Master ceramist shares wisdom, power and philosophies

CHICAGO - So many artists in the past 10 years have used the teapot as a canvas for every sort of inventive interpretation. How and why this common household item has morphed into an art object has always intrigued me.

So when I learned a workshop on the teapot form with a premier potter named Fong Choo was offered at the Evanston (Ill.) Art Center, I could not sign up fast enough.

I knew that in 2003 Choo had participated in the 14th Annual Teapot Show at Chiaroscuro Galleries, the annual show of artisan-made teapots, from funky to fabulous, organized by Joan Houlehan of A. Houberbocken Inc. in Milwaukee. I called Houlehan who told me Choo "was the stealth bomber of teapot artists. ... Learn from the best and get the most out of it." He is a force, both professionally and personally. Choo is renowned internationally for his miniature teapots reminiscent of the Yixing (yee shing) style of Chinese pottery that dates to the 14th century - some scholars say even earlier. However, he makes the teapots very much his own with jewel-like glazes and exquisite, sensual shapes. Speaking of his interpretation of the mini-teapots and why he does them, he says, "So much presence in that scale. I use my skills to scale these pieces down." Some are no bigger than a hen's egg.

It sounds, even to me now, presumptuous to try my hand at it. But I was curious as to how an artful teapot is made. Or even an ordinary one. How do all the parts of a teapot - lid, spout, handle, feet and even lugs (where cane handles are attached) - come together to make something useful?

When Garth Clark, author and collector, published "The Eccentric Teapot: Four Hundred Years of Invention" (Abbeville, 120 pages, $24.95) in 1989, he said that a teapot "allows for all kinds of games with anthropomorphism." That got me thinking. Did the attribution of human characteristics to this inanimate object have something to do with its appeal far beyond its functional purpose?

That is how at the crack of dawn one Saturday I headed for the workshop, held in the basement of the art center, housed in a vintage mansion on the north shore of Lake Michigan.

Dressed in bib overalls, Choo, a trim high-energy man, began the session by sitting with us around a large worktable and telling us about his background.

He is of Chinese descent, born in Singapore. He was an aircraft mechanic for six years before he came to the United States in 1983 to study business. As an antidote to his boredom with business classes, he took a pottery class. The moment his fingers met clay, he was hooked.

Today Choo is adjunct professor and artist in residence at Bellarmine University in Louisville. Among the many workshops he gives are those at Penland School of Crafts in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina and at Terra Incognito Studios & Gallery in Oak Park, Ill. He has participated in the American Craft Exposition in Evanston and the Smithsonian Craft Show, the nation's most prestigious juried exhibit and sale of contemporary American craft.

I was among 10 other workshop participants, all potters. Although I have no credentials as a potter, other than that I ran with the art crowd in college and often hung out in the ceramic studios where I tried throwing pots.

Some I learned were very accomplished ceramists, such as Peggy Frazer, whose hand-built teapots were gorgeous (she told me she had a piece in a small but important museum in Hawaii, where she's from). She had begun making ceramics at the age of 8. Now 83, she said she would continue until her last gasp. She was in the workshop to learn cane handle technique from Choo.

I told Choo I had not touched clay in decades. In his high-energy way, he promised me he "would get me there." But he added that making an actual teapot might be too much of a challenge for me.

Before we get to that part, here are a few introductory things he told us.

"I teach (my students) the whole philosophy of detachment, especially in clay," Choo warned. "If you are not used to losing, you are in for a `fun time,'" he said sardonically. "For every teapot I show, I lose 80 percent (of those he makes). I shoot them at my farm. Out of pure respect for the piece. I'm used to losing hundreds of teapots.

"Every firing is like Christmas," Choo said, when his pots survive the rigors of the kiln.

I loved it when he let us in on his inspirations, as when he showed us the handle on his Ming teapot, which he said is "reminiscent of Chinese moon gates," in Chinese architecture, a large circular opening in a wall through which one can step. "Something I saw in Singapore," he said.

"It is an ancient Chinese secret," Choo would add after giving us an insider tip, followed by a chuckle. "Talent is not a prerequisite. (Creativity) is learning how to see."

Then came the moment when Choo sat himself at the potter's wheel. I swear I thought I saw someone very ancient enter his being. His face and demeanor changed. The impression lasted only seconds. Houlehan had told me, "He puts his soul into his teapots." Another artist friend said when I told him this, "It must have been his Master" - the ancient potter that is his Muse.

