AADL Productions Podcast: J. T. Abernathy & Stan Baker

Thu, 07/16/2009 - 4:37pm

When: July 16, 2009

In celebration of the 50th Ann Arbor Street Art Fair, AADL brings you an interview with the only artist whose art has appeared in every fair, J. T. Abernathy. Fresh off a recent successful show at the Clay Gallery, J. T. sat down with us and Stan Baker, another Ann Arbor pottery great and former student of J. T.'s, to talk about his career and how pottery is different from half a century ago. Stan and J. T. give us a good look at how they think about their work and how their 30-year relationship has shaped them as artists.

To learn more about the history of the event that defines Ann Arbor in the summertime, visit the new online exhibit 50 Years of Originality: A History of the Ann Arbor Street Art Fair.

Transcript

• [00:00:03.65] ANDREW: Hi, this is Andrew.
• [00:00:05.04] AMY: And this is Amy and this is the AADL production's podcast.
• [00:00:09.07] ANDREW: Recently Amy and I had a conversation with local potters J.T. Abernathy and Stan Baker. J.T., a legend of local pottery, who's achieved world renown, has been making art for over 50 years. Stan, his former apprentice, is now a master in his own right, creating pottery at Highers Pottery Studio. J.T. and Stan chat about their careers, wax philosophical about their art, and banter about their now 30 years long relationship.
• [00:00:42.77] ANDREW: We're pleased to be here with J.T. Abernathy and were' going to ask you a few questions about the Art Fair, and your experience.
• [00:00:52.11] J.T. ABERNATHY: Well my memory and my visuals are not 100% reliable, but I certainly will do my best.
• [00:01:01.72] AMY: How does it feel to be the only artist who has been for 50 consecutive years at the Art Fair?
• [00:01:10.65] J.T. ABERNATHY: How does it feel? It feels just fine. I am fortunate that I was able to do that. Are we sure that I'm the only one?
• [00:01:22.52] AMY: I don't know that we are, but you're probably the only one.
• [00:01:25.85] STAN BAKER: We're pretty sure.
• [00:01:28.99] J.T. ABERNATHY: How does it feel? I feel fortunate that I can still get up and go to work every morning. I feel fortunate that I'm still in the Art Fair. I especially feel fortune that my work is quite well received now. It certainly wasn't in the beginning. I guess all signs are going positive.
• [00:01:54.03] AMY: How was your work received in the beginning?
• [00:01:57.25] J.T. ABERNATHY: Well, I had to make cups for a living. And that's just fine. Now I have more privilege and I can make more or less what I wish to make. But you still have to make what the customer will buy, if you're doing it for a living, and I certainly am.
• [00:02:18.03] But you see, the market now is considerably more sophisticated than it was in the beginning, although Ann Arbor has always been a place where the arts were particularly appreciated. And that's one reason I stayed in Ann Arbor, after I left the University.
• [00:02:36.97] I did come here to teach at U of M, I taught four and a half years and then I started my own studio on State Street. I was there 51 years. As I said the other today in my talk at the Clay Gallery, the learning curve has gone way up, and that means the art appreciation curve has gone way up. It's a different audience now, and it's particularly well-informed and sophisticated audience. Fortunately, I am still able to participate.
• [00:03:28.34] I told some friends of mine at the John Leidy Shop yesterday, they said, well you must feel good with being successful. Well, I'm not sure I'm that successful, and it certainly didn't come at an early age, I am 86 years old. But I still enjoy working very much and I look forward to getting up and going to work. And that covers it, I think.
• [00:03:54.36] ANDREW: This year being the 50th Art Fair, does it cause you at all to look back on your career, does that 50 years make you reflect on how your work has changed?
• [00:04:05.09] J.T. ABERNATHY: I'm not sure my work has changed that much. I think I made the best work when I was innocent and didn't know what I was doing.
• [00:04:16.29] STAN BAKER: Ignorance is bliss.
• [00:04:18.57] J.T. ABERNATHY: Well, I don't call that ignorance, I certainly am more well-informed than I was in the beginning. But, you see, as your knowledge changes, the challenges change also. So, it took me seven years to learn to center a piece of clay on the potter's wheel and now I can do it in 10 or 12 seconds. Any kid in high school doing ceramics now can do the same as I do.
• [00:04:57.29] The goals change and become more difficult as you acquire more knowledge. So I think you're just about always in the same spot.
• [00:05:05.02] AMY: Stan, maybe you can, what is J.T.'s signature style, what's his aesthetic? And how has his work changed over the years in your opinion?
