Jerry C. Williams - Ceramics

As an artist and human being, I have always struggled with balance. The balance between fear and safety, Love and hate, and the loneliness in between, happiness, and depression. I have also struggled with the balance of art and functionality, ancient and modern, the balance of cold and heat, and the regulation of drying time when it comes to clay, or as I call it our Mother and Grandmother the Earth and Water, our Grandfather and Father the Spirit and the Wind.
When I first started down the road of becoming a potter, my goal was to make and sell enough pottery to build a motorcycle. I looked at pottery as something that people used in their everyday lives, to feed themselves, or for growing plants in. I had never looked at it as art. But after a while I began to realize that I was becoming a kindred of my Mother and Grandmother the Earth and the Water, and the soul reason of me thinking that I was an artist meant as soon as I put my hands on our Mother and Grandmother, the Earth, my hands could not help but to create art out of functionality.

I still wanted to create things that would feed people, and still wanted to create pure art that has no use, except for the eyes and the soul. I began to give that part of my art its own space on the bottom of my pieces. Free of utilitarian use of functionality. The true balance between this and that.

I also began to include the Sun and Moon in my logo, the light and the dark, the yin and the yang. I have also borrowed the idea of the Navajos, they make it possible for the Ancestors Spirits to come and go in their art through a Spirit line.

I instead try to represent Tipis on the bottom of them to have a place to stay in my art, to balance the Spirit World with the reality of my world, and to give the Ancestors a place to live in my art.

I hope that what I have created, and still hope to create is a true balance between art and functionality. I guess that history will make that final judgment.

J.C. Williams

Read more about Jerry here.