayspace, the Asheville studio cooperative that Josh founded, was prominently placed in front of the kiln, offering rest for potters during the intensive tending of woodfirings that can go on all night.
Josh’s living space has also undergone changes. A roofed porch now extends from his Airstream trailer headquarters along the creek that rushes through the property. Bamboo blinds on one side and a small paned window frame on another close in a sitting and sleeping space. A beige couch faces the roofed cooking area, which includes a long wooden counter and a large grille with and propane burner. Josh plans to further close in the porch for the winter, which will transform it into a small cabin, not unlike the one on Zephyr Farm that we lived in one summer when Josh was a boy.
The portajohn, a fixture during last year’s kiln building and first firing, has been replaced by a composting toilet outhouse, situated behind the Airstream. “The outhouse was practice for building the new studio,” Josh said. His cat “Jean Claude Meow” charged down from a hill, where a bathtub was waiting to be a wood-fired hot tub, and into the raised bed vegetable garden. “He’s doing his job,” Josh said, which meant that Jean Claude has been keeping the mice population down.
Post notes: Part II continues HERE. See a video clip of Josh showing Joe the newly built kiln ware racks HERE.
The Wedge Brewing Company is the latest addition to the Wedge Studio building, a renovated warehouse in the River Arts District of Asheville, NC, where ClaySpace, the pottery studio and gallery that my son Josh Copus founded, is also housed. I was already buzzed from the brew tasting when I made my final decision and ordered an amber pint of “Golem.” I might have been warned by the beer’s name or the description of it on the beer list, which read, “a wicked and dangerously drinkable Belgium Pilsner …juicy and spicy.” But it wasn’t until I had partaken nearly half of it and realized I was drunk that I noticed in the write-up that the beer I had chosen had a 9% alcohol content, almost double what most beers have.
Joe got the 6.8% “Community Porter,” named for my son’s BFA Community brick art installment, which has grown into an ongoing art performance. 
Bricks from that show, made by Josh with the word COMMUNITY stamped on them, have been finding there way all over the country and world. A COMMUNITY brick was set in with others in the brew pub’s brick wall. Meanwhile, an old scratchy “Ella Fitzgerald Sings Cole Porter” record was playing on the turntable. Joe struck up a conversation with another beer tasting customer and I was babbling to the bartender about the poetry of beer and how beer tasting is like tea tasting and that designing brews might be like making perfume.
I meant to take my beer to one of the outside tables under a tree alongside the train tracks. I wanted to enjoy the evening scene and take some pictures of the wrought iron sculpture that framed it, but the bartender changed the album and I was busy singing the Beatles “Come Together” while reading the poetic descriptions of brews on the list. Joe’s Community Porter was described as: English-styled robust golden malt hops with the flavor of carob and coffee. The words bubblegum, burnt sugar, and chocolate also showed up on the brew menu.
Later, still high on Golem, we stopped for a dance to John Meyer in a parking lot before meeting up with Josh. There, I said to Joe, “This is a lot of fun for the price of a $3.50 beer.”
When my Asheville potter son, Josh, was a baby he had a shirt that said “Good as Gold” on it. At first I thought it could refer to his towhead blonde hair and his baby innocence. I later came to think of it as a premonition for his infectious enthusiasm, his ability to attract good fortune, and his love of making art out of everything around him. I’ve often described him to others as “a bright light” with a “big presence.” But as the mother of an artist, at times I’ve wondered about him burning his love of art at both ends. I’ve also seen his hard work and passion manifest surprising results and support from unlikely places.
The fourth firing of The Community Temple, the 3 chamber kiln that Josh built last summer, wound down last Friday, March 8. It was documented by an award winning photojournalist, Frank Bott. Frank is an Asheville River Arts District neighbor of the Clayspace Co-op studio that Josh founded, but he could be another one of Josh’s fairy godfathers. The Clayspace warehouse loft room where Josh once lived has been renovated into a gallery, a showcase for the finished pottery of all the Co-op members. During a recent studio tour, Frank showed up at the gallery and was drawn by the play of light in the new room, and maybe by the light that emanates from Josh when he puts his whole heart into what he’s doing. Frank took his first batch of pictures. Others would follow.
Frank’s website describes him as a “visual journalist of the human spirit.” His photos of the recent Community Temple firing show that there’s plenty of human and elemental spirit to be witnessed at a woodfiring. The potters look like gritty miners, earth welders, alchemists spinning straw into gold. With faces illuminated by fire, their captured expressions show the struggle of hard work and the wonder of creation. The Gold? It’s the vein of clay harvested from the earth; the inspiration it takes to spin it into form; the fire it takes to harden it; the finished pots; the photos, and the thread of magic that shines through them.
Post notes: The photos above are of the last Clayspace Studio Tour and were taken by Frank Bott. As Josh’s archivist, I received them from him the last time he was home for a visit. You can watch the slide show photos of last week’s woodfiring that Frank has titled “The Struggle” at his website HERE. Currently Josh is co-teaching a class with other potters on “Wild Clay and Precise Fire” at Penland School of Crafts. The whole class is going out to the kiln in Marshall, NC, on Monday to watch the unloading of the firing that Frank documented.
The following is Part II of "The First Annual Pot Party," the nickname I gave to my Asheville Potter Son Josh's recent Hometown Pottery Show, which was held at my house this past weekend.
1. We awoke to what sounded like a war zone. What I first thought was Josh stomping around in one of the upstairs bedrooms was really ice falling off in chunks from the pitched roof of our log cabin. After being slammed with wind and showered with sleet the night before, the sight of the morning sun brought a sense of relief, but the sudden warming it created also caused an avalanche of melting ice.
2. Coffee brewed, tea was poured, fried eggs sizzled in the skillet. Joe pulled up a chair and ate his breakfast while watching the twenty minute slide show of Frank Bott's photographs, dramatic images of the Clay Space Gallery and the recent firing in the noborigama kiln Josh built this past summer. We all had a snow day mentality. Fulfilled from the previous day's events, we were ready to welcome any new pottery show guests but weren't really expecting any.
3. But the sun shone a new day, and all was not lost by the Pottery Show announcement not getting into the Floyd Press. The announcement did appear in the December issue of the Museletter and some who had read about it there came out to see Josh's new work. Our first visitor of the day, a family friend named Paul, held up his new pasta platter like he had just won a final match at Wimbledon.
4. "I don't know a single one of them," I announced as I looked out the window and watched a group of three walk towards the house from the drive-way. They turned out to be some new Floyd residents who used to live in Asheville. Two of them knew Josh from Warren Wilson College. While they all had an enthusiastic visit, talking pottery and kiln construction, I wandered around the house getting to know the new pots better, handling them, gazing at them, and taking photographs like a portrait photographer takes pictures of people.
5. Museletter readers, Rosemary and Walter hadn't seen a trace of the balloons I tied to a tree out on the Parkway to help visitors find our driveway. Had the wind untied them? Maybe the sleet ripped them to shreds. Rosemary, whose sister is a potter interested in wild clay, leafed through the article Josh wrote for Studio Potter about his wild clay excavation from a North Carolina farmer's tobacco field.
6. Sunday's attendance was lighter than Saturdays, but like Saturday, every visit was fun filled and rich with meaningful conversation. By evening, the living room glowed as if it was enchanted. Shiny pots and foil wrapped presents under the tree caught the reflection of the string of Christmas lights in the window.
7. Every pot had been made from the wild clay and then wood fired in the new kiln. Each one had its own personality. In groups, they formed families that looked like they belonged together. I still hadn't picked out my own Christmas pot. Which would stand alone? Which was ready for a new home? I kept moving them around to see how they looked in different settings.
8. The next day while Josh was packing up to head back to Asheville, I walked out to the road to investigate the missing balloons. The wind had not untied them. They still hung, deflated and sliced. I imagined how they sounded when they popped from Saturday's gusty wind and icy onslaught. They never had a chance.
Post notes: More Hometown Pottery Show photos are HERE. A collection of posts about Josh's wild clay and wood fire kiln building adventures can be scrolled down HERE. A short interview I did with Josh in which he answers 'do you remember the first pot you ever made?' is HERE.
1. It was the party I never let Josh have when he was a teenager. Although I think he had a few behind my back that weren't condoned by me. This one was not only condoned, I helped with the planning. "This is the kind of party I can handle," I said to him as he was setting up pots for a Hometown Pottery Show and I was warming cider on the stove. "It's constructive, has a theme, and a time frame with an ending."
2. My house was transformed to a storefront studio. Every surface was enlisted to make room for pots, teapots, bowls, bottles, platters, and plates. They spread throughout the living room and kitchen. A few were on the front porch.
3. "How did you hear about this?" I asked potter Tom Phelps, who along with his wife, Carol, was one of the first arrivals. "I heard it from you, Colleen," he answered smiling. I needed that validation after the announcement I wrote didn't make it in the Floyd Press. Tom, who was Josh's first pottery mentor, also saw one of the flyers I hustled to hang just days before to make up for the lack of press.
4. "Did you see the balloons I tied to a tree out on the Parkway?" I asked Jody who came with her daughter looking for mugs.
5. A slide show of photos taken by Frank Bott that were playing on Josh's laptop was mesmerizing. Frank is a photojournalist covering the growth of the River Arts District in Asheville where Clay Space Co-op, the studio and gallery that Josh founded, is located. The photos show the newly renovated Clay Space gallery, a warehouse space that was once Josh's home, and the most recent wood-firing at the Community Temple kiln.
6. A steady stream of people flowed in throughout the day. Quite a few were fellow potters, like Zack, who is Donna Polsena and Rick Hensley's apprentice. Later in the day Donna and Rick, two of Floyd's "Sixteen Hands" potters who also live on the Parkway, dropped by. Donna was happy with the plate she picked out to purchase and pleasantly surprised when I took her in my bedroom and showed her one of her ceramic sculptures on my dresser.
7. My living room chair got relegated to a hallway. "This is where you can sit and tell Santa what you want for Christmas," I told all the guests. "All I want for Christmas is a roof on our house," said Chris Deerheart, who with his partner Alina is living in a workshop studio while building a house.
8. By the late afternoon it was sleeting ice and the front steps on the porch were slick. Josh and I got back to our kitchen table Scrabble game while Joe, who had just come in from hunting, made us all supper.
Post note: See the action video clip where Josh makes a spoof sale HERE. Click and scroll down HERE for more photos and narrative on Josh's wild and wood-fired clay pottery. Part II of this post is HERE.
During the last couple of phone calls I’ve had with my son Josh, I’ve learned that a mouse was living in his pottery kiln and that he’s taken up Scrabble. I’m shaking in my boots on the second count because, according to the scores he’s been reporting, he plays Scrabble better than me, and I’ve been playing on and off for a couple of decades.
“But you never even liked the game growing up,” I questioned. He explained that he didn’t understand the strategy then. He had played once and didn’t like it. Occasionally Dylan, his younger brother, would play with me.
“But that was only because he knew how much I liked to play and Dylan is sweet that way,” I said. Josh, who likes to play games competitively, agreed.
No sooner had Josh finished the loading, firing, cooling, and emptying of a new kiln, the 1st Annual Holiday Sale at the newly renovated Clay Space Co-op gallery, which Josh was hosting, geared up.
And then he caught his breath, which came in the form of playing Scrabble with his girlfriend Anna. Anna is also a good player, but it’s hard to compete with a play that involves the letter Q on a triple letter box going in two directions. 
I’m not surprised that Josh, a word lover who has been published in Studio Potter magazine and recently had his handwriting on the front cover, would catch the Scrabble bug. He likes to play Mad Libs and recently coined the word “chillaxing,” by mixing chilling and relaxing together.
We’ve been on the phone more than usual, making plans for his trip home this weekend to host a Hometown Pottery Show, Saturday and Sunday from 12-6. It’s an open house and the house that will be open is mine. I’ve been telling friends who know I’m a reclusive non-entertainer that now is their chance to finally see where I live.
So no more chillaxing for me. I’m going to vacuum and sweep the cellar floor.
Post notes: The first photo is one taken by photographer Frank Bott, who is documenting the evolution of Asheville’s River Arts District where Josh’s Clayspace Co-op is. The second photo is of a recent Studio Potter magazine cover, an issue on clay and words. It features Josh’s handwriting of a quote by Shoji Hamada speaking to a young potter. It's written on the ClaySpace wall and says: It is important for him to dig deep beneath his own feet to find the spring water. This is better than finding a section of the river of tradition that has already become unclear and weak. True tradition never comes from water flowing above ground: it comes from underneath the ground, from a man's own experience. Individualism is important, and without it one cannot do any good work in this age. To find real individualism does not mean the we should follow the new fashion, but rather the old way, the classic way. What is classic is always new. Fashions are always old ... Click HERE and scroll down for more on Josh's work.
AKA: “Santa Came Early” and “How we gonna wrap that thing?”
This is Josh’s early Christmas present, being tested out by Joe. Pulling at the split ends in my hair as a teenager took more effort than this. (See the action video HERE.)
Post Note: We’ll also be splitting the cost of this $1,000 log splitter with Josh. It’s the only thing he wanted for Christmas and will be a needed addition to his Community Temple wood-firing pottery complex. More on that HERE. See what Josh got for Christmas last year HERE.
My Asheville Potter son, Josh, has a sandwich named after him at the Klingman Ave Café near the Clay Space Studio where he makes pots. I found this out when I called him this past weekend to catch up.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I was just about to walk over to the café and get something to eat but realized they close early on Saturday.”
I asked him about the café, because I didn’t remember one within walking distance from the studio, which was when I learned about the sandwich named “Josh,” made with turkey, cream cheese, tomato and cucumber on a toasted bagel.
