Episode 5 – Nick DeVries

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Most of my work originates on the potters wheel, making forms based in a tradition of function and use. I enjoy balancing large areas of subtle texture and color with small additions, stamps, and details. I also enjoy the challenge of creating tight, direct, unbroken lines balanced by a bit of looseness and spontaneous gestural marks. I often work in a reductive fashion, throwing heavier forms, altering them, and then carving and shaving the pieces away to reveal the final forms. I bring all of these elements together with layered satin glazes that unify and accent these textures, lines, and marks.

I find a synergy between the natural ecosystem and the creative ecosystem, where the multitudes of nature and the thousands of years of clay overlap. This is a place where I am free to explore, and this exploration inevitably feeds back into both my work and life. I am interested in the ways in which we interact with nature, sometimes symbiotically and other times in contradictory ways. We attempt to tame, claim, and use the natural world around us, but it is always pushing back. Paint peels, metal rusts, buildings crumble; we are constantly being reminded that we are not entirely in control, we are no masters. If my pots could talk, this is some of what they might talk about.

Nick’s work can be seen on his website at devriespottery.com