Multi-Face Face Jug--Mahlke--The Yankee Potter

And now for something new...or old. Yes folks, this here pot is on holiday special! Act quickly and give that special something not yet found in the local Walmart. Art! Soul! Disquietude! This jug marks the ripping tug to pay homage to the established venerable greats while still trying to find my own voice. I have been studying the old Hellenistic busts with their craggy wrinkles, pinched lips, and heroically furrowed brows. Empty eyes. But still, somehow, alive. So too can I never get enough of the vividly intense pottery of Peter Lenzo--a living legend as far as I'm concerned. And so I suppose that this little pot of mine stands as the result of The Yankee Potter Goes Lenzo Hellenistic! The jug is 11" tall. It was turned on the wheel and then face--double-faced--from the inside out. It is coated in many different homemade glazes. It is in mint or perfect condition. Signed and dated on the bottom. I am a high school English teacher. For the past few years I have had my twelfth graders work on a project in the last quarter where they have to teach themselves something new--a new skill? Hobby? Trade? The sky is the limit. This year I decided I would share with them something that I taught myself about six years ago--pottery. I made a 60 second video on YouTube showing how I turn that glob of goo into a face jug. A year or so ago I was contacted by writer/director Chad Crawford Kinkle, who had just won Slamdance's top prize for best horror script, to make around 20 face jugs for his film. The film is currently scaring the pants off of viewers in festivals here and abroad. News is that it was just picked up by a distributor, so start looking for it around July. I included a still and a shot of the new poster to show my pots acting their scariest. To see more, please check out my website. Google: theyankeepotter . Thanks for looking. Who made this? My name is Jason Mahlke, and I am a self taught potter. I turn the pots in my basement, create the faces at my kitchen table, and fire them in my garage. I admire the Southern potters like the Meaders and Hewell families. Their pottery always features such solid, graceful forms with crude but expressive faces. But I am also drawn to the sophisticated and lifelike looks of some of Wallace Martin's face jugs and grotesques. I think I'm beginning to get close to capturing that sort of impossible balance. I mainly use Georgia clay because of its heavy grog. This gives the jars the sandy texture that you would find in the Southern stoneware. I make jugs, jars, coffee cups, salt & pepper holders...pretty much anything that can serve as some sort of container. read more