“They write your name on the ticket, so when I order it, they write my name twice. If I’m really hungry and order two, they write Josh and Josh x 2,” he said.
I laughed and wanted to know more, so he explained, “When they first opened up they had a menu, but I just ordered what I liked. I was an instant regular, going over for about 4 cups a coffee a day. Then they came out with a new menu with the “Josh” on it.
Some of Josh’s friends have sandwiches named after them too. “The Ford,” named after Ryan Ford, has sausage in it. Another one is called “Tim Pesto.”
“Is his last name Pesto?” I couldn’t help asking.
“It used to be just “Tim” until Tim started asking for it with pesto. Then it became “Tim with Pesto,” and finally just “Tim Pesto,” Josh said.
“Have you ever been in the café and heard someone order a “Josh,”’ I wanted to know.
“Yeah, that’s how it got on the menu in the first place. People started ordering it.”
Tim Pesto is getting ready to open a brewery in the Wedge building, the same building the Clay Space Studio is in, Josh told me.
“Then you guys will really have everything you need right there!” I said.
Post notes: The photo is one of the doodles made while talking with Josh on the phone. To read more about Josh and his pottery click HERE and scroll down. This weekend the Clay Space Studio will be part of the River District Artist's Studio Stroll in Asheville where Josh's pottery will be among the arts displayed.
Clay is a material accepting of impression. It is a record of every process, from its geological formation in the earth to its eventual transformation in the fire. My work with ceramics begins with the clay. By using local materials dug from the river bottom and mountainsides of North Carolina, my work gains a connection to place and establishes the materials as a valuable source of influence. ~ Excerpt from Josh's artist statement posted on the Gallery @ Good Earth Gallery website
Since early summer I’ve been documenting the progress on the woodfiring kiln that my Asheville Potter son, Josh Copus, has been building on his property in Marshall, North Carolina. In June I wrote about the raising of the kiln shed roof, which was built with parts from an old house that he tore down and salvaged. Last month, my husband and I traveled to visit Josh at the kiln site where we helped with last minute construction preparations and then took part in the first ceremonial firing. The intensity of that first firing was heightened by the fact that many of the pots stacked inside it were due in Athens, Georgia, for a show just days later. Josh and other area potters were set to have their pots featured at the Good Earth Gallery in a show titled “Pushing Traditions: Asheville’s New Voices.” Adding to the pressure of getting the kiln finished and fired in time was the fact that Josh was the show’s curator, the one responsible for organizing and putting it together. 
The manifestation of the three chamber climbing wood-fired kiln started with the excavation of eleven dump truck loads of wild clay from a local farmer’s tobacco field, which Josh wrote about in an article for Studio Potter titled “Neil Woody’s Turkey Creek Field.” The Clay excavation got some good attention and led to a research grant, awarded to Josh and fellow potter, Matt Jacobs, to further their work using local materials in ceramics. The momentum continued when Josh won a Windgate Fellowship Award to build a kiln, not only for the purpose of furthering his exploration with wild clay, but to support the theme of his UNC Asheville BFA thesis show “Building Community,” which Josh described in a recent article for the Log Book, an international publication for woodfirers.
Land was purchased and plans were drawn up. With the help of others, Josh headed up the three month full-time building project. His enthusiasm and motivation for what he’s accomplished and continues to do can be best explained in his own words contained in the rest of his Good Dirt artist statement for his first showing of pots fired in the newly built kiln:
I dig my own clay from a tobacco field alongside Turkey Creek and everything I make contains an element of my response to that experience. Every pot is informed with the qualities and character of my clay; whether it is the subtlety of its dark iron body breaking through a white slip, or the drama of its diverse particle size exposed through a facet, the qualities of my clay effect what I make and my intention is to bring out the inherent beauty of the materials in every pot.
However, my interest in using local materials for my pots is not limited to the influence of their physical properties and extends to the intangible qualities that those materials can bring to the work. The physical properties of my materials are not as unique as my experience of using them and it is the increased participation in the creative process that I have come to value the most. 
Digging my own clay has increased my connection to the area where I live and furthered my relationship with the surrounding community, creating an authentic context for my work to exist in. Most importantly I find a great amount of excitement in digging my own clay and my hope is that the enthusiasm I have for my materials will transferred to the finished product. I want each pot to carry with it the feeling I get each time I visit the Turkey Creek tobacco field.
The experience of working with local materials has contributed greatly to my growth as both an artist and a person. It has confirmed my belief that the more highly developed a potter is as a human being, the better their pottery will be. There is no real beauty without character and like the clay that I use to make them, my pots are a reflection of my character. As a human being, I am accepting of impression and each pot I make represents my personality, experience, and my dreams.
Post notes: A short video clip of Josh at the kiln first firing talking with a fellow potter about how the kiln works is HERE. All of the photos posted above are of pots made by Josh that were fired in the first firing of the new kiln. You can view more pots at the Gallery @ Good Earth HERE.
A collage works in the same way a dream does. It’s a visual snapshot of various symbolic images that can bypass the brain’s process time and convey a lot of information at once. ~ Colleen
1. The above and the following are a few selected photos of my Asheville Potter son’s collage journal. Josh has had to work with others to design specially made books to accommodate his collaged journal pages. The books expand as he adds to them.
2. I’ve been drawn to collage art for as long as I can remember. I had been doing rudimentary collages for many years, while putting together photo albums and baby books for my sons, but I wasn’t really inspired and didn’t recognize the potential of collage as a creative way to record one’s life until I saw Josh’s journals.
3. My first attempt at collage journaling myself was done as I approached the age of 50. It was a chronicle of my life thus far in colorful bits and pieces. Some photos of that are HERE.
4. Neither Josh nor I tend to buy special items for collage. We prefer to use found items and recycled scraps of our lives. The story of how Josh first became a collage journal artist is HERE.
5. One can work through personal issues by creating art, collage included. Some of Josh’s pages are too personal to post here. Some are almost too personal for me to look at, but I love reviewing his latest work and so far he still lets me. But doesn’t all art come with the risk of having the personal exposed? Doesn’t all art reflect what is deeply inside the artist who made it? (The above is an early collage, one I have always loved.)
6. Josh is a hard worker and an inspired artist. I think he has over a dozen collage journals. He usually weaves the creative work of making them into all parts of his life. But lately building the Community Temple wood-fired kiln, making pots, and having two firings back-to-back has been his full time art. You can see that art HERE. This collage conversation started HERE.
The following is Part 2 of “First Wood-firing at The Community Temple.” Part one, “The Countdown” is HERE.
My potter son, Josh, who was a big Lord of the Rings fan when he was a boy, confessed to me while he was dunking pots into glazes that he had just read six Harry Potters books in two weeks.
It had been three months since the last time I visited him at The Community Temple kiln site in Marshall, North Carolina, during the early stages of the kiln building when the shed roof was being raised.
“How did you do that with all this going on?” I asked, referring the pressing deadline of getting the kiln ready for firing pots already promised for shows. 
Sean, a potter from the Clayspace Coop that Josh belongs to and part of the kiln work crew, joked that Josh had been taking some extra long lunch hours lately.
“I got addicted to them,” Josh explained.
We estimated that Josh’s Harry Potter diversion set the wood-firing schedule back by about two days and that it might have been Josh’s girlfriend Anna’s fault since she had the books and was reading them too.
Later, I was in our camper making lunch for the workers when my husband, Joe, came in for some reason I forget now. He was getting ready to head back to the kiln site to cut more firewood when I said, “Hey, if Josh asks you where I am, tell him I’m out here reading Harry Potter.” 
Next, I heard a ruckus coming from the work site. Peeking out the camper window, I saw Micah, Josh’s neighbor Rob’s daughter, unload six cases of beer from the trunk of her car, which made me wonder if the firing that night was going to be “Wood-firing Animal House Style.” The beer was hauled to the spring box to keep it cool, and in the hours leading up to the first firing and for a couple of nights and days that followed, it proved to be refreshing to more than just the woodfiring crew.
The Community Temple, which will directly serve five Clayspace Coop potters, is aptly named. Because wood-firing is a labor intensive process that demands round the clock time and care, it takes a small community to pull one off. The kiln’s name is also appropriate considering the number of potters and friends who came out during its building to offer support. The visitors that floated in and out to see the kiln on the day of the first firing were like a who’s who of regional potters. There were also a few from neighboring states. 
Karl, a potter from Josh’s hometown of Floyd, Virginia, arrived bearing pesto to share and other fragrant delicacies from his garden. Maynard, also a potter, came all the way from Nashville (Yes, you heard me right. That’s Asheville with an N) hauling a load of firewood on the back of his truck and pulling another load in a trailer. He, dubbed the “Fairy Godfather of Wood,” brought a clay horse that his niece had made to add to the community of pots being fired.
Firewood, and a lot of it, is the key ingredient in wood-firing. “We burn enough in one firing to heat a house for a whole winter,” Clayspace potter Matt told me.
When I asked how many wood-firings they do each year, he answered, “about four or five.”
Meanwhile, Josh buzzed around like the kiln maestro conducting the symphony of elements that must come together for a successful wood-firing. Even so, he was always ready to take the time to greet visitors and act as a host. His ceramics teacher at UNCA, Megan Wolf, dropped by, towing her young son in her arms. With them was Jon Keenan, a ceramics artist and the associate director of UNCA’s Craft Campus, an upcoming facility that plans to merge creative arts with green building technology.
Later, work stopped to greet Paulus, a longtime Penland teacher and potter who came to see the kiln with a woman I recognized from seeing at Josh’s UNCA BFA show. Two other women potters brought pizza that night. Others called on the phone.
Vases, platters, plates, mugs, bowls, lidded jars, and teapots loaded into the first chamber looked like a still life art installation. I was told by more than one potter that loading the kiln is the most complicated part of wood-firing, the part that involves the most thoughtful planning.
“You have to know what each piece needs,” Matt told me. I learned that it takes a special knack to determine how close each pot should be to the fire and how to stack so many various sizes and shapes and get them all to fit.
At 11:00 p.m. Saturday night the kiln was ready.
Josh used Sean’s lighter. Joe uttered the words, “Houston we have ignition.” Everyone was speechless when it finally happened. Then, Anna broke out her violin and played as the fire began to rise. Joe joined in with his flute. 
Rob, from the farm above Josh, had company from Atlanta who had come down with him to witness the occasion. “Like the first torch at the Olympics,” one of them said. A sense of reverence and magic hung in the air.
“Look,” someone noticed, “Josh is finally sitting down! It was the first time in several days that anyone had seen him do that.
Post notes: For the rest of that conversation, go HERE. The first show of pots fired at the Communty Temple is one that Josh is curating, and will be held at the Good Dirt Gallery in Athens, GA this upcoming weekend. You can scroll down to read Josh’s curator’s statement HERE.
Photos: 1. Joe, Megan with baby, Sean holding up pot, Josh, Jon, Matt. 2. Maynard admiring the clay horse. 3. Joe and Sean unloading Maynard's truck. One block of firewood is caught in mid-air. 4. Josh talks to Paulis. 5. Pottery in front chamber ready for firing. 6. Josh lights the fire. 7. Josh finally sits down. Karl sits behind Josh.
A Noborigama chambered climbing kiln is built on a slope, and each succeeding chamber is situated higher than the one before it. The chambers in a noborigama are pierced at intervals with stoking ports. Climbing kilns have been used in Japan since the 17th century. ~ Wikipedia
Like a rocket ship with shuttle attachments, the Community Temple kiln in Marshall, North Carolina, has three individual chambers for wood-firing. When my husband and I arrived this past Friday night for the kiln’s first launch, my son, Josh Copus, and other Clayspace Coop potters were glazing their pots and building brick shelves inside the adobe chambers to load them onto.
After greetings and updates and after setting up enough night lighting, my husband, Joe, stationed himself at the electric stone-cutter.
A steady stream of water was pumped over the whining saw, preventing the diamond blade from getting too hot, as he cut through bricks. Various sizes were needed for “the furniture” the potters were stacking, which included chamber fireboxes and firewalls, along with the shelves.
Curious about everything, I took photos and asked lots of questions as I navigated around the impressive 27 foot long kiln. Clayspace Coop member, Eric Knoche makes pots with dramatic architectural angles. He was dipping them in a milky white glaze. Matt Jacobs, another Clayspacer, is known for the small houses that often show up on the pinnacle of his pots, reminiscent of refuge on mountainous landscapes. “They look like Dr. Seuss-like worlds,” I told him. 
Matt was making a mixture of pine sawdust, clay, and sand in a wheel barrow for “wadding.” I guessed by the name that it was something to plug up kiln openings but was told that the material would be balled up and stuck on the bottom of each pot to buffer it from the direct heat of the brick shelf surface.
Louisa, Matt’s girlfriend and an anthropology student at Warren Wilson College, brought Ellen, a fellow student who was doing field work for their class. The idea was observe while participating in a community project and then write about the group dynamics. Ellen and Louisa sat on a dirt step under the lights, sticking what looked like various colored cone incense into blocks of wadding or clay. The box they were taking them from said “pyrometric cones.” Josh explained to me that they would be put in the kiln and act as testers as they reacted to time and heat. 
Later, Louisa and Ellen would ball up the wadding, and I would be handed a trowel for chipping away extra mortar that had dried between bricks on the chamber walls.
Potter, Rob Pulleyn, Josh’s always supportive neighbor who sold Josh the property the kiln was built on, dropped by with a few pieces to be included in the momentous first firing. Rob is the former founding owner of Lark’s Books and is currently heading up Marshall High Studios, the development of creative space for a community of artists in the historic Marshall High School on Blanahassett Island, downtown Marshall.