In one pull with his finger inside the porcelain clay, a graceful shape began to rise and be born from the wheel. "The opening is smaller because it is more graceful," he said. "The belly has to be full to make it sensuous."

As he spoke, I learned that teapot sections have names borrowed from the human body: a neck, shoulder, belly, foot.

Choo is well aware of other erotic references, joking that in one workshop he gave, attendees referred to his sensuous teapots with their alluring feminine forms as "ceramic implants."

Finally, we all sat down at a wheel.

I practiced controlling the speed of the wheel's revolutions with my right foot - not too fast, not too slow. Not too difficult. Then one of the organizers made the rounds, flinging a 2-pound blob of porcelain clay onto each wheel. Suddenly Choo was hovering over me. "Center, hollow, pull," he told me.

I froze into paralysis. Sensing my stage fright, Choo said this blob of clay would be "a collaboration." Me, collaborating with a world-recognized artist like Fong Choo. The wild thought passed through my mind: How much would it be worth, if his teapots sell around $400 to $500? Half that?

No time for jokes, though. The clay when I put my hands into it on the wheel had the consistency of cream cheese, squishy. I liked the feeling, but the clay ignored me, did not respond. But when Choo put his hands over mine, the clay responded to him at once, leaping upward like a bird in flight.

The firm pressure of his hands over mine was more than I would have thought to do on my own. I gave in completely to it, let his pressure come through my hands. He was consistent in it to close to the end. "Ease off," he said, so I gently and gradually released my hands on my own.

And there it was, a form. It was beautiful. Did I actually do that? Though not a teapot, I had made something, a lovely tea mug not only of graceful shape but inviting to the hand.

"There," said Choo "You can drink your tea out of that."

"You made that and it's the first time you threw a pot?" one of the other potters in the workshop asked incredulously. I nodded yes, scarcely believing it myself.

I was not the only one with whom Choo did "a collaboration." He went to each student and through the magic of the laying on of his hands, the form rose, became a thing of greater beauty than it had been even in the hands of practiced potters. I tried one more time, a little more on my own. The results were not as lyrical as the first try, but not bad. The first try actually could have been a rather plain teapot, had I added spout, handle and lid.

That afternoon, Choo again sat at the wheel to show us how he puts moats on the base of his teapots to catch the glaze, which can "run" on the bulbous Yixing forms. A handle in the making can be "ornery" he said.

"You can't tell I'm a control freak?" he asked. "Everything you do, it's a lesson."

Early the next morning, he showed us how to make our own tools - push sticks and trimming devices.

During a break, I talked to another potter, Debra Favra. "I love teapots, and I love the whimsy in Choo's teapots," she said. "I am more interested in them as a sculptural form than a functional form. He gives you a new way of looking at things as a canvas. You need to know how to put it together so it looks like it belongs, and he's fabulous at that," she added.

How true. That afternoon, Choo showed us how to make spouts, lids and handles and tiny curly feet, like baby toes. Some he made on the wheel and some he hand-formed. I sat at his side, holding a bat, or plastic disc, upon which he placed the handles, the spouts, the lids, as if they were tiny cookies headed for the oven. He never failed to make the lids exactly the right size for the mini-pots he had thrown.

And then he gave away another of his "ancient Chinese secrets." He took a ruler and laid it across the neck of the lidless pot. He said the spout, after the edge is notched, and the neck or opening of the teapot, and the top of the handle (attached to the side), should all be level. It made the hydraulics of the pot work. I also saw how it balanced the scale of the pot.

At the end, all the tiny pieces stood ready for firing and glazing.

"Mary, he makes it look easy," the rest of the class warned me in a chorus, when he finished. "And it's not."

I hoped my collaboration with Choo would survive the process of firing and glazing, to be done later. (It did, the result - pictured on the cover - looking amazingly like one of Choo's own pots on his Web site.)

As I was leaving, many of my workshop-mates asked me if now I would like to throw more pots, as the experience is addictive.

Yes, I thought, I will try one day again. Perhaps a teapot in the shape of a cat, holding a mouse as a spout, with a curled tail as a handle. If I took a class from Choo again, I might be able to do it.

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(c) 2006, Chicago Tribune. Distributed by Mclatchy-Tribune News Service.