Etched in fire
Chester Nealie’s Woodfired Ceramics

Chester Nealie’s pots from the latest firing of his tunnel kiln at Goanna Ridge in the dry eucalypt and cypress bush west of Gulgong in New South Wales continue the evolutionary pathway of his sensitive woodfired clay forms.

The choice of Goanna Ridge, where he established his workshops six years ago after moving to Australia in the early 1990s, was influenced by the inherent quality of place in which, though sometimes parched and landlocked, Nealie sees strong visual and other affinities with his beloved springs of inspiration in the forms and tones of New Zealand landmasses, coastal fringes, grassfields and reedbeds. He is drawn to places which are "on the edge of nature with a harshness of climate and land. The burnt earth, the rocks, the lichens and subdued green tones of the sclerophyll bush bring to my mind the reed and dry mud-flat colours of Kaipara." The dwellings and workshops built in both Kaipara Harbour in New Zealand and Gulgong in Australia are open to their surrounding vistas so as to create a sense of being part of the natural world.

Much has been written on Nealie’s approach to his work, drawing on his ability to clearly articulate and evoke that which drives and influences him, his comprehensive knowledge of the technical aspects of his materials and their transitions to ceramic form. That which has escaped evocation is his unique and personal dynamic interrelationship with the natural world. This he expresses as a direct launching pad to his creative process. His vital sense of play and the increasing degree to which he perceives his creations in microcosm of the surface gives character, mystery and meaning to his thrown and manipulated vessel forms.

At Goanna Ridge, Nealie sees beauty in the transparent passage of life through the day and night and the seasons – a continual backdrop and a source of pleasure as wallabies, kangaroos and deer go about their daily business, grazing nearby at night, moving to the dam to drink, mating and fighting. Large lace monitors (goannas) ponderously at home on the rocky house verges and birds going through their daily and yearly patterns, the living jewels of blue wrens feeding from a rich shino-glazed pot surface on the wooden verandah floor, the warbling cadences of the early morning magpies from a high burnt branch or a wedge-tailed eagle surfing high on the shimmering thermals above the close-embracing hills. Plants and vegetables grow in abundance in the tended kitchen garden and orchard. Nealie enjoys being in and interacting with this natural and now familiar world, saying there is "a freedom of association without being a dominant part of it".

This feeling of immersion and camaraderie with the environment flows through him, expressing itself in the spirit of his work and is an essential requirement for him to create: "I like to engage the elements when creating pots," he says. Nealie captures the panorama of nature not through the static lens of the landscape artist but through absorbing within himself the resonating movement of life through time and translating this into the processes of creation – "movement when frozen at a point of the making". The reality, ever-present before him in his working spaces in the bush, of the integration and mutual co-dependence of the natural world is also something which stimulates him – all aspects of process and work are carefully interrelated with one another. He aspires to work "with the absolute freedom and functional beauty of an eagle going into a dive, in complete control of its being – effortlessly powered by spontaneous instinct of muscle and feather and in unconscious but complete and intimate command of its aerial environment."

Nealie builds his works on the basis of a mastery of experience, understanding and intuition over the technical aspects of his craft and a mysterious ability to project himself into materials and process to direct outcomes with a sure alchemy of perception.

Most of his pots are vessels which are initially created as strong and well proportioned, competently thrown forms. He never rushes to complete a pot. His attitude to making is an aesthetically calculated mix of precision and chance. Surely-thrown vessels are formed on a slow-turning wheel as a starting point. After the work has come from the wheel and still in a relatively soft state, the germinal organic forms are sensually and fluidly adapted to fit functionally to the hand and use. Every tool or finger mark, every emotion of making is left in the pot’s form and surface to be read as a pathway to creation. A calligrapher’s scribing and decisive cutting of line and plane is also a characteristic of Nealie’s work, often defining areas usually overlooked by other potters such as the lower profiles of the pots at the base – stretching and fondling the life-force into this sensuous medium. Pots are made not only as individual vessels or objects but are carefully profiled and considered so as to interrelate to one another in the kiln. Each form, each shape, each glaze, each material defining the ultimate surface is interrelated in the making and firing of a kiln load of Nealie’s works. In his kiln loading the pots support one another in both their positive forms and in the negative spaces through which the flames will bathe – the entire loaded space is a sculptural construction with a purpose.