But the firing didn’t happen as planned that night. Delayed by a day, every one got some sleep, knowing that the next couple of days and nights would involve the painstaking and constant watching and stoking of the fire, done in shifts by the Clayspace community of potters, family, and friends. To be continued … 
Post Notes: The Community Temple is a manifestation of Josh’s pottery career that began with the excavation of eleven dump-truck loads of wild clay from a local tobacco farmer’s field (as outlined in the article Josh wrote for Studio Potter); followed by his UNCA BFA show on Building Community, involving a 15 x 18 foot brick wall installation constructed out of handmade wild clay bricks stamped with the word “individual” to represent the strength an individual has when joined together in community; and leading to the winning of a Windgate Fellowship Award to help fund the construction of a wood-fired kiln and further his exploration into using local materials in ceramics.
To see a short video of Josh glazing pots at the Community Temple this past Friday go HERE. Kiln building photos are HERE.
UPDATE: Newly downloaded video - When we arrived for the weekend of the first kiln woodfiring, Josh was building shelves to load pottery on inside the kiln's second chamber. At the same time he was orchestrating woodfiring steps to others. See a clip HERE.
The following are photos from the Community Temple Kiln Building. For more photos and narrative, scroll down to the next post or go HERE.
1. An inside job
2. Josh and Karl pondering the plans
3. Checking on the progress
4. The law of attraction
5. The mud that holds it all together
6. Noah's Ark?
7. Fixing a hole where the rain gets in
8. Very cool!
AKA: Potters who aren’t named Harry
It’s been nearly three months since my husband, Joe, and I went to the kiln roof-raising at my Asehville Potter son's place, where Joe joined the work crew and I cooked for them. Joe’s been back to help a second time. So has our friend Karl, who snapped this photo of the results of the roof raising, which I documented by way of videos on Youtube HERE. The material for the roof came from the old house on the property that my son, Josh, tore down and salvaged for parts.
Lots of back-to-back work days, hard labor, and sacrifice have gone into building this kiln. Josh worked from morning to night for weeks at a time. Friends and fellow potters (like Matt Jacobs pictured here) came out to lend their bodies and hands.
Josh (pictured here) and other potters at the ClaySpace Coop in Asheville (founded by Josh in 2003 along with fellow members Matt Jacobs and Sean Fairbridge) are making new pots to be the first fired in the new kiln, which is called The Community Temple. It’s a wood burning, three chamber climbing kiln that is 27 feet long, with a stacking space of 260 cubic feet. Check it out and click around on the new ClaySpace webpage HERE. Josh still plans to put together a personal website when construction slows down.
Before the roof went up, the kiln site looked like a Mayan ruin with a tarp hung over it, or an archeological dig. Later it began to take on a mythological look, reminiscent of the building of a megalithic stone structure or ancient pyramid.
A kiln always remind me of the oven that Hansel and Gretel pushed the witch into, and woodfiring is like a "Where the Wild Things Are" fairytale that involves staying up all night and fire alchemy.
The irony that bricks are made of fired clay and that a kiln is a construction for firing clay that is built largely of bricks is not lost on me.
Soon Joe and I will be traveling back to Josh’s place in Madison County, NC, to dedicate the kiln for its first woodfiring. I imagine in this case the dedication will involve the smashing of a bottle of a beer, rather than the traditional champagne against the brick structure, because although Josh currently lives in an Airstream trailer called The Land Yacht, he’s more of a Pabst Blue Ribbon man than a champagne one.
Seems you can go anywhere on the grounds of FloydFest with a sparkly pink performer’s wrist band, even to the hospitality tent for a complimentary beer on tap. And if your husband is organizing the parking at the festival you’re likely to get a decent parking place and maybe a ride in a golf cart.
Now if you happen to have on shiny new pink boots (always a good FloydFest choice, since you never know what the weather is going to do) and you’re part of the opening act on the first night of FloydFest, you’re bound to get your picture taken, a lot.
“Did you notice that quite a few people were coming up to take your picture while you were playing?” I asked my son’s girlfriend, Anna, the fiddler player for the Barrel House Mamas.
“I sort of did.”
“That’s what happens when you’re playing in Josh’s hometown and word gets out that you’re his girlfriend,” I told her.
“But you know,” I continued, “that guy with the big camera, that was Doug Thompson. He’s covering the festival for the Floyd newspaper. He didn’t know you were my son’s girlfriend. He was probably just drawn your boots. Wearing boots like that could land you on the front page of the Floyd Press,” I said.
Here’s how the FloydFest program describes the Barrel House Mamas: This trio of women from Asheville, NC, conjure the sweet and sultry sounds of the Appalachian Mountains they call home in their robust three part harmonies and original songs. Imagine the old-timey pluck and the twang of claw-hammer, and sometimes contemporary funk, banjo. 
Now lace it with middle-eastern inspired flute lines, the wailing honk of harmonica, and the soulful belting of heartfelt poetry. The result is a sound that is all at once bluesy, rootsy, folk, Americana, a touch of country and truly Mama’s own.
I was thoroughly impressed with their set and a couple of them are staying at my house tonight. Check out a short clip of them HERE. And Josh (wearing a Barrel House Mamas T-shirt) talking pottery to a fellow potter on the FloydFest grounds HERE.
I’m not much good at a construction site. I don’t have the inclination or stamina for it. So, like my grandfather’s brother, Carol Wentzell, who cooked for a lumber camp in Nova Scotia, I signed up to feed the workers helping my son Josh raise the roof over his kiln this past weekend.
Mostly I used an oversized cast iron skillet that took up more than one burner space on our Palomino camper stove. I scrambled eggs, cooked chili, and sautéed onions and green peppers using it. I refer to this skillet as a cannon because whenever I pull it out from the camp drawer, I feel like I’m pulling out the big guns, as opposed to the small Teflon omelet pan (also in the camper drawer), which is like a pop gun in comparison.
I cooked three meals a day for anywhere from three to seven people for the nearly four days that my husband Joe and I were there. Josh, like a Hobbit, loves a second breakfast when he’s working hard, and sometimes snacks in between meals were in order, especially if it was a box of Cheez-its, his favorite. 
When the food was ready, I drove it up to the kiln site in Josh’s old Subaru. One afternoon, the workers showed up at the back door of my camper. Wild lamb’s quarters soaked in olive oil, lemon juice, and garlic was served with venison and brown rice that day.
Before I left home in Virginia, I harvested lettuce, kale, arugula, basil, and cilantro from my garden and brought it with me, which added a gourmet touch to the camp fare. I sliced up naval oranges from Ingles grocery store, four miles from Josh’s property, and filled water jugs from the spring on a wooded hill. I discovered that it takes five full minutes to collect enough spring water to fill a gallon jug, which was okay because it was cool up there on the hill and I had a good view of the construction progress.
Sometimes in the heat of the day, I would retreat into Josh’s Land Yacht Airstream (I’m sure the workers would have liked to do that) tucked into the woods by a creek. 
There, I’d charge up my lap top, write some notes, or download the photos and videos I was taking; for that was my other self-proclaimed responsibility: documenting the roof raising progress.
I didn’t just cook and take pictures. Beer is sometimes a friend to construction workers and many empty bottles had collected from before we arrived. I put them in a garbage bag but never did find a recycling center or even a green box in town where I could dump them. I staked up Josh’s tomatoes using tobacco stakes lying around that Josh pointed out to me when he saw I was breaking up tree branches for stakes. I mulched the tomatoes using grass clippings from when the garden plot was plowed, but I forgot to get someone to hammer them in with the sledge hammer. I wonder if they’re still standing.
My muscles are still sore from hauling three loads of Josh’s laundry to the laundry mat, which, besides cooking, was my most successful activity and one I was happy to do. 
A potter’s clothes can get purty dirty and so many had piled up since the constant work of kiln building began. Add a building site and a few afternoon sprinkles that turn dirt into mud to a potter’s already dirty clothes and you’ll need one of those jumbo washers (which I happen to know takes 16 quarters) to get them clean.
Always the collector, I learned some new words hanging out at the building site. I wrote down “hurricane clips,” “collar ties” and “purlins” in my notebook. Nobrigama is the Japanese name for the type of climbing chamber kiln Josh is building. At one point Joe referred to a saw cut as a bird’s mouth cut. I wrote that down too.
In the few days I was there a couple of Josh’s art collectors, a couple of people from the neighboring farm community, and a woman doing a pottery tour stopped by to witness the kiln’s beginnings. One of the three nights we took showers up a Rob’s. Rob, a member of the community that borders Josh’s place and the man Josh bought his property from, is also a ceramics artist. 
He was cutting clay slab pieces in his workshop as Leonard Cohen played on the stereo when we arrived. Not only did we get hot showers, but Rob fed us hot soup, and so the camp cook got the night off.
The morning of our first day back home, I called Josh on the phone. He answered from the building site and I could hear him and Sean putting up the salvaged tin from the house they tore down. I knew by the end of the day the kiln shed that was framed over the weekend would likely be covered. So now the rain that’s been badly needed but only threatened to come down all weekend could hopefully let loose, I thought. And maybe the cosmos seeds I planted in Josh’s garden will be standing tall in bloom by the time the kiln is finished.
Post Notes: Photo #2 (left to right) is my husband Joe, fellow potters Matt and Sean, Josh, and his girlfriend Anna. Photo #4 is of Josh and I just before Joe and I headed back to Virginia. You can read more about Josh on the Asheville Potter Son category on my sidebar HERE. Scroll down for older posts. A collection of video clips from the long work weekend can be seen HERE.
1. While working a long weekend helping my son Josh raise a roof over his kiln site, my husband nearly forgot the foot injury he got at a recent martial arts event. The first morning back at home, he started thinking about it again and it started to hurt. “Why is it that when things slow down our thoughts like water tend to flow to the lowest level?” I asked.
2. Also heard on the same first morning home after camping along the creek on Josh’s two acre property: “I have to go uncamp the packer now.”
3. After four days at Josh’s place, when we first got home I was feeling out of whack, or should I use my construction education and say, “out of plumb.”
4. I have to rethink the question I recently heard myself ask someone: “What’s the matter?" Technically, I’m not sure how the term came about but it's a question that seems to expect the worst. 'What’s new?’ ‘What gives?’ or ‘What’s happening?’ are all improvements, but in the spirit of keeping it positive (not to mention hip) I think I’ll go with ‘What’s up?’
5. You’ve heard of an omnivore, or a vegetarian? My son is an “opportunatarian.” That’s when “you take an opportunity that comes your way and make it meal plan,” says Josh.
6. In the rural outskirts of Asheville, where Josh lives, his closest neighbor is a snake handling Holiness Pentecostal church congregation. I don’t know if they still handle snakes, but from what I cold hear, their Saturday night church services are pretty rousing.
7. The best part of the arugula, cilantro, kale, and basil that I harvested from the garden for my camp cooking was not how good it tasted when we ate it but that by the time we got home it had all grown back and was ready to be picked again.
8. Besides runs to Ingles supermarket for water, chips, oranges, and sandwich fixings for the workers, I made a few runs to the library to get on the internet. “I’m going to the library. Do you need anything?” I shouted out to Josh who was up in the roof rafters on our last afternoon there. “Yes,” he shouted back. Check and see if the Red Sox won last night.” When I got back he took one look at me and asked, “What’s the matter?” The Yankees had won.
9. My younger son Dylan is a construction worker by trade, along with plumbing and electrical wiring. When he was four, I asked him what he was going to learn to do when he grew up. His answer was: Learn to ride a bike; Learn to ride a motorcycle; Maybe I could jump from the clouds on a parachute; I’ll learn how to swing from vines; And open an orange by myself; I’m going to learn how to work on cars with a screw; And open sodas by myself and put one in my lunchbox and go to work.
10. My father used to call me the Duchess because I didn’t like hard work … So why me? I ask the muse …My calluses are ink stained … I labor over words … put them together like a mathematical equation … dream them like Einstein dreamt theories … I write like I’ve got a problem to solve …and if I don’t I feel hypoglycemic … ~ Colleen, from the Zen of Winter Poetry.
11. Although my natural inclination for writing may have come from my father’s Irish heritage, I suspect that my mother’s heritage had an influence on me too. Her lineage is largely one of self-sufficient Lutheran carpenters of German descent, and carpentry and writing have a lot in common. Once you learn the basic skills of construction, whether you’re writing an article or building a home, the rest is about problem solving and working in changes as seamlessly as possible. A good eye for detail also helps. ~ From my Silver and Gold Website bio.
12. Since the summer trees in my yard have filled in, it seems that my favorite birds are having a hard time finding my birdfeeder. About the same time I noticed this I also went out of town and visits to my blog went down. I wonder if it’s related.
13. My Crone Crowning is revisited HERE and THIS is my favorite hood ornament in action.
Thursday headquarters is here. My other 13's are here. View more 13 Thursday’s here.
“Always we are eating and drinking earth’s body, making her dishes.” ~ Potter and poet, M.C. Richards.
Between the bullfrogs and the snake handling church service being held just above Josh’s pottery kiln site, Saturday night in the Walnut part of Marshall, North Carolina, was pretty lively. The sound of hammers banging, electric saws singing, and the big bass hum of the generator filled in the mix as the kiln shed roof was being framed. Gabe, who was perched high on a beam rafter, occasionally broke out in building commands, or a song.
Josh’s girlfriend Anna arrived from a gig where her band was paid in beer, so there was beer for supper that night. I’ve heard that her fiddle playing is impressive. So is her skill with an electric saw. I held the flashlight for her when it got dark to see without it. In between the whine of her saw someone who sounded like Bob Dylan sang from a nearby IPOD.
