Lynda Katz: Of Patience and Pottery

As an undergraduate student at Douglass College in New Jersey more than forty years ago, Lynda Katz walked by the ceramics studio on campus. A window was open, and on the sill she noticed a brilliant red clay teapot. Having little formal art training, Katz said to herself, “I have to do that. I have to make something that luscious and yummy.”

Since that moment, Katz has been throwing clay on her potter’s wheel and fashioning sturdy and usable, while at the same time beautifully delicate, pieces of pottery. In graduate school at Florida State University, Katz studied ceramics with professors who had studied under the “grand dame of potters” herself, Marguerite Wildenhain.

From there, Katz taught at Florida A&M University until she moved to Louisiana where she taught art history survey and ceramics at Southeastern Louisiana University for a time. Currently, she teaches an art appreciation online course for American Military University. Though her students are serving in the military all over the world, she said she finds this twenty-student class to be more intimate than her 150-student lectures at SLU. Teaching from a remote location is appealing to Katz. She is able to spend more time traveling and, of course, more time in her studio.

Katz used to spend up to eight hours a day in her studio creating pieces that she would sell wholesale to retailers. But, the unsteady economic climate made it impossible to sustain full-time art making and selling. Now, she spends roughly four hours in her studio each day. “In four hours I might sit at the wheel and throw a couple dozen mugs or dinner plates,” she said.

Next, she checks on the drying process (it takes three to eight hours for the desired “leather hard” that Katz looks for). After drying is complete, she’ll attach any remaining pieces, like handles on mugs, for example. Then, after more drying (this time, six to thirty-six hours for “bone dry”) comes firing in the kiln for ten hours, followed by eighteen hours of cooling.

Wax the bottoms, glaze and fire again for eighteen hours, cool for twenty-four and then another hour to unload and a piece is finally finished. Because firing the gas kiln is expensive and time consuming, Katz only fires up when she can completely fill it. From start to finish, the turnaround time for a kiln load takes patience, as it can easily take six to eight weeks to start and finish the average casserole dish or mug.

The architect who designed Katz’s Louisiana home imagined an adjacent studio that fills out a third of the home’s entire square footage. The studio includes a slab roller, a sink, cabinet storage for glaze chemicals, two potter’s wheels, an electric kiln and a room devoted entirely to displaying finished products. Glass double doors look out into the woods behind the home, which provide Katz the ideal backdrop as she works.

Outside lives a gas kiln that rests on a slab of concrete and under a protective shed. Two kilns may seem extreme for the average home studio, but Katz said the decision to use electric or gas affects the overall outcome of the product. The electric kiln will only fire in a fully oxidized atmosphere. The radiant heat works well with bisque firing—the initial firing before glaze is applied. The gas kiln’s oxygen, on the other hand, can be adjusted. This flexibility to reduce the oxygen level can result in different colors. For example, a pale green celadon glaze can only be produced in a reduction atmosphere.

There is a chemistry to the entire process, Katz explained. “Ceramics is one art form that is both right-brained and left-brained,” she saids, “which is why I really fell for it.”

It is not entirely surprising that Katz’s favorite item to make is a teapot. But it is for reasons beyond the vibrant red teapot she saw as a undergraduate at Douglass College.

“I like to make things that actually work and are visual statements,” Katz said. No two teapots that Katz creates will ever be exactly the same, and this irregularity and complexity are what she finds the most satisfying to create.

Details. Details. Details.

Much of Katz’s work is inspired from the Chinese celadons from the Song Dynasty. You can find Katz’s work currently displayed in the Henry Hood Gallery as a part of the “Set the Table” exhibit. Other pieces can be purchased at Louisiana Pottery in Gonzales, the Ogden Museum gift shop in New Orleans and the Louisiana Artworks gift shop in Baton Rouge.