Q&A with ceramic artist Anja Bartels
- February 26, 2024 -
If you’ve been to Citizen Vinyl in the past six months, you’ve probably noticed the exhibition of large-form porcelain vases — inspired by Greek vessels for storing oil — featuring a variety of portraits of rock stars. These were created by Anja Bartels and her partner Gabriel Kline.
Anja is a stencil artist, originally form Hamburg, Germany, who discovered pottery making while living in an intentional community in Virginia. Her work typically centers on images of the ocean: Learn more at Anja Bartels Porcelain. But a recent departure from her popular sea urchin luminaries and tentacle mugs led to the MINDFUL MINDLESSNESS: A CERAMIC HISTORY OF ROCK’N’ROLL exhibition. Anja shared the inspiration behind the show in a recent Q&A.
Citizen Vinyl: Your MINDFUL MINDLESSNESS: A CERAMIC HISTORY OF ROCK’N’ROLL exhibition at Citizen Vinyl was a departure from your better-known oceanic ceramic work. What inspired the History of Rock’n’Roll pieces?
Anja Bartels: My partner Gabriel found an image of a lekythos in a book about ancient Greek pottery and showed it to me. As ceramic artists, we’ve always had an appreciation for forms of all kinds, especially technically complicated ones, so we tried making one together. He and I had been playing around with partner or team throwing, a lesser known technique where one potter supports the other one by holding their wrists, which allows you to throw large amounts of clay and make much bigger pots than possible when on your own.
The lekythos turned out beautiful and needed decoration, which lead to us coming up with the concept of A Ceramic History of Rock’n’Roll. The old Greeks used to decorate their pottery with imagery of their gods and goddesses — we simply updated the whole thing by telling sordid stories of our own demi-gods: Rockstars! We had been collecting wild stories (some more and some less true) of rock, rap, blues, and country musicians, and what better way to tell them
than to put them on our pottery.
In addition to the 12 lekythoi, you also created 15 portrait mugs. How did you choose the musicians you featured?
The portrait mugs are a nice addition to the 12 lekythoi because I employ the same technique: I paint black underglaze on the pot, in this case, porcelain, and then carve through the black layer into the light clay to reveal an image. I mostly chose musicians with iconic and interesting faces: Lemmy Kilmister, Dolly Parton (everyone’s favorite), Tupac, Kurt Cobain, etc. I try to not just paint a face but really capture their soul, sometimes this takes a few tries.
Any chance the rock star mugs will become part of your regular repertoire?
Yes! I hope so! They are labor intensive so it’s impossible to go into heavy production with these kinds of mugs, but maybe that’s also what makes them so special. Before I start I need to sit down with photos of each artist and learn about them to do them justice. Each portrait captures a mood, which might be melancholy, sexy, wild, drunk, or happy.
You discovered ceramic-making while living in Virginia. After you completed your ceramics study and apprenticeship in Germany, what brought you to Asheville?
I had always know about Asheville as a mecca for potters, which is absolutely true and has to do with its rich ceramics history due to its abundance of clay from the mountains. After my apprenticeship I applied to be an artist in residence at Odyssey ClayWorks. The residency is an amazing opportunity for young professional potters getting on their feet. It allowed to be establish myself as a ceramic artist, continue my education, and put down roots in Asheville. I came to love this town and the widespread support for the arts you can find here. It’s such a supportive community!