He sees his shapes, "as a synthesis of an emotional link I feel with past objects and the accidental play with clay in its making. I like to use a slow turning wheel with a minimum of water so that all the honest marks of the making remain to be seen. … making clay shapes that are compatible with my sense of emotional freedom… this love of raw clay is the essence behind woodfiring. Every touch, every sigh, every emotion is revealed in the clay. You can’t be false. All is revealed and those skilled with eyes and heart can read your handling as in any prose. So to become one with your clay, the wheel, tools, hands and heart must flow from within so that finally we are left with this mysterious object full of the subtleties of making formed with the thought of fire heightening its joys still further." Just as a harmony with the natural world is an essential mind-set for Nealie’s creative work in the forming of his pots, so is a harmony with the firing process a precondition – an intimate knowledge of his kiln as a working tool (designed and built by him for a specific functional range), its internal dynamics and an intimate rapport with the flame and its sustenance throughout the long gestational hours of firing.

The evolution of Nealie’s early formal vocabulary was intimately evocative of the functional hand-held Pacific Islands artifacts such as Maori kotiate or patu, pectoral and ear pendants, vessels of naturally-shaped forms used by Maori such as gourds, and strongly profiled natural forms such as echinoderms. The extensive Pacific Islands artifact collections of the Auckland Museum were and continue to be a particularly loved place of exploration, discovery and inspiration.

Pots are also redolent of sensuous human forms, the curves of waists and limbs defining vessel shapes and miniature intimate erotic passages of flesh and fold inspiring the small lugs so characteristic of Nealie’s pots (for which ultimate and long-quest models are the lugs of certain Tang Dynasty pots long-admired in the Auckland Museum and those of the earthy pots of the Bizen master, Toyo Kaneshige).

Although Nealie’s current work continues to be firmly based in the sensually profiled formal vessel-based vocabulary which he has developed as his own over the past four decades, since coming to Australia his work has shown a distinct evolution to a greater exploration of richer and multi-layered surfaces. As he recounts it, his first years in Australia were semi-itinerant, moving with his wife, Jan Irvine, from place to place of interest and working with a number of potter colleagues firing their kilns. "I used many kilns, concentrating on firing and not form… there was much re-firing and post-firing elaboration of previously made pots at this time." He says this transient phase freed him up to focus on surface rather than the development of form, which he feels is a corollary of being rooted in a particular place (as he now is again at Goanna Ridge). As his knowledge of a new range of materials and his new kiln grows he is moving once again to further formal experimentation.

In the mid-1980s Nealie increasingly engaged with the growing woodfiring potter community in Australia (through workshops such as the Woodfire 1986 Conference organised by Owen Rye in Gippsland and those organised by Janet Mansfield at Gulgong from 1989 onwards) and in 1991 he moved to Australia to marry textile artist Jan Irvine. He feels a need to be close to friends and peers such as Owen Rye, Peter Rushforth, Bill Samuels, Janet Mansfield and Alan Peascod – a rich source of collaborative interaction, "otherwise you run the risk of becoming introverted … Unlike East Asia and other traditional craft worlds, Australasia is without a historical ceramic tradition, the shared knowledge of fellow potters is as near as we get to a tradition from which to learn and evolve – my five colleagues just mentioned have some 200 years of experience between them." This environment of craftmanship and technology derived from Oriental traditions but in a robustly experimental and inquiring Australian context is expanding the parameters of woodfiring and its aesthetics and discourse internationally. Nealie fires his present kiln with native cypress pine and produces high temperature ware almost exclusively. He has a thorough and intuitive knowledge of the internal dynamic of his kilns.

