Introduced by Jeffrey Sarmiento, Jonathan entered the room. Looking at him, you wouldn’t expect much; maybe some thrown pots with traditional glazes in the same colour as his checky shirt or corduroy trousers, but actually his work is next level extraordinary and is a fine leap forward into the next generation of ceramic art.
“I want to keep this very open, no secrets. There’s no point to keeping secrets, it just keeps us in the present and stops us moving forward”
Despite his keen interest in 3D printing, Keep started his profession as a potter, throwing since school and taking note of many cultural traditions surrounding pottery, particularly African, as his home town can be found in south Africa, although he prefers the term ‘sculptor who just happens to make pots’, but please note that this is also the man who says he managed to “escape the ceramics ghetto”, referring to the simple ceramic art uses to scam many collectors out of money.
He is amazed by human senses and experiences, and tries to include as many different senses in his work, and during his talk he brought up several images of human, pig and chicken fetuses with their different development stages, attempting to make the connection that one idea can turn into something completely different depending on natural experiences.
During the talk, I was mostly interested in this thoughts and opinions towards arts and crafts, and where his work sits within the two. He described how whilst he was studying, it was mostly European art that was considered fine art, and any pieces that showed significance of cultures other than European were considered almost primatine and undeveloped, and were therefore craft, a label given to items created out of nessecity. To him, these labels don’t matter because art evolves. He believes that the important thing to remember is the beauty in an object, which is unusual due to his skill in throwing, sculpting, and making digitally created pieces. I was also impressed that he admitted to “living cheaply” in order to be able to live off of his art, and talked about having a “regular Joe job” to fund his business, something that almost no other artists I have met would admit to!
“I chose to call myself a potter in support of the gradual acceptance of pottery into mainstream Western contemporary art. Having begun to work as an artist in South Africa – thirty years ago – when European notions of high art and other cultural imperialist attitudes were being seriously questioned, the pot offered a format of universal appeal and a common human visual language.“
To start building his empire, he developed a machine that would squirt out liquid clay. Using a “squirly pattern maker” and an old gluegun, powered by a small motor. This became his own ceramic 3D printer and would be adopted by american institutes to create your typical ceramic printer.
He creates his pieces by using a program called Cura, after training I’m the use of virtual reality programming 20 years ago. He then uses his digital designs to program his original printer to print out a physical piece before firing and occasionally glazing.
Despite finding his back for creating digitally designed ceramic art, he still enjoys mKi g what he calls “anologue” pots, which are made by hand, as this keeps him tied to his roots and makes sure he still has physical skilk as well as digital excellence.
Meeting Jonathan was an amazing experience, being able to speak to such a grounded individual was a refreshing change from the usual snobbery of the art world.