Tell us a little bit about yourself. Who are you, and what do you do?

Well, I’m Roger Jamison. I’m a retired Mercer professor who studied pottery both in undergraduate school and graduate school, and right now I’m just a potter. I live north of Macon, closer to Macon than Juliette, but we get our mail through Juliette. I like saying that I’m from Juliette, ‘cause, you know, it’s sort of a romantic little town. 

I make mostly functional pots, useful things, and I fire with wood in two different kinds of kilns. One is a smaller—well, it’s a pretty big kiln by its own standards. But the smaller one is a wood-fired salt glazing kiln, and the larger one uses wood, but it’s a longer firing, and it’s based on a Japanese-style kiln called an anagama. That kiln design is probably the oldest high-temperature kiln. The style originated in China sometime before the 5th century BC. That’s the oldest kiln that they’ve excavated, but they have pots that look like they were fired in kilns that look like that.

What first got you interested in pottery?

Uh…I don’t know, exactly. I mean, my first potter experience was about fourth grade, I guess. My dad was a high school teacher, he was friends with the art guy [in our town] at the time. He brought home some clay and some little jars of glazes, and the whole family made stuff. And my mom (laughs) saved that, those few things that I made. I found them after she passed away, and we were cleaning out some of her things, so I still have some of that stuff. 

But, I didn’t really…I was sort of a science nerd in high school. I had a science scholarship to go to the University of Kansas, and I didn’t take any art in high school at all. I did sneak into the art room and make pots one or two times with a friend, but I think I only succeeded in making one thing that didn’t collapse. But, you know, it was kind of a turbulent time. There was Vietnam and, you know, “Summer of Love”, Woodstock, all that stuff was going on, and I found out that it was a lot more interesting hanging out with artists and poets than it was with the science guys. (laughs) And then I took a ceramics course and fell in love with it, and after my second course, that’s what I wanted to do.

I know you mentioned that you’re inspired by Japanese pottery. Are there any specific techniques that have helped you create more unique designs?

I started off doing a Japanese technique called raku, that is, an Americanized version of it. It’s a wood-firing process where you have a small portable kiln, and you fire things very quickly and take them out, and then in the American raku, you do a post-firing treatment that can lead to all sorts of iridescent, colorful effects. So I did that for a while, but I got disillusioned with raku because it’s not very functional. It’s rather softly fired, so it’s not particularly strong, it’s not waterproof. Basically, all you can do with it is just stick it on a shelf somewhere. I liked making it, you know, I grew up on a farm with practical people who did a lot of stuff themselves. Fixing things, building things. I like practical stuff, so I wanted to make pottery that was useful.

As far as Japanese techniques, I use some glazes, and of course, the wood-firing technique with the anagama is a Japanese technique. All glazing actually originated in Germany around the Renaissance, and it’s one of the early European high-firing techniques and glazing techniques.

I did some salt-glazing in graduate school—and undergraduate school, too, actually. The first kiln I built was a salt-glazing kiln. It wasn’t fired with wood, it was fired with diesel oil from a tank that my dad had on the farm. (laughs)  

As far as Japanese pots, I’m most interested in pots that were associated with the tea ceremony. They’re really a unique sort of style of work. They often concentrate on the accidental and the mistakes that people find beautiful.

For this exhibit, what made you and Patrick Rademaker want to work together? How did the partnership start?

(laughs) Well, I got hurt last summer or spring. I fell when I was walking my dog one night, slipped on a rock and fell on the rock and broke some bones. I was laid up for a while, so I didn’t make anything during the early summer while I was convalescing. Then, once I healed up, my back went out. I had some really severe—well, nothing that they could fix with surgery, but I was out of commission again. 

I wasn’t doing anything for a while, and Patrick, I’d known him for a little while since he’d been in town. I’d been trying to get him involved in the anagama firing because he’s studied with firing. That’s mainly what he did in school…I knew he was interested in wood-firing pots and stuff, but he was busy with the shop. He never really did anything but come to a couple of firings, so we went over to the shop one day, and he asked me if I’d be interested in having him come help me once a week. I said, “Sure, I could sure use some help.” 

So, that’s how it started. On his day off at the bagel shop, he would come over and help me move heavy stuff; I was still bothered by back problems. I said, “Why don’t you help me make pots for firing?” So we started last fall—or late summer, actually, not long after this time of year—and made pots for a fall firing that I used for the “Fire & Ice” show. We did another one in the spring [for “Fired Works”] and just did another one recently for this show. All three firings were in the smaller wood kiln, which is just a one-day firing. Well, it’s 20 hours, a very long day for one person. I used to do it when I was younger, by myself.