• [00:05:15.51] STAN BAKER: Well, I agree with J.T., I don't see that his style changed so much over the years, it's just grown in the sense that he gets to do more of what he wants to do. Being a potter myself, I see the same thing. I feel like I'm in the spot where he was 40 years ago, where I'm trying to make what the customer wants and trying to make cups and bowls, and it's not really what I would like to do, but I don't have the opportunity right now to do what I really want to do.
• [00:05:53.33] So I see J.T.'s stuff, back in the day as I say, we did produce, and he produced a lot of functional ware. The robin's egg blue or what's been more commonly referred to as the J.T. blue, was a very beautiful color, and it really drew in a lot of people. J.T. doesn't do so much of that anymore, because he's done enough of it, I think.
• [00:06:29.56] J.T. ABERNATHY: Right now I'm caught in a position. See, I went broke in my studio on State Street and right now I'm caught in a position where I don't have the exact proper equipment to do that blue glaze. And also there are other things I'm interested in. I'm more interested in, at this point anyway, I'm still very interested in art ceramics, but I'm also interested in very high-tech ceramics. And I'm not sure that I'm qualified to participate in that field, but I certainly have a great deal of fun trying.
• [00:07:12.89] Right now, I'm trying to develop some very sophisticated ceramic burners. And that's a real challenge, with even very qualified materials engineered. I've always paid a high price for following my own curiosity, that's why I'm broke all the time.
• [00:07:37.56] Many people who make pottery, they don't have to depend on it for a living. Many a people don't wish to do it for a living, but I've always done that. Sometimes I think artists, in general, are just people who aren't good for anything else.
• [00:08:05.50] My artist friends get upset when I tell them that, but I don't see them going into another field, so I don't know.
• [00:08:15.16] STAN BAKER: You've spent so many years, I think, almost your whole life in ceramics, and you've had this with your other shows, where you've said it's exploring the boundaries of clay and ceramics. And the quintessential part of you is that you're not just making art out of ceramics, but you're making technology and technological advances in the ceramic field. I think that's one of the great things that you've worked on all these years, is not just making pots but making other things. Ceramic liners, as you are now working on these burners.
• [00:09:01.82] It's like every time I turn around you've got another idea, and another great idea, that you're going off on another thing, that it keeps your mind active and keeps you going, I think.
• [00:09:13.79] J.T. ABERNATHY: Well, you know it only takes a few minutes to have an idea, and it takes a lifetime to execute it. After awhile you run out of time.
• [00:09:25.55] STAN BAKER: But you haven't yet.
• [00:09:27.78] J.T. ABERNATHY: That's what I said in the beginning. I feel damn fortunate. That I can get up and go to work.
• [00:09:33.55] ANDREW: How long have you two been sharing this space here?
• [00:09:36.58] J.T. ABERNATHY: Ever since he came into my studio -- when he was a freshman in High School.
• [00:09:42.91] STAN BAKER: Since '75 we've shared a space.
• [00:09:46.09] J.T. ABERNATHY: We shared my space for a while and now we're sharing his space. He made me a shop up in the other part of the building there.
• [00:09:53.28] STAN BAKER: That was two years ago, I think.
• [00:09:55.69] J.T. ABERNATHY: Two years ago.
• [00:09:57.87] STAN BAKER: But we've always been, like you said, I started working for him when I was a little kid, practically. I've never left, even though he's told me it my time was up. I just went and started my own studio, and I still came back practically on a daily basis to pry him with information.
• [00:10:19.88] AMY: J.T., do you feel it you taught Stan well?
• [00:10:27.30] STAN BAKER: You're putting him on the spot.
• [00:10:29.84] ANDREW: Do you feel Stan learned well?
• [00:10:36.33] J.T. ABERNATHY: Well, certainly I feel he learned well. I've always encourage him to go get some different teachers, and let's see, he's in a position now to learn from his colleagues. The people who do art fairs exchange a great deal of information. Art fairs are a recent phenomenon, in time anyway.
• [00:11:02.74] I don't know if the Ann Arbor Art Fair was one of the first art fairs, I know it was one of the first ones, but I don't know that it was the first one. And these people get together and they spend days and days together and they exchange immense amount out of information.
• [00:11:21.24] You have an idea, you talk to someone about it and the next day the whole ceramic community knows it, internationally. They get on the computer and they start talking and, knowledge spreads quickly now. 60 years ago that certainly was not true.
