Simone Leigh on being a “weirdo sculptor”
In the catalog for the exhibition Hear Me Now, there is a wonderful conversation between the artist Simone Leigh and historian Jason R. Young. Young first asks Leigh about her interest in making sculpture out of fired clay, which started in the early 1980s. This excerpt starts with Young’s second question:
Jason R. Young: You say you were interested first in making water pots. Were you drawn to the form itself or to the materiality of the clay?
Simone Leigh: I was drawn to the idea of a handmade readymade and how these beautiful objects were valued and why. As far as formal concerns, I felt these objects were modernist masterpieces. I was also drawn to the fact that there’s clay covering the whole earth that is available to everyone, unlike so many raw materials acquired through violent extraction. The material connects to time from a geological perspective. That process was beautiful to me. I was interested in the feminist implications of a tradition most often restricted to women and that so many who worked in it were anonymous. I think there’s no Black woman artist who doesn’t have to come to terms with the fact that their foremothers are largely anonymous. The first ceramist that I was aware of was Ladi Kwali from Nigeria. And the first person I saw working in a way I wanted to work was Magdalene Odundo. When I came to New York and was developing skills working with clay, I realized that people did not understand what I was trying to do as a conceptual enterprise. So I abandoned the idea of being an artist who worked in the field of ceramics and just became this kind of weirdo sculptor.
JRY: That was a very brave decision to make. Another artist might have decided to move into a different medium, but you stuck with it.
SL: I was really interested in coming to New York and being int he art world as an intellectual activity. We already had Duchamp, using a ceramic object, make it clear that anything could be art. But when I came to New York, I was told that this material was not something I could use seriously in my conceptual work. So that made me dig in my heels.
Read the whole interview in the catalog. More on the book below
In addition to the conversation with Simone Leigh, the catalog features four essays, maps, a bibliography and 154 illustrations. The show was quite densely installed at the Met, so it’s a pleasure to revisit each artwork in this beautifully illustrated book.
The catalog features a cover printed with a picture of a stoneware storage jar by Dave the Potter, and a clear plastic slip cover with the title. Edited by Met Musum curator Adrienne Spinozzi, the essays are by Spinozzi, Vincent Brown, Jason R. Young, and Michael J. Bramwell and Ethan W. Lasser.
This book is a must have for any fan of 19th century pottery and it contains new scholarship that is enlightening and revealing.
Hear Me Now: The Black Potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina
Edited by Adrienne Spinozzi
Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Hardcover, 200 pages with 154 illustrations
Listed at $45 but typically available for less.
