Ceramicist Tony Soares
Joshua Tree, California
"The tools I use are exactly the same tools as the old folks used 500 to 1500 years ago. Same clays, same firewoods in some cases."
Your in a constant state of making, what’s happening this week in the workshop?
So this week I am working on a few different orders for museums and reservations. Lots of pottery, different styles, it will take a month or more to get all done. Also working on some stone points.
Can you tell be about your first memories of clay as a child?
My first memory of clay is probably with my grandmother as she taught me how to make a sunflower and then some small pinch pots. Also her sister my great aunt took me out camping along rivers and I remember playing in clay making wasp nest on the trees and bird nests. I was always fascinated with eggs and the egg shape, like pottery.
The Ollas you make are a unique form, it was a little confusing to see a utilitarian vessel with a rounded base but then when you consider the desert environment and how an Olla can be nestled into the sand and sit at any angle it starts to make total sense. Can you tell me a little bit more about what they were used for?
Pottery was used mostly for dry storage of harvested seeds and nuts. The rodents are quick to take all you have harvested. Pottery was a safe place to keep food. Also it was way more efficient for cooking in. Before pottery they cooked in baskets which is very tricky and time consuming.
You teach now, including childrens workshops. How do you think the tactile experience of making with clay influences the kids?
If I’m not making I am teaching kids and adults how. I think when I teach on a specific reservation their pottery type, I really try to install how prideful they should be over their type of pottery because it is usually very unique to that specific tribal area and was not made anywhere else on the planet.
You discovered later that the tools you have made to create these forms and refined over years of experimentation are perfectly aligned with what Cahuilla people used 500 years ago. It must give you a great sense of connection?
The tools I use are exactly the same tools as the old folks used 500 to 1500 years ago. Same clays , same firewoods in some cases. I don’t know why this was gifted to me , but it is something I do everyday. I have to make things.
The more I see of your life and work, the more I realise how fundamental your relationship with the desert is. Can you tell me what the desert means to you?
Life in the desert is what I love, I love the dry hot summers, the chance of a thunderstorm and heavy rain that happens very seldom. The nice fall time , the cold and sometimes windy winter where I can sit by a fire in the house or by the pottery firing outside. Springs can be full of flowers or not depending on the amount of winter rain and freeze to germinate seeds. I don’t know how I would ever live in a city, I’ve done it in a few occasions, hard to fire pottery and shoot bows and arrows when people are so close to each other. If I could move farther away I would. I don’t think my family would follow me. I do like to see the vastness of the desert, it is a lovely place and can be very unforgiving even when you think you are prepared. I love the big skies and how far you can see. 100 miles or more in the right places.