• [00:11:39.76] STAN BAKER: J.T. has always encouraged me to go back to school, even though I never did. He always told me, time and time again, that I would be well-served to go back to college or to take some college courses, and I did listen to him a few times, and take some life drawing classes through some of his friends that were instructors at the University. But I've always felt that my best knowledge was learning from him, and learning with hands-on. And as I always say, when everybody else was in school, learning about things, I was in J.T.'s studio doing it.
• [00:12:22.50] J.T. ABERNATHY: I think the best results are some incorporation. What you want to do is learn from everyone you see, and talk to, and --
• [00:12:35.92] STAN BAKER: I think you said, just the other day at the Clay Gallery, when you said that you're still learning every day from everybody you meet. I think that's an impressive thing, to be at your point in life, 86 years old and still not close-minded and thinking that you know everything. That you still learn things from me, from people that have only been doing pottery for a little while, you still get ideas or knowledge from them. You still soak it up and use it.
• [00:13:09.42] J.T. ABERNATHY: When you think you're the only one who knows something, you're making a gross mistake. I told the same group the other day, best advice I think I ever had about that type of thing was, I had a watercolor instructor, and we were criticizing each other's work in class, quite ruthlessly, and this gentleman said -- some students got very upset -- and he said, when people are criticizing your work, it doesn't matter who they are, how much they know, or where they are. Stop and listen, you might learn something.
• [00:13:51.36] If they tell you something that you don't think is true, you don't have to accept it, but you don't interrupt them. Take the criticism with the attitude that you want to learn, if you possibly can, whatever they're saying. I still believe that. I have friends who say things that, I don't like that. Well, I ask them, why don't you like it? Can you expound on that? And sometimes they're terribly right, you know. Everything you do isn't a blessed event, you know.
• [00:14:27.44] STAN BAKER: You used to tell me that one out of 100 pots or maybe one out of 1,000 pots is actually a good one. I think [? Peggy ?] said just the other day, we pretty much are always selling our seconds. Because every pot's a second, because there's only a few really good ones that are firsts.
• [00:14:51.14] J.T. ABERNATHY: A lot of the pottery factories, they all have a show room in the plant, and they have a sign that says seconds, you know, it's something that has a flaw in it. They haven't studied much Oriental philosophy, because there's beauty in mistakes. When something's too perfect, they push it off side a little bit. Push it out of round or stick a hole in it, or put some debris in it. Of course, that gets to be a bit obvious. Usually nature will do that for you, when the top of the kiln falls in.
• [00:15:24.67] I don't invite seconds.
• [00:15:30.49] AMY: That's good advice.
• [00:15:33.18] STAN BAKER: Seconds to you, but firsts to everybody else.
• [00:15:40.02] J.T. ABERNATHY: That's another point.
• [00:15:42.00] STAN BAKER: I got a household of firsts, in my opinion.
• [00:15:44.53] J.T. ABERNATHY: Congratulations. What did you say, ignorance is bliss?
• [00:15:51.38] STAN BAKER: Of course, none of those pots in my house are mine, either.
• [00:15:55.04] J.T. ABERNATHY: I don't sell pots, I rent them. They're still mine.
• [00:16:00.78] AMY: You mentioned a little bit about how ceramicists communicate today. How else, just reflecting back on the Art Fair, how has the Art Fair itself changed, in your view, in these 50 years.
• [00:16:12.05] J.T. ABERNATHY: The quality of the work is fantastic compared to the beginning. I started potting in 1946. There were probably a dozen potters in the world that we talked about. I can mention, if I could recall the names probably, 100 potters that are worth talking about.
• [00:16:31.92] There are thousands of people making pottery. And that proliferation, if compared, compare it to music. How many kids are out in the garage in their house making music or composing music or singing. It's fantastic the way that culture has grown. I think that's good.
• [00:16:53.70] ANDREW: What got you started in 1946 making pottery?
• [00:16:57.23] J.T. ABERNATHY: I couldn't do advanced math and engineering school.
• [00:17:02.58] STAN BAKER: You were like, what, a degree or a class away from getting a degree in engineering?
• [00:17:09.48] J.T. ABERNATHY: I had enough credit hours for a degree, but I never did get a degree in engineering. I was in mechanical engineering for several years, I did that type work in the army for three years. For which I got acceptable college credit.
• [00:17:27.13] STAN BAKER: But I see it, don't you think that all that engineering really helped you with your ceramics over the years?
• [00:17:33.70] J.T. ABERNATHY: Certainly. Any knowledge you get is going to help you with any other endeavor you seek, take up. I don't believe knowing or having any information or knowledge about something interferes with you having any knowledge or information about another subject. And, actually, I think they're all terribly related. You know it all boils down to human endeavor.