Looking more like an ancient Mayan compound at night, with a spotlight emanating from the center, the construction site took on an eerie glow that felt primal and monumental. From the first shovel of clay dug from Neil Woody’s tobacco field, to the Windgate Fellowship award Josh won for his work with wild clay, followed by the Wild Clay Exhibit and his Building Community BFA Thesis show, each were steps that lead to this roof raising night. I thought about the future wood firings that would take place here and the area potters they would bring together. What would the clay vessels created here hold? Where would they end up, I wondered?
What’s the name of the kiln going to be?” I asked Josh as the night and the frame of the roof grew pitch.
“The Community Temple,” he answered.
Soon there will be two kinds of services going on in the neighborhood.
"Potters like sun and stars perform their art--- Endowed with myth, they make the meal holy." ~ M.C. Richards
AKA: See the T-shirt in photo number 4.
“What’s the first thing I should do? Enjoy the scenery? Okay, I’ll check that off my list,” I joked to Joe just few miles out of our driveway, heading south on the Blue Ridge Parkway. We were on our way to Asheville to visit Josh for the weekend, to help put a roof over the pottery kiln he’s building. I was having a hard time shifting gears from the flurry of last minute travel preparations to beginning the actual three-hour drive to North Carolina. Mabry Mill, just ten miles up the road from our house and the most photographed scenic site in Southwest Virginia, got my attention. There were two white ducks looking perfectly placed, gliding across the pond in front of the old grain mill when we rode by.
I tried to deny that I wanted to stop and get a better look when Joe asked if we should pull over, thinking we shouldn’t waylay our trip. But Joe knew better and I was glad he did. After a fellow traveler in leather biker pants (a confessed workaholic who had strict orders from his doctor to stop and smell the rhododendrons) offered to snap our picture in front of the picturesque scene, I took a deep breath, let go of the life details we were leaving behind, and felt like we were on vacation.
When we arrived at Josh’s two acre property in the town of Marshall, he was on his hands and knees working at the kiln site. Using white sand to level out the bricks he was laying in a measured section of flooring, he explained that he was doing what he knew how to do best.
Raising the roof was something he would be learning as it went up, with the help of Joe, a one time timber framer, his master carpenter friends from his Warren Wilson College days, Jody and Gabe, and fellow potters, Sean and Matt.
I couldn’t believe how much the three-level kiln site looked like a Mayan ruin or an archeological dig. Josh had dug out the site, including a dirt stairway, from the side of a hill with a tractor. It was loosely framed with salvaged boards from the “Tearing Down the House Party,” held up by locust posts that were harvested off the land. A tarp spread across the top where a roof would hopefully soon be.
The Zuma Café in downtown Marshall, five minutes from Josh’s property, featured turkey wrap sandwiches, a wireless internet connection, and one of Josh’s Community Bricks displayed on a shelf behind the counter. Josh and Joe ate while I checked my emails and blog comments and sipped on some Earl Grey tea. I couldn’t see buying lunch when we had a camper fridge full of food, venison sausage, lettuce and other greens from the garden.
Our waitress let me go behind the counter to snap a photo of the brick. I later learned, from looking at Josh’s latest collage journal, some more places where his Community Bricks are building community, brick by brick: Besides locations up and down the east coast, there are bricks in California, Arizona, Hawaii, and Alaska; as well as England, Ireland, and Japan. The bricks have traveled on planes and been sent by mail. I didn’t expect to see one at the Zuma Café. I’m going to have to start paying more attention because I’m sure there are more than a few that have found homes in the Asheville area.
Post Note: Read more about Josh's Community Bricks HERE.
During this past fall while working on my BFA thesis exhibition, I became interested in exploring methods of using wood-fired ceramics to visually explain the strength of community. I wanted to create an installation that would communicate ideas about the universal importance of co-operative spirit in our world today, while also specifically expressing my gratitude towards the people who have supported me as an artist. The solution that I finally arrived at was using bricks as a form to give structure to my ideas. ~ Josh Copus
Two of my son Josh’s Community Bricks were displayed at Notebooks, Floyd’s independent bookstore. The owners got the bricks at the “Building Community” slide show presentation Josh did when he was in town last Christmas. Although they weren’t for sale, a woman who was shopping in the bookstore was keen to have one, and so the bookstore owner sold her one, although she felt awkward because she didn’t know what to charge.
The brick was chosen as the vehicle for my concept because of its connection to ceramics, as well as for its connection to shelter and the historical significance of bricks in creating permanent civilizations. In this case, the brick acts as a metaphor for the human condition; individually each brick is relatively useless and displays very little of the power, strength, and stability associated with bricks once they are bonded together to build a structure. The solitary brick seems insignificant, like a solitary person, and only once it is joined in mass with others of its kind does it gain the capacity to garner attention. ~ Josh
Another Community Brick sits on the window sill at the entrance of Jacksonville Center for the Arts, where Josh gave the slide show (shown in the first photo) and where my Writer’s Circle meets twice a month.
The Building Community installation is compromised of 1600 handmade bricks, extruded from local clay excavated out of a nearby tobacco field, open-chequer stacked and wood-fired in the anagama at UNC. The kiln was purposefully fired unevenly to create a color spectrum ranging from the hot, dark purple bricks in front, to the cooler, light orange bricks in the back. I used the common practice of branding firebricks with a company’s name or other defining characteristics, as a method of literally communicating my idea about an individual’s role in their community. Half of the bricks were stamped with the word “individual” and installed in the gallery as a wall, while the other half were stamped with the word “community’ an arranged in a solid cube on a pallet. ~ Josh
At our April ceremony honoring elder women in our community, one of the women was addressing the crowd of about seventy about the importance of community. At one point, she looked directly at me and said, “I have one of Josh’s bricks. I use it as a doorstop!”
My intention was to make the wall large enough so that its physical size would command the attention of the viewer, and its presence in the space would successfully communicate the power of organized individuals to create a unified whole. The ‘community’ bricks were given away during the exhibition, both as a symbolic gesture of giving back to the community that supports me and also as an attempt to raise the level of consciousness in each person as they entered into a relationship with me, by taking a brick with them and participating in the experience.” ~ Josh Copus
Josh’s bricks are building community. They’re getting around. There’s one in Ireland, another in Japan, and a number of them have found their way to different parts of this country. My blogger friend Naomi received one recently. She was surprised to discover that it was delivered without packaging and with her name and address written directly on its surface. “My post woman asked me why I was receiving a brick in the mail...LOL...” Naomi later emailed me to say.
Post notes: The italicized text is excerpted from an article Josh wrote for “The Log Book,” an International Wood-fired Ceramics Publication. For more information on Josh and his work, go HERE and scroll down. Check out Ronni Bennett’s Elder Story Telling HERE. The guest post features a recent Loose Leaf Post, “From First Holy Communion to Community Croning.”
The following aired as a WVTF radio essay on June 15th.
“Mom, what do you want to be when you grow up?” My son Josh asked me once when he was a little boy.
I smiled and indulged him with an answer, “Probably a farmer.”
Both Josh and his younger brother Dylan regularly gave thanks to the farmers when we shared what we were grateful for around the dinner table. Although we didn’t come from a farming background, it was considered a noble vocation in our little family, which is why it seems fitting that Josh has grown up to be a farmer of sorts.
He harvests clay from the land. His market crop is the pottery he creates. With his homemade treadle wheel he makes pots and fires them with wood in a hand built kiln.
Born in Texas and raised in the Mountains of Virginia by a mother from Massachusetts and a father who was born in England, there was really no telling what direction Josh might take in life. I’m not surprised that he’s an artist. He’s been making art since he was old enough to hold a crayon, but the farming connection is one I’ve only recently fully recognized.
Living in the country now, outside of Asheville North Carolina, Josh is a good-old-boy with a twist. In his beat-up truck, he hauls clay instead of manure, bricks instead of animal feed. He carries a racquet for racquetball on the rifle rack in the truck cab. He’s currently building a kiln, the way a farmer might build a barn. He lives in a trailer, but it’s an Airstream called “the land yacht” that looks like a spaceship and has a disco ball hanging from the middle.
“The house is gone,” he told me over the phone the other day. He was referring to the old house on his property that he and some friends recently took down and salvaged for parts.
“You had the bonfire? Did you have friends over to help?”
“Yeah, the Volunteer Fire Department, and now I’m a member,” he said.
“You’re a fireman!?” I asked. "Are they going to train you?"
“I know something about fire, mom,” he reminded me.
After we hung up I remembered that when Josh was four years old he wore a yellow thrift shop slicker, rubber boots, and a red plastic fireman’s hat for weeks at a time. I pulled out the article titled “Building Community” that Josh had recently written for The Log Book, a pottery magazine. In it he described how fire was what first sparked his interest in woodfiring pottery. He wrote: I was mesmerized by the fire – the way it moved through the kiln, its long flames pushing their way through the waves with a velocity that bordered on violence, yet contained a sensitivity that left nothing disturbed.
Okay, a fireman makes sense; he works with fire everyday, but it also makes sense for another reason.
Many of us here in the rural county of Floyd are transplants – artists, crafters, musicians, herbalists, organic farmers – who dropped out of the mainstream to live a country lifestyle in community with others of like mind. During the 70’s and 80’s when the influx first began, locals and newcomers were like two distinct and separate communities. Since then, there’s been a more integration.
It was the kids of the Floyd alternative community who first paved the way for a meeting of the cultures. It wasn’t an easy thing to do and many of them felt like outsiders when they finally made the move from home-schooling (or The Blue Mountain School, our parent-run-cooperative) to public school. Josh and his home-schooled peers had a tight knit community of their own. They were proud of their upbringing, but they also knew the sting of being considered different. Eventually they earned the respect of the local community as they excelled in sports, acted in high school plays, dated local kids, worked at high school jobs, and became salutatorians and valedictorians of their classes.
Josh’s roots are diverse, but he’s grounded in the Appalachian Mountains, the bio-region that includes his childhood in Virginia and his current home in North Carolina. I’m not surprised he’s on the volunteer fire department in the rural town where he lives and belongs. Once he gets more settled, he’ll grow a good garden, and maybe even have a goat and some chickens.
Photos: 1. Josh at home. 2. Josh and girlfriend, Anna, working. 3. Burning down the house. 4. Josh on the tractor. See "The Tearing Down the House photos HERE.Scroll down HERE for more posts about my Asheville Potter Son.
1. This is the mailbox that used to belong to a man named Cleopis whose nickname was “Cope,” and it now belongs to my son, Josh Copus, whose nickname is also “Cope” (dog).
2. This is the old house that Josh un-built.
3. This is the crew that helped Josh un-build the old house.
4. This the part of the house un-building where my husband who was helping un-build the house said, “See, how easy it is to make a sunroom, Colleen.”
5. This is the intermission part of the house un-building where burgers were eaten and refreshments were enjoyed.
6. This is the end of the first day of the old house un-building where metal was sorted, plastic recycled, and 2x4s were saved. A follow-up de-nailing party is planned.
Post Notes: See the Before and After video clips HERE and HERE, taken at the start and end of "Day I" of salvaging the old house on Josh’s 2 acre creek front property in Madison County, North Carolina. The materials from the old house will eventually be transformed into a pottery studio, kiln, and a new house. In 2006 Josh won the Windgate Fellowship Award and received $15,000 to further his exploration into using local materials in ceramics and for the construction of a kiln. He recently had a story published about his Building Community project HERE. You can read about it HERE. Tearing Down the House Party! is HERE.
These are the stats: 96 beers, 12 pounds of hamburger, 8 meatless patties, 9 tomatoes, 2 blocks of cheese, 24 buns, 30 best friends, 1 videographer, 1 band, and 2 dance performances. The whole house is coming down in one day. Siding, roof, and floors. We’ll salvage what we can. The rest: We’re gonna burn it.
So goes the list I took down verbatim from a phone conversation I had with my Asheville potter son Josh this past Friday night. I was going to be working all weekend doing respite foster care, so would miss the “fun and a little bit of dirty work.” But my husband, Joe, who bought Josh a sledge hammer for Christmas, headed out for the three hour drive to Josh’s two acres to be a crew leader. The old house on the property wasn’t worth saving. A new house will eventually take its place. 
Since his days as a little boy with his teddy bear ninja army, to his love for the Red Sox and the big clay dig in the fall of 2005, my son, Josh
Copus, aka Josh Circus, has been keeping stats. Since the “After Fool’s Day Parade Party” where Josh took to the street wearing a suit that made him look like the Riddler, to the Drury Fest, which involved him in a gorilla suit and 90 people tubing down a river, Josh has been producing events.
I sent two cameras with Joe. I hope he can capture a small part of this bigger than life occasion.
As of yesterday, my Asheville Potter son who loves the Red Sox is the proud owner of a green folder full of papers with lawyer “language” that says he owns 1.8 acres of land in Madison County, North Carolina. He bought the land from a man named Rob, an artist who appreciates Josh’s art, who lives on adjoining land, and who has gone out of his way to offer guidance to Josh and help make this a reality.
“Was Rob there?” I asked.
“Yes, he brought me some eggs and then when the lawyer left the room we stole some pens,” Josh answered.
Spoken like a true Floyd boy.
Post note: Josh will soon begin construction of a pottery studio and kiln with the Windgate Fellowship money he was awarded. Currently, he’s living on Rachel and Annabelle’s sun porch while renovating what he calls “The Yacht," an Airstream trailer which he’ll live in during construction. You can see some of Josh’s work HERE and read more HERE.
I never know what I’m in for when I call my Asheville potter son Josh on the phone. Last year when I called expecting him to be home some of my calls were routed to Canada, New York, Arizona, and South Carolina. Once when he answered his phone he told me he was in New Jersey. “What?” I said incredulously.