Although the woodfiring process is to a great extent unpredictable, Nealie has developed considerable control over the variables, "controlled chaos" as he characterises it. Most pieces are made for a specific place in the kiln (in terms of clay body, form and glaze) – so that in one firing there may be five different types of clay with multiple slips and glazes. Hence the making and the firing are conceptually integrated from the beginning. Particular consideration is given to the passage of flame and ash. The wads of clay and shells that he uses to separate pots during firing later act as windows to fluxed layers of ash deposits. Prising them off exposes layers of time and colour, as well as scars and fossil-like imprints – a narrative akin to the weathering of rock.

"I am looking to place the pots in the kiln so that all making marks are visible to their best effect. I want unpredictable qualities, directed qualities and that same freedom I try to impart to the clay when making, left on the pots for all time. Ultimately it is the story of the making and the firing that must stand out… the aesthetic must be achieved through the temperature of the kiln and the placement of the pots so that the wood ash… and flames can do their job… this tumbling of the flame, bouncing off various pots and breaking up the pattern is what we have to consider as well. We are not only playing with temperature, we are also playing with the conditions of the flame through the bundle-stacking. Handles and lugs have to be tucked into the edges of necks and subtly kept out of the way of the descending wood… If the pots are going to be lying on each other, the marks of placement are going to be part of the decoration of the pieces. I use a special porous wad mix of coarse sand and fireclay which gives the flame a chance to go between the wad and the clay body, producing a dappled colour on the pot… to me the scars are important. The quality of the scar is part of the passage of that pot and a whole aesthetic develops around what kind of scar you’re going to be left with."

In much of Nealie’s work, the firing is not necessarily the end of the process but a stage in a long evolving process of ceramic creation in which pots are sequentially treated and retreated after they are born from the kiln. After the initial firing, Nealie’s preferred waddings of Hallam fireclay and coarse sand are removed, and decisions are made as to whether to peel back layers of surface to expose other levels or leave well alone for each individual pot, surfaces may be ground or peeled back to expose windows to earlier generations of body or surface (the marks of the tools used themselves creating a new vocabulary of surface textures), toning solutions may be applied to porous areas, and layers of additional clay and slip combinations may be applied to create new effects in further firings.

"When the pots come out of the kiln there is yet another process to consider. How much ash surface to rub off and how much to leave? After firing most of the wadding and ash is removed by rubbing with a hand stone or gently chipping with a chisel rather than grinding down with a tool. Scars – think of them as birthmarks – tell the story of a pot’s creation and are an important part of the aesthetic of the whole. The essence is to leave the naturalness of the process so that the story of making and firing is revealed without obvious contrivance. But the pots are not always finished after their first firing – they could be multiple fired. The surface subtleties develop with each firing. Flames and ash leave magical marks …" Prising off waddings of clay and shell exposes layers of time and colour, as well as scars and fossil-like imprints.

In latter years Nealie is also working towards new large slab platter-like forms. In recent firings he has produced footed platters with rich and textured surfaces lustrous with shino-type glazes in marble whites and shining metamorphic creviced rock-evoking patinas of Venetian and blood-ochre reds. This is not his first venture into large-scale works. Some time ago, returning from the inspiration of the New Zealand Artists in the Sub-Antarctic Expedition, he created large sculptures of fired clay more than a metre in size for the exhibition which came out of this joint project. (See Ceramics: Art & Perception #4)

Chester Nealie has long had a particular admiration and interest in large Pacific Island artifacts – sturdy wooden benches and voluminous wooden bowls, for example. Among the work of current potters he is particularly drawn to the massive clay works of his Norwegian friend, Torbjørn Kavasbø. These sources are part of the rich, inter-connected and ever-growing vocabulary of natural and man-made forms and processes which stimulate and inform the creation of his new works.

Guy Petherbridge is a cultural heritage management and cultural rights adviser and researcher working with international bodies such as UNESCO and ASEAN and with national governments and cultural institutions. He documents traditional technologies with a focus on the ceramic producing cultures of Central and South East Asia and their sustainability. He is Deputy Chairman of AusHeritage – Network for Cultural Heritage. Chester Nealie’s exhibition will take place from 2–31 October, 2002, at the Ceramic Art Gallery, 120 Glenmore Road Paddington NSW 2021 Australia. Photographs of pots by Ian Hobbs. Detail photographs by Guy Petherbridge.