We managed to not be in each other’s way or get angry with each other, so I guess it was pretty good. (laughs)

I know when you guys came here to drop everything off, Patrick was talking about how you had this big, built studio in your backyard.

Well, it’s not huge, it’s about a thousand square feet, but most of it’s full of junk. Right now, there’s not a whole lot of room for two people to work in there. But, when we moved, I was still at Mercer; in fact, I had an old house over near Tattnall Park that I lived in for many years. But, I really wanted to have a wood kiln because I had built one at Mercer in ‘85, mostly for an activity for my students to be out of the classroom and do something together. Pottery’s really often a cooperative effort because not everybody has kilns, and there’s a lot of shared stuff—mixing clay, mixing glazes, firing together. It’s really common for that art form, as opposed to painters, who just go to a studio and work by themselves.

But anyway, I had a wood kiln at Mercer and I really loved it, and I had a residency out in Oregon in the mid-80’s—late 80’s—that a friend out there arranged to work at the Oregon School of Arts and Crafts for part of the summer. And I did salt-firing there, but in the meantime, I got invited to participate in an anagama firing, one of the first three that was built in the US, back in the 80’s. I was just amazed, and I decided that I wanted one. So, I started saving bricks that I could find, and the anagama is built almost entirely of salvaged bricks that I scraped up, a few at a time. Anyway, I think I may have wandered from your question. (laughs)

What keeps you motivated to create, and how do you stay inspired?

I don’t know, there’s always something to investigate. This firing, I’ve been working with trying to develop glazes that are based on natural, local materials. Stuff I can find around my yard. So, we’re using things like wood ashes from my wood stove, granite dust from one of the local quarries, and also granite dust that I just grind up from rocks in my yard, and local clays. A lot of the glazes that we’re using are wood-ash glazes that have at least partly some local material in them. So that’s my latest thing that I’m investigating. Actually, the granite dust idea was from back in the 90’s, but I hadn’t played with it for years. We did a bunch of testing at the end of last year. I have a gas-fired high-temperature kiln, too, that fires about the same temperature, so we mixed up a bunch of glazes. 

So, it’s that curiosity. You know, there’s always something better to make. The pots are never perfect when they come out. Maybe they are when I first see them, but after I live with them for a while, I start thinking, “Well, I could’ve done this differently. Maybe next time.” So there’s always that “maybe next time.”

And you’re always improving something just a little with each one that you make.

Yeah, and you know, my pottery, as I look back at it, has evolved. Or changed, anyway, I don’t know if evolution’s really the right word for it. But, you know, it has changed, and sometimes it’s gotten better, sometimes I don’t think it’s gotten better, might have gone the other way! But yeah, I guess that’s kind of what keeps me going. I mean, if I didn’t do it, I don’t know what I would do. Everybody that I know, people my age that are retired, either find something that fascinates them to keep them involved, or they just decline. You just lose it. In fact, a friend of mine, I just heard…you know, people my age are starting to die and have problems. A friend of mine, I heard yesterday, didn’t recognize his wife. She went in to help him button his shirt. That’s the kind of stuff that people my age are thinking about.

Pottery keeps me busy, it keeps me challenged. It’s physically demanding. It’s a quart, quart-and-a-half of wood to cut for one of these salt firings, most of which—well, I get half of it from my property from trees that die and things that get blown over in storms. I buy some wood from local tree services, and my neighbors give me wood sometimes. But the anagama takes much more because it’s five days of throwing wood in the kiln, probably seven or eight quarts of wood for one firing. I think there are really only a couple of anagama pots in this show because I either don’t like them or I’ve sold them. (laughs) But these are almost all from the smaller kiln. We didn’t fire the anagama this year because I just couldn’t split wood anymore. I have a great big pile of wood now that I’m gonna start splitting for our firing in the spring in the large kiln. That’s a group firing. A number of local potters, potters from around Georgia, come and help fill it and help fire it. We do six-hour shifts; that’s about as much time as anybody wants to spend throwing wood into a kiln. 

I can’t wait to see how they turn out!

Yeah, well, there’s one big jar that’s very typical of the anagamas that are in the middle of the back wall [in the gallery]. I forget what else, there’s a couple of other things from that kiln, but most of these are from the salt kiln.

Anyway, I’m grateful that Sierra [Bush] invited me to show [my work]. I had planned to do it last year, but I couldn’t because I got hurt. A show like this gives me the opportunity to mostly make smaller work for the spring and fall shows, like more tableware. This gives me a chance to do some larger forms and play with glazes and things that I might not have done.