He usually explains that he’s at a ceramics or a wood firing convention, building a kiln somewhere, assistant teaching, presenting a slide show or otherwise on an adventure.
So we talk for a while, me in Virginia and him in New Jersey, and then he says: “Gotta go now, mom. My bus stop is coming up.”
“What? Now you’re on a bus?”
Another time this past year when I called him, his answering machine picked up and reported that his cell phone had fallen in the toilet and that he wouldn’t be returning calls until he got a new one. Then there was the call about his car being stolen while he was at a restaurant eating breakfast.
A few days ago I called him and got this report: “I’m living out of 5 boxes on Annabelle and Rachel’s porch.”
I knew he was moving out of the loft warehouse apartment where he was living in the back of his Clay Space Studio Co-op, and that he was renovating an Air Stream trailer to live in while he built a kiln, pottery studio, and house on his recently purchased property.
“It’s good practice for living in the trailer,” he assured me before adding, “I’m getting ready to go to Louisville, Kentucky now …”
Photo: The above photo is a self portrait painting Josh did, which includes a time-line of photographs from various stages in his life. The last time I was visiting him, it was hanging in the doorway of his warehouse loft apartment. I said, “But Josh the 3rd one from the end isn’t even you.” He laughed and told me who it was but I can’t remember now. Josh and some of his friends were recently filmed dancing for a video shoot, the photographs of which are HERE. Josh and Rachel are swing dancing in frame number 13, 22, and 7 from the end.
The following originally appeared in the Floyd Press on January 11, 2007.
A group of 40 Floyd Countians gathered together on a recent Wednesday night to view Josh Copus’s “Building Community” slide show presentation, which aptly took place in the Community Hall room of the Jacksonville Center for the Arts. After two different laptops were unable to handle the file size of Josh’s power point presentation those in attendance pooled their problem-solving skills in a display of community spirit to get the show up and running. During the 20 minute delay, impromptu humorous stories about Josh’s years growing up in Floyd were volunteered by audience members. Some wandered over to the Hayloft Gallery to see the home-schooler’s art show on display. Others lent a hand in transporting a desk top PC from a downstairs office, which proved to have enough processing power to run the show. The slides were chosen by Josh to highlight his research grant findings into using local materials in ceramics and his recent Bachelor of Fine Arts Thesis Show at the University of North Carolina in Asheville, where the Floyd High School graduate now lives.
Considering the standing ovation given at the end of Josh’s 90 minute presentation, it was obvious that the initial wait was well worth what followed. Josh’s high school drama background and comedic timing, his enthusiasm, and his insights into art made for an entertaining evening. Not only was it informative in outlining the creation of pots from the ground to the gallery, but the human and historic aspects of Josh’s education, his appreciation of natural resources, and his respect for the ceramic tradition made his story especially worth hearing.
The slide show began with a recounting of Josh’s initial research, funded by an undergraduate research grant and conducted with a fellow potter. The research led to the excavation of clay from tobacco farmer Neil Woody’s field in North Carolina, which Josh described in depth in a recent Studio Potter magazine article. It also involved the collection and use of other local natural resources, non-industrial processed materials, and trips to local mines for feldspar, limestone, and granite dust, all of which were used in making pottery glazes.
His Thesis Show was the culmination of four months of intensive labor, which started with the digging of wild clay and continued “up until the moment the show opened,” Josh joked. Although his finished pots were exhibited, the focal point of the Thesis Show was a 15 x 18 foot brick wall installation constructed out of handmade wild clay bricks. The wall tied into the theme of “Building Community” because the bricks, fired at varying temperatures to create a rainbow effect, were stamped with the word INDIVIDUAL, symbolizing the strength that each one has when joined together as a whole. “A single brick has relatively no power or usability. Bonded together they create a community. The wall visually shows that force of strength,” Josh told us.
A cube shaped arrangement of bricks stamped with the word COMMUNITY provided an interactive compliment to the wall installation. Throughout the course of the BFA Show people rearranged the COMMUNITY bricks into interesting shapes, some of which were photographed and included in the slide show. The COMMUNITY bricks were also available for people to take home. Most had Josh sign them before they did.
“Building kilns initiated my interest in bricks,” Josh, who has built several kilns and has assisted in building half a dozen others, told the group of Floyd Countians. He prefers wood fired kilns over electric or gas ones because wood is a common local resource, but also because it’s necessary to do wood firing with others, which further builds community. “Some firings took three days of constant tending. You can’t do them alone,” Josh said as he introduced us to one of his kiln crews by way of a photo.
Another component of the BFA Show, Josh explained, was an installation of bricks, titled “With Respect to My Influences.” The bricks in that installation were stamped with the names of people who were influential in Josh’s development as artist, including those of some well known Floyd potters, such as Jayn Avery (who opened the Floyd slide show with a warm introduction), Tom Phelps, Ellen Shankin, Rick Hensley, Donna Polseno, and Silvie Granatelli. Tom Phelps received a round of applause when Josh spoke of the mentoring influence that Tom had on his life and the lives of other young people in our community.
As Josh’s mother, I thought I was well informed about what Josh was up to, but after viewing the slide show and hearing the presentation, I realized I had gaps in my understanding, which the slide show helped to fill. Josh opened my eyes more fully to the role clay has played in human survival when he stated that the conceptual basis for his BFA Show was a pipe, a vessel, and a brick and then explained the significance of early ceramics: a pipe moves water and sewer, a vessel stores and transports food, and brick is used to make shelter. I was amazed to learn how many times each of his homemade bricks had to be handled in the making, drying, rounding of the edges, stamping, stacking, firing, loading, unloading, sorting by color, and installing of them. It made me appreciate his efforts to recreate the COMMUNITY brick installation at the Jacksonville presentation, making those bricks available for the slide show attendees to take home, as he had for those at his BFA Show.
What impressed me most about the slide show was seeing Josh’s dedication to making most everything he needed. The photos he shared showed how the back of his Asheville Clay Space Studio looked like a clay processing factory, with a brick making machine that extruded clay out in long lengths, a hand built shed, clay screening and drying racks, and more. Even Josh’s living space has been a renovation of his own making. For the past few years he has lived in a loft in the back of the warehouse that houses his studio, the front portion of which is a cooperative space where Josh and other potters work. But he won’t be there for long. He recently purchased a few acres of creek front property outside of Asheville and will soon be building a pottery studio, a wood-fired kiln, and a home there. This past summer he won a $15,000 Windgate Fellowship Award through the Center for Craft, Creativity and Design to fund the construction of the kiln and to further his exploration into using local material in ceramics.
Josh concluded the slide show at the Jacksonville Center with a photo of him at his treadle wheel, a pottery wheel that is powered by a foot kicking motion. “I value my treadle wheel more because I made it myself and with the help of my friends. I think that value is translated into my finished work,” he said. ~ Colleen Redman
For more information about Josh’s work, he can be reached at copiousplus@hotmail.com or 1-828-242-2368. You can read more about his Thesis show HERE and about his clay excavations HERE and see some of his pots for sale at an Asheville Gallery HERE.
Photos: 1. Josh signs a Community brick at the Jacksonville Center slide show presentation. 2. Wall installation in the background at Josh’s UNC Thesis Show. 3. Fired bricks and pots stacked in the UNC kiln for the “Building Community” show.
A few days after my son Josh’s UNC BFA Thesis show, the culmination of 4 months of intensive labor of making pots and bricks for a massive wall installation, his car was stolen. His car being stolen was the event that caused me to realize (and mention in an earlier post) that when someone lives large, they also cast a large shadow. The above is a shot of the front seat of my husband Joe's truck, evidence that Josh was home for Christmas and borrowing Joe's truck. The Cheez-its are the biggest clue – everyone who knows Josh knows he love Cheez-its – but the hat, pottery mug, CDs, fortune cookies, Yuengling beer (unopened), and Floyd phone book are also signs that Josh was in the house, in operating mode.
Josh’s car was found on the same day that it was stolen, but it no longer worked and some valuable items had been stolen from it. Because his mechanic was on Christmas break and could not work on the car, Josh arranged for a ride with a friend so that he could be home for Christmas. After getting new brakes put in and cleaning out a few old mouse nests, we presented Josh with our old farm truck, probably the largest Christmas present he’s ever gotten. It’s not the most reliable transportation, but it got him home and a truck will come in handy for building a kiln and a house, next up on Josh’s agenda.
Before: This is Josh at about 4 years old in our home in Tomball, Texas, showing off his building construction. The blocks were wood remnants from a house site Josh’s father was working at that I collected and sanded for Josh to play with.
After: The focal point of Josh’s BFA Thesis Show, “Building Community” was a brick wall installation (pictured behind the jumbled construction). The bricks were hand made by Josh with wild dug clay and each was stamped with the word INDIVIDUAL, symbolizing the strength that each has when bonded together as a whole. The picture is of Josh beside the interactive compliment to the wall, a cube of bricks stamped with the word COMMUNITY on them. The COMMUNITY bricks were available for people to move around and take home (the photo is of the final shape the cube of bricks took). When Josh was in Floyd for Christmas, he presented a slide show for the Floyd community at the Jacksonville Center on his adventures with wild clay, the BFA Thesis Show, and how growing up in Floyd has affected his art. An account of this exciting and unusual evening is coming up later in the program...
1. Favorite low-tech Christmas gift given to Josh by Colleen: A manual Smith Corona typewriter.
2. Or maybe it was the Christmas ball of lights made out of plastic cups that I got in the Christmas Eve Yankee swap and called “Steve Martin’s Brain.”
3. Pens appear out of nowhere in my house like socks disappear in the laundry.
4. And my bras lose their elasticity like gum loses flavor.
5. One of the strangest pens that recently showed up says “Select Sire Power.” Another one advertises online therapy at mytherapy.com.
6. When I quickly click through and view the pictures stored on my memory stick in my digital camera it looks like animation.
7. I once asked my siblings why they thought the letter E on my keyboards always wore off faster than other letters. “Do you think it’s because I have so many E’s in my name?” I asked. My brother Danny’s answer to my question was this: “Too many E-mails.”
8. My blogging niece Chrissie lost her two front teeth (partials) a couple of days before Christmas. I reminded her of the old song “All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth.” I think she’s planning to write a blog entry with that title.
9. My Asheville potter son Josh wanted a manual typewriter for typing entries for his collage journals because he likes the retro font it creates. 
I love the sound of typing on a manual typewriter and the bell when the line finishes. It sounds like a writer’s jazz.
10. I once met a poet in Dupont Circle in Washington DC who would type you a poem with your name in it for a dollar.
11. I love the hand knitted purple scarf that my husband gave me for Christmas so much that I wanted to book a flight to Boston and go visit my family just to show it off.
12. WHAT are you looking at?
13. HERE is a virtual typewriter with a message typed on it for you.
Thursday headquarters is here. My other 13's are here. View more 13 Thursday’s here.
Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone. ~ Picasso
Watching my son’s push to pull-off his BFA graduation show reminded me of his years as a high school wrestler. Seeing him compete and place in state wrestling competitions, I witnessed how much heart and discipline he could muster. I respected his efforts and was amazed by what he was able to call up from within.
But Josh’s wrestling years also came with a price. His trainings were rigorous, and he starved and dehydrated himself to make weight, to the point that I sometimes feared he was killing himself. As a mother, what I saw Josh sacrifice for the love of a sport, horrified me at the time. Looking back, I now realize that the drive boys have to create a rite of passage into manhood sometimes takes a little boot camp of some kind or another. Males in particular seem to need to see what they’re made of by testing their limits.
A couple of weeks before we made the trip to Asheville for Josh’s show, I called my younger son Dylan, who got married this past summer, to see if he and his wife would be making the trip as well. I encouraged him to go by saying, “you know, this is like Josh’s version of a wedding,” and I began to view it that way. It was a life milestone that needed to be marked, one that involved intense planning and the stress that often comes with that.
Josh’s graduation from the University of North Carolina with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree is the culmination of over 7 years of school and life education. His formal art education (ceramics in particular) began with a 2 year enrollment at Warren Wilson College, was followed by graduation from Haywood Tech Community College, included a few stints at Penland School of Arts (both as student and teacher’s assistant), and a trip to England to meet studio potters that Josh wanted to learn from. Besides his emotional investment and commitment to making art, to put his Thesis Show together catering had to be arranged, invitations sent out, events and performances planned. Josh hosted family and friends in town for the weekend. He hired a band (or got someone to) for the after show party, and even helped clean up the party mess the next day.
Just a week before the show he was working so hard – still firing bricks and last minute show pots, working on his massive 12 x 20 foot wall installation – that he ended a phone conversation I had with him by saying, “my hands are being held together with super glue.” I knew from that comment that he was probably living on coffee and little sleep in order to accomplish the monumental undertaking, of which he refused not to give his all to.
As an adult in the Asheville art world, the perseverance Josh learned in those formative years while wrestling has served him well, and I couldn’t be more proud of him. The result of his recent efforts were impressive, inspiring, and innovative. But although his show was a wonderful success and we all had fun being in Asheville, it was obvious to me that he was stretched thin. 
To accomplish what he had, his life not related to his art was put on hold. Even his own basic needs were compromised for his one-pointed goal. There were a few Van Gogh-like mania moments during the show, as well as some signs of burn-out after it was over.
On the last day that Joe and I were in Asheville, we had breakfast with Josh at a local café. His brothers, his father, and the Floyd hometown contingency had left the afternoon before. It was the morning after the first night in weeks that Josh had gotten a reasonable amount of sleep, but he was still distracted after functioning at full throttle for days and asking himself from minute to minute ‘what needs to be done next?’
