James C. Watkins: Conjuring up ancestral memories through ceramics
Source: Roswell Daily Record
I want to start by thanking my colleague Cloe Medrano, registrar at the Roswell Museum, for writing the last three editions of the museum’s monthly “From the Vault” column on Dorothy Eugénie Brett, Garo Antreasian and Ernest Martin Hennings. Hennings' work is currently on display in the Roswell Museum’s Donald B. Anderson Gallery as part of the exhibition “Decades: The 1990s.” This month, I would like to focus on another artwork in that exhibition: “Untitled,” a ceramic double-walled pot, by James C. Watkins.
Watkins led a ceramics workshop at the Roswell Museum in the late 1990s, after which Juanita Singer Stiff purchased said ceramic double-walled pot from the artist. In 2012, Singer Stiff’s estate donated the artwork to the Roswell Museum. What the “double-walled” term refers to is an empty space between the inner and outer walls of a ceramic vessel. This double-wall endows the object with greater strength and enables the creation of larger works without the risk of collapse probable with other ceramic methods. Watkins further explains in a September 2021 Ceramics Monthly column, “The large double-walled caldrons … are made using the coil method, which requires that the piece dries enough that the walls can support extra weight before adding another coil to make the vessels taller.” In that column, he also added, “There is an architectural element to the double-walled caldrons … because of the hidden interior space between the walls, which gives the vessels a feeling of mystery and voluptuousness. The hand-built appendages on the rims of the double-walled vessels are meant to create a sense of movement, musicality and visual interest.”
Watkins was born in Louisville, Kentucky on May 28, 1951, and was raised in Athens, Alabama in a family of farmers. He was the oldest of six children. He grew up with two brothers and three sisters. In a 2021 Glasstire (art magazine) interview with Hannah Dean, Watkins relates his early experiences on the farm to his contemporary ceramic practice: “I would plow fields with my father,” he said. “Him with his big red tractor, me on a small John Deer tractor. I saw the furrows made by the plow as a drawing on the landscape. In Lubbock, there are furrows carved by the miles, and I started carving the clay surfaces of my pots.” In addition to his memories of working with his father on the farm, he also had responsibilities helping his mother, in charge of keeping the cast-iron pots hot in her production of hominy, soap and other products.
“I discovered ceramics accidentally,” Watkins explained in the interview with Dean. “During my year of study at Decatur, Alabama (at Calhoun Community College), there was a ceramics course across the hallway from the courses I was taking. I would go in and see people working together, mixing glazes and helping each other, all cooperative activities. It was festive. In my other studio courses, we had cubicles, occasionally group critiques, but that was the extent of any group activity.” He would go on to receive a Bachelor of Fine Art in Ceramics and drawing from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1973 and then a Master of Fine Art in Ceramics at Indiana University Bloomington. After completing his graduate studies, he moved to Lubbock, Texas and oversaw the Mackenzie Terrace Pottery Center, a public arts facility, from 1978 to 1983.
Watkins holds the prestigious title of Paul Whitfield Horn Professor Emeritus in the College of Architecture at Texas Tech University, where he taught for 35 years. During this time and after his 2018 retirement, he has received several distinguishing awards and honors, including his inclusion in the 1993 White House Collection of American Crafts, a Senior Fulbright Scholar Fellowship in 2005, where he taught at the Ho Chi Minh University of Architecture in Vietnam; a Texas Master Award from the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft in 2005; and a Visual Artist Award for three-dimensional works from the Texas Commission on the Arts in 2023.
In an undated essay entitled “Reflections on Legacy” on studiopotter.org, Watkins reflects on how his earliest memories and the practices and legacies of his ancestors live with him as a contemporary ceramicist. “My ceramic work is an artifact of my reality,” Watkins said. “Made up of historical references, cultural melodies and an aesthetic vocabulary. It is a realization of a multitude of memories. Most important are the cultural memories of growing up as an African American in the 1950s and ’60s in a farming family in Athens, Alabama. We lived under Jim Crow laws: I attended segregated public schools, and all areas of our lives were segregated. I was 18 years old before I shook hands or had an informal conversation with a white person. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to; I just never had the opportunity. To say that this period was culturally restricting is an understatement … . My parents and grandparents never had the luxury of being called ‘artists,’ yet inventiveness was a way of life for them … . Every day they sought creative solutions to the challenges of providing for their families in an adverse social environment … . From my family’s example, I developed a strong work ethic and the sense of industry and frugality needed to maintain my own ceramic studio practice. I use my work to connect with my rich heritage. My double-walled caldrons are an attempt to materialize and conjure up ancestral memories.”
James Watkins’ “Untitled,” ceramic double-walled pot, is on display in the exhibition “Decades: The 1990s” through July 7, 2024. For more information about the Roswell Museum, visit roswellmuseum.org.
