Dennis Sipiorski: In Praise of Pragmatism

“We love these, because even in Louisiana it keeps the butter from melting,” Dennis Sipiorski recalls one of his customers commenting with delight about a butter dish very much like the one you see on our table, that he made and they bought. Ceramics, Sipiorski explains, are not only beautiful, but have the tendency to keep cool things cool and warm things warm. That’s why functional pottery has been gracing our tables for millennia.

Much of the pottery in this issue is drawn from a current exhibit showing at the Henry Hood Gallery in Covington, that celebrates the fact that the functional can also be beautiful.

“I said, ‘Why don’t we invite potters to show dinnerware and things to go on the table,’ ” recalls Sipiorski of the conversation he had with Hood that sparked the show.

A decade ago Sipiorski had a similar idea when he taught in the art department at Nicholls State University in Thibodaux and realized that there was a particularly appropriate opportunity to partner with that school’s best-known program.

I was in the art department and I created a national competition for functional pottery and the John Folse Culinary Institute was the sponsor. In fact, notes Sipiorski, Folse now has his own collection of contemporary handmade functional pottery.

Today, when he’s not behind his potter’s wheel, Sipiorski teaches the ceramics program at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond where he says, “I have a great batch of student potters. I’m trying to produce a new crop of talented new people that want to do that for a living.”

But not that entire “new crop” is to be found among his university students.  When we stopped by to see him demonstrating at the Henry Hood Gallery during the Three Rivers Art Festival we found his son Martin at his side.

“He’s fourteen years old,” says his proud dad. “He has a real knack for faces and images on pots. So his thing is Face Jugs. I throw the jugs and he makes the faces.”

Details. Details. Details.

See Dennis Sipiorski’s practical pottery  through December 9 at the Henry Hood Gallery, 325 Lockwood Street in Covington, along with that of other artists including Denise Austin, about whom you can read more in a web extra at countryroadsmagazine.com.