“Do you have to read the newspaper right now?” I asked. He was on his first of six cups of coffee. He laughed as he answered, “no.” Putting the paper aside, he shifted in his chair a few times, let his eyes dart around the patio to take everything in, before stopping … to take a deep breath.
Our eyes met, and after a few seconds of looking and really seeing each other, we both welled up with tears. Nothing needed to be said.
Photos: 1. Family friend Karl, Josh, and my husband Joe sharing a moment and enjoying the view near where Josh recently purchased a couple of acres of land. 2. Potter son’s hands holding a warm cup of coffee. Scroll down to learn more about Josh’s art or go HERE.
The scene at my son Josh's BFC Thesis show at UNC Asheville this past weekend was a photographer's dream, with various shaped ceramic pots casting shadows in the warm reflective glow of Josh's 12 foot tall and 20 foot wide brick wall installation. There was a steady flow of people milling about throughout the 6-10 p.m. exhibit show, titled Building Community.
The bricks were made by Josh and then fired at varying temperatures, creating a rainbow-colored effect. The ones in the wall installation were stamped with the word "individual," representing the strength and potential they have when joined together as a whole. Bricks with the word "community" stamped on them were signed by Josh and available for people to take home. Still others stamped with the names of those who have had an influence in Josh's art were stacked in arrangements that held exhibit pieces.
A vacuum cleaner (on shag setting) stood high on a brick stand, looking whimsical and just slightly out of place if you didn't read the words that accompanied it: "Art doesn't happen in a vacuum." Two square plots of clay were displayed. One was growing lush kelly green grass on it and had a ceramic piece shaped like a house off to the side. "Can you mow it with scissors?" I asked my friend Amy.
Eventually Josh's collage journals displayed on a shelf got spread out on the floor. People leafed through them while munching on cilantro shrimp salad, feta roll-ups, guacamole dip, and more.
I got to shake Neil Woody's hand and meet his wife Peggy. Neil is the tobacco farmer whose field Josh excavated wild clay from. He seemed to enjoy being a part of the process and seeing what Josh created from that "old dirt" he couldn't grow anything on.
There was a contingency from Floyd who also attended. Family friend, Karl, sold pieces out of what we called "Karl's Cabinet." The idea was to counter the "no touch" art gallery policy and to have some pieces available that could be handled, purchased and taken home without waiting for the week long show to be over.
There were even tricks involving fire for the performance part of the evening. Using a long two-pronged pole (the machine), Josh pulled out a total of 8 pinch bowls from the fired-up kiln that was just outside the gallery door. The bowls came out red hot and translucent and when placed on a board they burst into flames. As one bowl cooled down another arrived, making for a colorful and lively display. The finished piece was purchased by a collector who told my husband that he valued it particularly because he witnessed Josh create it.
After the bowls cooled down, the crowd, who were bundled up in winter coats, hats, and scarves, watched as Josh and another potter poured hot liquid glass into one of the bowls. They expressed their enthusiasm with oohs and ahhs and sometimes applause. The name Josh Circus, coined by Josh's friend's little boy who couldn't pronounce his real name, Josh Copus, never seemed more appropriate. Don't they need a permit to do this, I was thinking?
Then it was off to the after show dance party at the Flood Warehouse Gallery (across from Josh's Clay Space studio) to unwind and to celebrate Josh's hard work and the successful evening. (That's Josh in the forefront swing dancing.)
Post note: You can read more about Josh and his art HERE.
I really like to drink coffee beverages, wear sunglasses, eat sandwitches, stay up late, wake up early, and pray that the Red Sox win the World Series. Some of the things I collect are waterfalls, interesting looking bricks, and pieces of trash that can be transformed into art. I make pottery for a living and try to make time everyday to cook food, practice yoga, and work in my journals. I have a motorcycle that doesn't run and sometimes I write dumb poetry about it. I also have a car that I don't like driving much, except if it is through a huge puddle. ~ Josh’s “About Me” online bio.
My son Josh is a serious artist, but he has an unserious side to his nature. Or maybe I should say “he’s seriously unserious when it comes to play.” Since he was a little boy, he hasn’t met a costume he doesn’t like, to the point where I have referred to him as “a closet super hero.” He hasn’t let being an adult dampen his dramatic fun-making.
His latest nickname, Josh Circus, coined by a friend’s little boy who couldn’t pronounce Josh’s real name (Josh Copus), actually fits him to a tee. He likes to host events (which back in my day would have been called “happenings”). One such event revolved around elaborate robot costumes, another, the Drury Fest, marked a friend’s departure into the Peace Corp and involved over 90 people tubing on a river and a costume on Josh’s part. In this case, the costume was a gorilla suit, which worked well for posing for photo-ops while carrying a girl in a bikini.
Although Josh is a potter by trade, he also hasn’t met an art medium he doesn’t like. 
While he appreciates the masters, he’s just as inspired by Maxfield Parrish or Dr. Seuss. He likes Graffiti and has 4 desks in his warehouse apartment to facilitate his three ring circus of art. Besides clay, his primary art outlet is making collage journals, some pages of which were exhibited in an art show this past summer.
Apparently, my son’s name has been verbified. Some of his friends have taken to using the term “josh copus” interchangeably with the word “collage.” One, who recently saved a scrap of something and then pasted it down in her journal, announced to another friend, “I josh copused it.”
I wonder, if “josh copusing” something means to collage it, or to collect scraps of garbage that other people wouldn’t even notice, what might “josh circus” mean? And what would your name mean if it became a verb?
Post note: My son has his own category side bar here at Loose Leaf. You can read more about his artistic adventures HERE.
“Why didn’t you tell us that Josh was being interviewed for US Airways Magazine?” my sister-in-law’s message on our answering machine said. Her husband was flying from Missouri to the east coast when he picked up the magazine in the seat pocket in front of him, I learned when I called her back. Flipping through the pages, he found himself reading an article about Asheville, North Carolina, written by Stephen Poole. He was stunned to come across this about my son: “During one of the biannual Studio Strolls you might meet Josh Copus (Wedge Building), an aspiring potter who, after seeing a farmer excavating a field, wound up with tons of free clay and a new friend.”
Josh, a twenty-seven-year-old BFA student at University of North Carolina in Asheville, has been getting a lot of attention for his work with local clay. In 2005 he and his fellow potter, Matt Jacobs, won an Undergraduate Research Grant titled “Recreating Tradition: Observing the Effects of Local, Non-industrially Processed Ceramic Material on the Work of Contemporary Ceramists.” The grant led to a presentation of their findings at last year’s National Conference on Undergraduate Research and a show, organized by Josh and Matt, at Asheville’s American Folk Gallery. The show featured pottery made with local materials by North Carolinian studio potters and those from as far away as Japan and England. More recently, Josh was awarded a $15,000 Windgate Fellowship Award to fund the construction of a wood-fired kiln and to further his exploration into using local materials in contemporary ceramics.
The US Airways mention of Josh was the least of the press he’s recently received for his work. He was also cited in the current issue of “Ceramics Monthly,” a local potter who subscribes to the magazine informed me. Another magazine, “Studio Potter” recently published “Neil Woody’s Turkey Creek Field,” a story penned by Josh that describes his unlikely friendship with the farmer whose land he had excavated clay from.
“Neil Woody is a sixty-year-old tobacco farmer in Leicester County of western North Carolina with a drainage problem in one of his fields. Last year, Neil farmed over a hundred acres of burly tobacco but didn’t harvest a stick out of the bottom field that runs along Turkey Creek,” Josh’s story begins.
Working on a tip from a local rock hound, Josh and Matt drove out to Turkey Creek in search of “wild” clay. What they found was a ditch with huge chunks of dark blue clay lining the bank by the road. Apparently, the farmer who owned the adjacent fields had dug into the sedimentary clay in an effort to divert heavy rains from flooding his crops. They left with a truck load of the roadside clay and the name of farmer, which they learned from a neighbor passing by who pulled over to lend a hand.
According to Josh, using the wild clay was an enlightening experience that inspired the creation of new pots. He and Matt stretched their prized stash of it for as long as they could, but eventually it ran out. “It took a long time to get up the nerve to call Neil … The Woody’s have been living in Leicester County for six generations, so there are a lot of them in the phone book,” Josh wrote in the Studio Potter article.
Making the call, Josh arranged to meet Neil Woody to ask about harvesting clay from his field. He was encouraged to discover that not only was Neil receptive to the idea, but that Neil had a reference for handmade pottery, as he had inherited a small collection of folk pots from his grandmother and had fond memories of her using them.
“When I showed Neil a pot made out of the clay from his tobacco field, I caught a glimpse of the potential that pots have to impact people’s lives. He held it as a potter would, turning it over in his hands and touching it like someone with an insider’s appreciation for how it was made. He didn’t just look at it, either; he really saw it and he knew where it came from,” Josh explained.
After a couple of small shovel digs that were beginning to feel invasive to the land, Josh approached Neil to ask about a full scale excavation. He describes Neil’s response this way: “Now Josh, you know you’re going to pay those boys to pull that stuff out of there. You don’t need to pay me nothing; you leave my field in better shape than you found it and we’ll be all right.” He liked what we were doing and didn’t feel the need to exploit the situation. I also think he knew his eventual payment would come. He really liked our pots and we had every intention of giving him anything that caught his eye,” Josh wrote.
The Studio Potter article goes on to outline the three day excavation of eleven dump-truckfuls of clay at a cost of $3,800, but the main theme of the story is the one Josh tells about the bond that was forged between him and Neil, based on their mutual appreciation of the land and what it provides, as this excerpt illustrates: “What is truly unique is the experience: my friendship with the Woody family and the feel of the clay through my hands. Neil offered me an education in clay beyond the classroom. He told me stories about the land and the people who lived on it. Instead of just talking about the physical properties of clay, Neil taught me about its history.”
Neil and Josh’s friendship is ongoing. Josh says he looks forward to Neil’s visits to his pottery studio. “He never calls; he just stops by whenever he is in the neighborhood, which happens frequently, especially during auction time at the tobacco warehouse just down the street. He just walks in and says, “Show me something you made out of that old dirt,” the story concludes.
Currently Josh is busy putting together his BFA Thesis Show, which is entitled “Building Community” and involves a wall installation of homemade bricks. The bricks are fired by Josh at varying temperatures creating a rainbow of clay color. Each one is stamped with the word “individual,” symbolizing the formidable strength that each separate individual has when joined together as a whole. There will be other bricks stamped with the word “community” available for visitors to take home, as well as a display of Josh’s pottery.
My husband and I are making plans to attend the show, scheduled for December 8th at UNC in Asheville. “Will Neil Woody be there?” I asked Josh the last time we spoke on the phone.
“Yes, of course,” he answered.
“Good,” I said enthusiastically. “I’m looking forward to shaking his hand.” ~ Colleen Redman
Post Notes: You can read more about Josh's work with wild clay and view photos HERE, HERE, and HERE. Or you can visit my sidebar catergory, Asheville Potter Son.
“Sports are important,” my Asheville potter son, Josh, in town for his brother’s bachelor party, said to me as I was trying to get a non-sports word in edgewise. “It has stopped wars ... and has started some too.” He continued.
He, Floyd County Soccer MVP in the year 1997, went on to tell me about a group of Senegalese in Asheville who rejoiced to the point of crying when their soccer team claimed victory over France, their country’s former colonial power, in a World Cup series match.
I was thinking about how when the Red Sox won the World Series after an 80 year slump; it was more than a game to everyone in my family, including Josh who has rooted for them as the underdog since he was a little boy. “How do you know these people from Senegal?” I asked him.
“They all worked at the gas station near my house then,” he answered without looking at me because his eyes were on the TV.
This year Angola rose from the ruins of civil war and poverty to play in the World Cup, bringing a boost of hope and confidence to their entire country, I learned from Josh.
“Yes, sports can be a good way to express nationalism without violence,” I said, and we both agreed.
It also brings men together, I thought as I snapped a picture of Josh and my husband, Joe, watching the game together.
Post Notes: For some further reading, check out “Significant Moments in Sports and War.” “Sports Metaphors Trivialize War,” is also interesting.
“I’m always picking stuff up to use in my journals, scraps of garbage that other people don’t even notice.” ~ My son, Josh.
When my husband, Joe, and I were in Asheville this past April, visiting my potter son, Josh, Joe scribbled some phone numbers on a piece of mail that he found in my car and then left it by mistake in Josh’s studio. It was a Red Cross CPR card, reflecting my most recent training, something I need for respite foster care work I do, and something I wouldn’t look too kindly on doing over. I asked Josh to look for it and to please mail it back.
Getting mail from Josh can be memorable event. The last time he sent me something in the mail I wanted to savor his handmade envelope art and was hesitant to rip it open. “It’s like getting a greeting card that you don’t even have to open. You could just send out envelopes like that with nothing inside them,” I told him.
Not only does it appear that Josh’s collage art is spilling over into postcards, by the looks of his most recent mailing to me, he has taken my advice to keep making envelope art to heart.
Inside the decorated envelope, fashioned from a page of art history notes, was a photo of an egg in a frying pan. Next to it a notebook was opened to a message that read: Hey Josh, I was in your class this fall and I was wondering if you have any (pottery) seconds for sale. On the back of the collaged photo, in Josh’s handwriting, the note to me said: Just letting you know that breakfast is still my favorite meal.
The CPR card was also enclosed, but it seemed dwarfed and insignificant amongst the rest.
Is art a luxury or a necessity? The mother of invention?
“I don’t even have any regular envelopes,” Josh later told me.
In the spring of 2000 when my Asheville potter son, Josh was 20 years old, he came across an old journal he had kept when he was 16.
“Everything in it was silly. I hated it,” he said, in answer to the question I posed ‘when did you start journal collaging and why?’
“I wondered who was writing all this ridiculous stuff,” he continued, “but I also knew it was an important part of my history that I couldn’t just throw away.”
That first journal became Josh’s prototype to so many others. He explained how he covered up its contents with collage, in an attempt to disguise what was embarrassing, leaving only little snippets of the original text as hints into that time. 
“At that point, I had a sketchpad, was keeping a photo album, and a journal. I combined them all into only one book to carry around,” he explained.
“What a relief to put everything in one place!” I responded.
Josh went on to describe other details that fostered his interest in collage journal art. One particularly striking experience was when he discovered Dan Eldon’s published collage journal (Dan was a young photo-journalist who was killed tragically in Africa). Josh was at a friend’s college graduation party when he spotted the book and immediately became was transfixed. 
“I sat down with it. People wandered over to see what I was doing, looked at it some, and then went back to the party. I never got up. I looked at it for hours,” Josh said.
“But you know, mom,” he added, “the books that you made helped …”
“What books? The homemade ones we used to make?” I interrupted. I had forgotten for a moment that I kept scrapbooks and baby books that both my boys grew up looking at.
“I was fascinated looking at the baby books you made for me and Dylan. A lot of those pages were done in collage. You were definitely outside the box. And you told us more than once about the importance of keeping a journal.” Josh reminded me.
As he spoke, I began to remember. Indeed, when Josh was 11, he and a friend traveled around the country with alternative education pioneer Jerry Mintz, and the only academic practice I demanded of him was that he keep a journal of his experiences.
“Even a shopping list is interesting to me once it’s a year or two old." Who said that? You did, mom! And now I’m always picking stuff up to use in my journals, scraps of garbage that other people don’t even notice,” Josh said.
Like mother like son? It’s true, except for the fact that when it comes to making art, Josh surpasses me by miles.
Post Notes: Collaging runs in our family here. View pages from my collage journal here. That's Josh's brother Dylan in the forefront with him looking at Josh's art scrapbook sometime in the mid 80s. Some pages from Josh's collage journals were recently featured in an art show in Winston Salem, NC.
Mid Day Update: There is an effort by local Southwestern Virginia bloggers, headed up by Marty Martin in Roanoke, to collect used ink jet cartridges and old cell phones in order to raise money for an infant who is in need a life-saving transplant. Visit Marty’s site "HERE" to learn more about it, or call him (397-0014) or John Herndon in the New River Valley (800-277-3077) to find out where you can drop these items off. I kid you not; I just finished changing an ink cartridge when I got Marty's email.
Warning: One house isn’t big enough for 3 collage artists.
All forms of record keeping interest me. Since receiving my first “Dear Diary” when I was 10 years old, I’ve gone on to keep photo albums, dream journals, baby books, and scrapbooks.
I’ve always enjoyed making collages, but when my Asheville potter son, Josh, began doing collage journals about 6 years ago, he inspired me to a new level. 
Josh has been a mad artist since the time he could hold a crayon. His collage journals have gotten so extensive that he has had to hire someone to design books that expand with use, in order to hold all the pages of his prolific and multi-media art, which on any given day might include a fortune cookie fortune, paint, photographs of photographs, receipts, or pieces of mail.
I made my first collage journal when I turned 50 as a way to consolidate a visual review of my first 50 years. Not long after that my husband made one of his own as part of an assignment for his masters in counseling program.
Now were all hooked, but Josh more than the rest of us. In his studio warehouse apartment, he has 4 desks to accommodate his art. When visiting us in Virginia, he's been known to pick us his journal and start collaging whenever the muse strikes him. When he leaves, there are always traces of his art making left behind. Besides various scraps and interesting scraps of paper, fabric or cardboard on our floors, there are drops of frozen clear epoxy on our cellar floor, and a yellow outline on our back doorstep of something Josh spray painted last year.
Photos: Me, Joe, and Josh. Notice that I am the messiest of the group. I hope to post a few pages of each of our journals in a future entry.
Like the alchemists of medieval times who sought to turn base metals into silver and gold, potters seek to transform clay into vessels of beauty and function. And they do. They dig raw material out of the ground, mix oxides into glazes, and forge their wares with fire.
There’s a fairytale quality to a potter’s life. Watching my son, Josh, work his treadle wheel, keeping it spinning with the beat of his foot while drawing-up beautiful forms from a wet lump of clay almost seems magical, as though he were spinning straw into gold like Rumplestiltskin, the Grimms’ fairytale elf.
When Josh talks about making pots his eyes light-up. He uses words like blunge, slip, and slurry, which conjure images of mystery in me. When he talks about the kiln firings and the crew mates who tend to them with him, I find myself thinking about characters from “The Lord of the Rings,” who forged weapons and rings with fire. The firings often go on all night with the potters taking alternating shifts, the thought of which makes me think of one of Josh’s favorite childhood books, “Where the Wild Things Are,” a tale of a boy’s adventurous ruckus with untamed creatures of the night. 
I’ve seen a few of the kilns that Josh uses, some of which he has helped to build. They remind me of another fairytale, Hansel and Gretel, the story of a boy and girl captured by a witch who kept them in cages, fattened them up with food, and then tried to cook them in her oven.
Recently, while my husband and I were in Asheville visiting Josh for some art events that he was involved in, he gave us a tour of a wood-fired kiln in progress. I especially thought about Hansel and Gretel and was cautious when one of the crew members, wearing a protective mask, opened the kiln door so I could peek inside, into what looked like a big oven.
The pots inside had shape-shifted into ghostly glowing figures that almost looked invisible against the furnace of fire. Once my eyes got adjusted to the sight, I could see the various sizes and shapes of the pots lined up on a rack, so hot that they were white and translucent! 
Making pots is an ancient art that hasn’t changed all that much since prehistoric times. Every firing is a ritual that links the potter with potters from days long past. Every pot in the kiln will go through a transformative creative process. There is no guarantee of how it will turn out. When the kiln cools down and the alchemist potters enter the womb-like kiln, they do so wondering, did their efforts take shape? Did the pots survive their test? Did the magic work? Is it functional? Is it art?
Let us in!
My son Josh is in the back of his clay studio sleeping in his loft. His cell phone is turned off and my husband, Joe, is trying to break in. Here’s the story that led up to the scene:
Josh has a bigger-than-life personality. Although he’s a serious artist, he’s playful and theatrical in his pursuit and expression of it, so much so that when I learned he would be presenting the results of his wild clay grant research project in a power point presentation for the National Conference on Undergraduate Research at UNC in Asheville this past weekend, I asked, “Will there be a costume involved?”
And at the Wild Clay Exhibit when I said to one of his pottery mates who was remarking about Josh’s creativity and energy… “You should have seen him as a boy…” the potter injected before I could finish, referring to Josh’s playful nature, “OH, BUT I THINK WE HAVE!” 
The culmination of months of intensive preparation for the wild clay exhibit and power point presentation were packed into two days this past weekend. In the weeks leading up to the events, Josh was going to school, writing an essay for the Studio Potter magazine about wild clay, producing two publications for the exhibits, and getting his car un-booted after receiving several parking tickets while loading and unloading pots to and from venues. In the days before the events he was functioning, admittedly, on too much coffee and too little sleep.
The conference presentation - given by Josh and his colleague Matt – was a huge success, eliciting rousing applause and even a few tears from some of us. I was particularly moved when Josh spoke of the bond that developed between himself and the farmer whose land the wild clay was excavated from because they both shared a deep appreciation for what the earth could produce.
After the last of the events, Josh was more than ready to relax and spend some time with me and Joe, who had traveled from Virginia for the occasion. He graciously gave us a daytime and nighttime tour of a kiln wood firing he was a crew member of; we attended a sunset picnic kite-flying birthday celebration for a friend of his, and dined on pasta at a downtown restaurant. 
Later that night, we headed back to the Days Inn motel where Joe and I were staying to download some photographs and to bestow a promised massage on the hardworking potter son. It was then that it was revealed or discovered that Josh had a fever!
In high school, Josh’s wrestling skills took him to state championships. Through wrestling he learned the importance of focused discipline, which sometimes included ignoring the body’s messages of fatigue until the job got done. It seems that his enthusiasm and best efforts in pulling together a major art opening featuring local and international potters who use wild clay and then doing his research presentation the next morning had taken a toll. When he finally let his guard down, it became obvious that his resistance was down as well.
He never made it out of the motel that evening. Fell asleep where he hit the bed. The next morning, he was scheduled for a 4 hour stint tending the kiln. Joe drove over to the site with him. They lined up a replacement fire keeper, and then got Josh home for some needed bed rest.
Before Joe and I left Asheville, we stopped by to check in on Josh, which is when the first posted photo was taken. Luckily, he came out before anything actually broke. And happily, I can report that Josh is well on the way to recovery.
Photos: The second photo: Josh talking with an audience member at the NCUR research presentation and art exhibit at UNCA. The third photo: Samples of local pipe clay displayed at the Wild Clay Exhibit, excavated by Josh and Matt and presented in their various stages: raw and wet, dried, kiln dried, and finished.
That’s me, a 5’ 1” mom standing on my toes to pose with my 6’2’ son, Josh, in front of a display of pots that were part of the show he was a co-curator of. The exhibit opened at Asheville’s American Folk Gallery and was the result of a grant that Josh and his colleague, Matt, received to research the influence of local materials in making pottery, a subject I recently wrote about in “A Life time Supply.” It was purposely scheduled to coincide with the National Conference on Undergraduate Research (NCUR), held at Asheville’s University of North Carolina this weekend where Josh and Matt are scheduled to present their research findings tomorrow. 
The night was a Who’s Who of Josh’s life and an opportunity for my husband and me to put names to faces. We met Josh’s peers and mentors, teachers from Penland and UNC, friends and other potters, some of whom rent space at Josh’s studio, Clay Space.
Some of the pieces displayed were ones made by a Japanese potter that Josh recently studied with. Others were from England from a potter Josh connected with during his trip to England last year. Most were made by North Carolinians like Josh and Matt, and all the pieces reflected the theme of the show, having been made with wild clay dug from the areas where the potters live.
A few pots held branches of cherry blossoms or dried grape vines. People mulled about drinking wine and eating cheese and crackers while appreciating the pottery. I talked “blogs” with the owner of the gallery, who has been thinking about starting one herself, and received compliments for and about my son. After the show we ate dinner with a potter from Josh's community who I discovered knew my cousin years ago in Massachusetts. It was warm enough to eat at an outside café. The noodles were hot and the beer cold.
Read more here…
AKA: What Does Nina Simone have to do with it?
The Background: Last Friday I posted a follow-up to an original blog entry titled “How Much is that Pot in the Window?” It was related to a pottery piece that my Asheville potter son, Josh, had displayed in the window of his “Clay Space” pottery studio; 9 pots glued to piece of wood, which was set on the ledge of his studio, not necessarily for the purpose of selling, but more to draw attention to his studio. 
“How Much is that Pot in the Window?” Last week, Josh called with the answer; “$400.” It was purchased by a private collector.
The Plot Thickens: The art collector who bought Josh’s pots glued to wood has a blog! It’s called “The Eunice Waymon Birthplace” and chronicles his efforts to restore the original home of Eunice Waymon in Tryon, North Carolina. In the time it took to click on a google search, I discovered that Eunice Waymon is Nina Simone! Of course, I knew Nina Simone was a singer and a major talent, but I didn’t know anything about her history, or the fact that she was active in civil rights, recorded several Bob Dylan songs, and sang a rendition of (my all time favorite) Suzanne by Leonard Cohen. Her webpage describes her as: "Singer, Pianist, Arranger, Composer, Honorary Doctor in Music and Humanities, High Priestess of Soul, Queen of African Rooted Classical Music. " She died in April, 2003 at the age of 70. 
But the best part of this connect-the-dots saga, is that the private collector who purchased Josh’s Clay Space window pots sent me a photo of them in their new home. Don’t they look great?!
My son, Josh, doesn’t have a webpage yet. I’m thinking maybe he needs his own category on the sidebar of my blog.
Post Note: We are heading out for some R&R to an undisclosed location that I’m hoping involves the ocean. Posting here may be erratic.
I originally posted this photo, the front window of my Asheville potter son’s warehouse studio/ living space, on January 8, and asked, “How much is that pot in the window?”
Yesterday my son called and gave me the answer; $400.
It’s all one piece (the pots are glued onto wood) and has been purchased by private collectors. I’m hoping they will let us take a picture of it in its new home, so that I can update you all on this pottery adventure.
The couple who purchased it left a comment on the original post, which I first took for spam: COPUS Assemblage. Clay and wood, 2005/2006. Private Collection, Tryon, North Carolina
Hey, does anyone else have any wares to advertise here? 
Post Note: Tomorrow is the last day to vote in the Share the Love Blog Award of which Loose Leaf is a finalists in two categories, Best Writing and Most Thought Provoking. Voting is done here. Thanks!
Enclosed in the package was a CD of photos and a small 3x3 note cut from a framing mat that read: I wish I had written you a long letter telling you how much I love you. Instead I wrote a little note that said the same thing. I love you, mom.
But I didn’t open the package until later that evening. It sat propped up on a living room coffee table like a work of art. The next day when I talked to my son on the phone, I told him how much I liked the envelope.
“You could just send out envelopes like that without anything inside them. It’s like getting a cool greeting card that you don’t even have to open,” I said.
Post Note: So, how often do people nominated for something forget to vote for themselves? Monday is the last day to vote in the Share the Love Blog Awards over at One Woman’s World.
AKA: Have Art Will Travel
My eldest son, Josh, and I share a love of art, and we especially like creating it from unlikely everyday things. When it comes to art, I’m a late bloomer. The extent of my childhood exposure to it was flour and water paste, crayons, and homemade paper dolls. In school it was drawing lollypop trees and coloring within the lines.
As an adult I worked as day care teacher whose job it was to set up art projects for children. When my sons came along they benefited from my background and, unlike me, were exposed early to a variety of art mediums. Josh especially took to art like he was born to make it, experimenting with different mediums since he was old enough to hold a…paintbrush, crayon, bottle of glue, or scissors. Today, as an adult, he’s primarily a potter, but he continues to explore his artistic expression through a wide range of mediums, such as photography, printmaking, journal collage, and street theatre. Recently, he found a new medium, and he phoned to tell me about it.
He began the conversation by saying how cool the IPOD he got with his Christmas money was before moving on to the real reason he called…to tell me about his favorite new artist's toy given to him by a friend. “A label maker! You would love this, mom!” he exclaimed.
On the same day he got the label maker, he had an art show to set up at his school. “I found the room but it was locked, so I printed out a label that said “art show” and stuck it on the door,” he said.
The story went on… When the janitor came with keys to open the room, he saw the sign and became disgruntled. “This won’t fly,” he said. “It’s going to rip the paint off the door,” he suggested as he tore the label off.
“THIS WON’T FLY,” Josh emphasized as he set up the scene for me.
After the janitor unlocked the room and left, Josh printed up a label that said THIS WON’T FLY and stuck it on the door. “And guess what? The name of the art show is now THIS WON’T FLY,” he said.
"The challenge is to do the thing you have to do because you're in love with it and can't do anything else. Not because you want to become famous or rich, but because you will be unhappy if you can't do it." - Warren MacKenzie
The following conversation took place over the phone as my son, Josh, was on his way from his home in Asheville, North Carolina, to Athens, Georgia, to visit a friend. It was inspired by the pots he had gifted us with over the holidays and was a continuation of an ongoing dialogue we’re in the midst of.
Me: Do you remember the first pot you ever made?
Josh: It was at Jayn’s studio (Jayn is a family friend and neighbor who lives on a farm community with 4 other families). Her studio was more accessible to kids than other studios in Floyd. I was 7 or 8, and it was a simple coil pot with a mug handle. I remember it wasn’t coming out the way I wanted it to, and I don’t think it ever got fired.
Me: What was your next pottery making experience?
Josh: Coach Pratt’s ceramic’s class in 11th and 12th grade. I threw more clay at the wall than at the wheel. It was a goof-off, mostly because the school didn’t have much to offer in the way of materials, but it was an introduction.
Me: What happened next?
Josh: Working with Tom Phelps was a big eye opener. I, and another friend, hung out with his son because it was the best place in town to party, and we would go into the pottery studio after hours and make stuff. Tom gave us a real opportunity. He said, “It’s cool that you guys want to make stuff, but it could be better.” His son was already making face pots, and Tom told us, “If you make more of these, I could sell them.” We didn’t expect him to sell much of the face pots we made, but when he did, it changed everything. We got serious. Soon after that, word got around and about 8 of us started working in the studio. Tom was a real mentor.
Me: When did you fall in love with pottery?
Josh: It wasn’t until Warren Wilson College. I was studying Environmental Science, and because I worked with Tom already, I got on the work study crew as an assistant in the pottery studio. I took my first ceramics course, learned to throw pots, and eventually became a teacher’s assistant. By my second year, I was waking up in the morning; I’d get my coffee and bagel and be on my way to class but find myself in the pottery studio instead. When I got an F and a D in my academic classes and 3 A’s in my art classes, I knew I had fallen in love with pottery.
Me: What keeps you faithful to it?
Josh: It’s all about the material. That’s where the interest started and that’s where it remains. I love the medium. The way it moves and feels. Clay is amazing and it always surprises me. I continue to do new stuff with the pots I make, and I can’t wait for the next clay making cycle.
Post Notes: Josh’s pottery, pictured above, is available at his Clay Space Studio in Asheville. He can be reached at copiousplus@hotmail.com or 1-828-242-2368.
What do you love to do?
This is the front window of my Asheville potter son’s warehouse studio/remodeled living space. I wonder how many web surfers searching for a certain outlawed herbal remedy will come to my site and be disappointed today?
When my Asheville potter son, Josh, comes to visit and we’re catching up, I take notes. That’s how I know that he and two other potters recently excavated 430,000 pounds of blue clay from Turkey Creek in Leicester, North Carolina. It took 3 days, 11 dump trucks and a trac-hoe, and cost $3,500 to do it. A $3,000 research grant to explore the use of local clay and a friend of Josh’s who reported seeing big chunks of it on the side of the road when a drainage ditch was being dug, all played into the discovery and acquisition of the once-in-a-lifetime lifetime supply.
"You know, ya gonna hafta pay those boys to pull that stuff out of there… You don’t pay me nothing… If you leave my field in better shape than how you find it, we’ll be alright,” the farmer who agreed to the excavation on his land said to Josh. And when they gifted him with the end result, a collection of finished ceramic pots, he understood the signifigance. His eyes widened and his face lit up with appreciation. “It don’t grow much good of nothing down that end of the field. I never would have thought it would make something as beautiful as this,” he said.
Before Photo: Josh with the excavated clay from Turkey Creek.
After Photo: Finished pots. Christmas morning. Gifts for everyone.
Post Note: A website is in the works to feature Josh's pottery, which is available at his studio "Clay Space" in Asheville, North Carolina. One can also google his name "Josh Copus" for more pottery viewing or reach him directly at copiousplus@hotmail.com or 1-828-242-2368.
“Sometimes, at art openings, the people that come to them are more interesting to look at than the actual art,” Josh Copus whispered to me at Emily Kasinecz’s September 16th opening reception at Harvest Records. “Interesting art brings out interesting people. Hopefully the people at the New American Arts Collective show will be just as fun to look at as the art too.” ~ The Asheville Disclaimer
My eldest son, Josh – the Asheville potter who loves the Red Sox – is a mad artist and has been experimenting with art mediums since he could first hold a crayon…or scissors…or paintbrush…or a hole-puncher. Fortunately, because I was a day-care teacher, whose job it was to set up art projects, before having my own kids, I knew what to expose him to.
Today, he’s primarily a ceramic artist, but he also does collage journaling, drawing, print-making and super-hero costume making. Not only that, but he can write. Back in the early 80s, when MTV was good and Josh was only about 3 years old, I had some writing published in “Mothering Magazine” and was a regular contributor to another “attachment parenting” publication called “Nurturing.” During that time, I also submitted Josh’s art, poems, recipes, stories, and quotes, many of which were also published.
Recently, on our way home from Colorado, my husband and I stopped off in Asheville to surprise Josh at an art opening. The photo above shows some of his pottery that was featured at the opening, which was the result of a grant he received to explore the use of locally harvested clay. After some visiting and hobnobbing, after some after-show sushi, and decaf at a wireless café, we picked up a copy of “The Asheville Disclaimer,” and who did we find on the front cover side-bar…Josh.
The paper is mostly a spoof on the news, but their entertainment columns are for real, as was the one Josh appeared in… Visual Arts Rummage Sale: Caravanning around Asheville with the New American Arts Collective... “I got shivers,” said Copus as we headed to Emily Kasinecz’s show at Harvest Records, where we were greeted with frozen pizza, wine and a series of deceptively minimalist black and white photos. ~ The Asheville Disclaimer
Josh is a member of the newly formed New American Arts Collective. ...Josh Copus, predominately a ceramic artist, made his screen-printing debut at the show, which seemed to be well received. “Josh is really spontaneous with his printing style and I think that gives them more impact,” said Lisa Nance. ~ The Asheville Disclaimer
Last week, when we first met up with him, he had just come from a kiln building under the direction of a renowned potter visiting from Japan. This week he’s hosting a studio potter from England who he met this past summer while visiting master potters in that country.
The boy came in with a mission. It’s fun to see how richly he’s manifesting it.
Post note: To read more about Josh's work click HERE and scroll down.
You might think me an English socialite, judging from the fact that I just attended two tea parties in one week. The first was held on my friend Katherine’s back porch and the topic of conversation was growing up Catholic. All of us in attendance were raised Catholic, and one woman had actually spent over 20 years as a nun before being guided from within to leave the convent. There were scones and jam and cream and pots of tea. The words “fire and brimstone” were used.
Then there was “high tea” at Gillies in Blacksburg where black Assam tea, strawberry shortcake, and lemon squares were partaken. The subject there was “the Downing Street Memo,” the leaked English memo which reveals that President Bush and Tony Blair had fully intended to invade Iraq, even while they were telling the public that invasion would be a last resort. The word “impeachment” was uttered, more than once.
The next day, while recovering from carbohydrate overload, I received a phone call from my Asheville potter son who loves the Red Sox. He was back from his trip to England and planned to stop by and visit me on his way home to Asheville. Not only was he speaking in a perfect English accent, he was using Cockney Rhyming Slang.
From my understanding, rhyming slang is most associated with East London and likely derived from gangsters who learned to talk in code as a way to be discreet about their activities. In the bizarro world of rhyming slang “plates of meat” mean feet, and “apples and pairs” are stairs. It would be fun and easy if that was all there was to it, but it’s not. Part of the tradition is to drop the rhyming part of the coded phrase, so that stairs would be called simply “apples.” Holy shite (Irish for you know what)! My son already uses lingo profusely…how will I ever understand him now?
Here’s an example and translation of rhyming slang that I found at The Cockney Rhyming Slang Dictionary Page: “Got my mickey, found me way up the apples, put on me whistle and the bloody dog went. It was me trouble telling me to fetch the teapots.” It means: “Got to my house (mickey mouse), found my way up the stairs (apples and pairs), put on my suit (whistle and flute) when the phone (dog and bone) rang. It was my wife (trouble and strife) telling me to get the kids (teapots and lids).
While waiting for my son to arrive, I made up a few rhyming slang phrases that I wanted to try out on him…but not before offering him a “spot of tea” (not another tea party, please), so I got the tea-set down from the cupboard, put it on the kitchen table and waited.
He arrived wearing a souvenir T-shirt that said “Mind the Gap” (that would be “watch your step” to us), and after some big greeting hugs, the subject of Cockney Rhyming Slang came up. I told him about the two tea parties I had attended, the scones and lemon squares, and then I said, “If I keep going to tea parties, I’ll end up in with a big jar." I had to translate: jar of jelly = belly. Drop the rhyme word “jelly” and jar, according to rhyming slang logic, now means “belly.”
Some Cockney Rhyming Slang made its way to this country and is still used today, such as with a wet “raspberry” kiss that you blow on the object of your affection (or your victim). The translation goes like this: raspberry tart = fart. Drop the word tart and now raspberry means fart. That’s the sound a good raspberry kiss makes.
Confused yet? If not, feel free to make up your own rhyming slang.
My son, Josh, was published by the time he was 3 years old. An article and a poem I had written appeared in “Mothering Magazine” around that time, and I was a regular contributor to "Nurturing,” a Mothering-like magazine out of Canada. I sent his poems, drawings, stories, and recipes, along with my own submissions to “Nurturing” and, much to my delight, they frequently used them.
Today, Josh is fully grown. Although he is primarily a potter, he is an artist in every sense. He has a way with lingo, lives larger than life and has stories to prove it, the kind that you couldn’t make up if you tried. I knew when I started this blog that if I ever was at a loss for what to post, I could dig into his wealth of stories and find a gem. He’s agreed to guest post a story from time to time, but because he’s nearing the end of a school semester and preparing for a 3 week trip to England after that, I don’t expect one any time soon. So I’ll relate a story he told a group of us over a sushi supper last Friday night. He calls it “The After School Special” and I’m guessing he was about 19 or 20 at the time. It still makes me shudder:
She was pretty and blonde. They were in bed, making out. They had been drinking. Things were heating up when he rolled over and his head hit something hard…metal. “What’s this?” he asked her. He was shocked to see that it was a gun. “Let me show you,” she said, grabbing it. It was loaded! And went off! “Hey, can you keep it down in there,” a friend from the other room shouted to them.
As Josh tells the story, “It blew up a shoe, and after that, I lost my license.”
I was confused. “Did you get pulled over, driving home?”
He whispered in my ear a hint of what he meant, and then I understood that HE WASN’T IN THE MOOD anymore.
He got the message loud and clear, and he was never in the mood with her again. When they ran into each other months later, she gave him the bullet as a souvenir.
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In Other News: Loose Leaf is being featured in a Showcase Carnival this week hosted at BlogCruiser. Go take a look. There are a variety of new blogs to check out with topics including everything from sex to politics.
Also: Mainstream Media and Bloggers by Juan Cole is an article worth reading. It's about the state of blogging today. Cole is an author and Professor of History at the University of Michigan.
My eldest son, Josh, loves the Red Sox, which is unusual for a Virginian living in North Carolina and has something to do with the fact that his parents come from Boston. My son has a lot of heart, which makes him a good candidate for being a Red Sox fan. It takes someone with heart to have unconditionally loved the Red Sox throughout their long and cursed losing streak.
When Josh was a little boy, I told how I had once met Carl Yastrzemski, the all-time great Red Sox player (1961 - 1983). The Yaz, as he was sometimes called back then, had come into the boutique on Tremont Street in Boston where I was working. It didn't mean that much to me, not being a sports fan myself. I was only nineteen and probably wasn't even that sure of who he was. But my son could hardly believe it was true, that I met Carl Yastrzemski. "Mum! Why didn't you get his autograph for me?!" he shouted excitedly.
"But Josh," I answered, trying to explain, "I didn't know I was going to grow up to have a boy like you!"
To view my son's pottery, google his name "Josh Copus." Website coming soon...