• [00:18:00.24] All endeavors, philosophy at the top. So it all pyramids up into one person.
• [00:18:09.41] STAN BAKER: Well certainly all of that engineering helped with being able to explore the boundaries of ceramics, and even ceramic equipment that you've developed over the years.
• [00:18:23.98] J.T. ABERNATHY: Yes. Actually it helps a great deal. My teacher once told me, I was telling her, well, if I had a kiln that would do this, I can do so-and-so. She said, oh yes, but it's about what you do with what you got that counts. Now make it work. That counts also.
• [00:18:49.19] And I have another attitude. You can go buy a lot of fantastic equipment, but my attitude is if you can't build it out of nothing, to hell with it. I like to go to the junk yard and look for what I want and put it together and make a good machine out of it.
• [00:19:07.04] I had an interesting experience when I first started my studio on State Street in 1946. I built practically every machine in there out of the junk yard. I had gone down and registered myself as a company. Two weeks later, the tax assessor came in, and they said, what's this machine worth? I said, well, it's not worth anything. I built it out of the junk yard. We have to charge 20% for your labor.
• [00:19:41.18] STAN BAKER: The equipment that he developed back in the early 60's artists still use. I have a wheel that he built, probably in the early 60's. When did you start building these wheels, boss?
• [00:19:57.47] J.T. ABERNATHY: Fall of '57.
• [00:19:58.68] STAN BAKER: Fall of '57. When did you build that one?
• [00:20:03.40] J.T. ABERNATHY: I don't know. I didn't actually make it. There was the machine shop in town, they're still around, called [? Morley ?], and they built hydraulic whips for me for several years. And the components were built from B-25 bomber -- I think they put the same equipment in a lot of different planes. They were the hydraulic components that moved the gun turrets up and down, sideways, from side to side.
• [00:20:39.44] When I started building them, we could buy those service items for $10, and they got up to $250 so we ditched it.
• [00:20:49.75] STAN BAKER: But that was after you had made it. I mean I got two or three of them.
• [00:20:55.06] J.T. ABERNATHY: I don't how many we made. We must have made 50 or 60 of them.
• [00:20:59.79] STAN BAKER: They're unlike any other wheel made today because of the power and versatility of them.
• [00:21:06.49] J.T. ABERNATHY: See, the transistor was invented quite late compared to how long I've been working and to get power from an electric motor you have to have DC power, direct current. And the only way to get that, of course, was to convert ordinary AC current, you have to rectify it. And the machine that could do that was as big as a refrigerator when I started. And it also didn't have a great deal of longevity to do what I wanted to do. I had bugged General Electric down in Detroit, when I was a student. I was a student from '48 to '51. I kept saying, I have to have a strong motor with variable speed. And the guy said, I'm sorry, we don't have it, come back in a few years.
• [00:22:05.89] I don't have a few years.
• [00:22:07.59] So when I started to build the heavy duty pottery equipment, I knew I had to have -- the only power available was hydraulic power. I was so naive I didn't even know if you could even buy a hydraulic motor. So I got on the telephone and I called Victor's Hydraulic in Detroit, and a gentleman name Mr. Brown, was the field representative, and I simply asked him, do you make hydraulic motors? And he said, are you putting me on? I said, no sir, I'm absolutely sincere. I need some steady rotary power, very strong. He said, I'll come out and see you in the morning.
• [00:22:49.12] So he did, and he assured me that they had all kinds of hydraulic motors, and he showed me pictures and specs and drawing. So I went to the junk yard, and sure enough, I found a really nice motor which they more or less gave to me. And I made my first hydraulic wheel, and I still have it upstairs here. It ran for, well, 50-something years, and it's still as good as the day it was built.
• [00:23:19.35] STAN BAKER: The only thing that's wearing out on my wheels is the wheel head where my hands rub on the wheel and make a groove.
• [00:23:26.66] J.T. ABERNATHY: Well, your hands will [? grow back. ?]
• [00:23:27.63] STAN BAKER: They have.
• [00:23:31.65] J.T. ABERNATHY: Supposedly I have three talents: mechanics, art, and music. I've never done anything with the music.
• [00:23:39.98] STAN BAKER: Well, you've certainly done a lot, also, with your drawing. Over the years, and now you're even putting, I think that's one of the great things you're doing now, is adding the drawing aspect to your pots. Which is really --
• [00:23:52.62] J.T. ABERNATHY: I don't know if you'd call that drawing, but I certainly have a great fun doing it.
• [00:23:58.74] STAN BAKER: Well I think your friend, [? Sears ?], certainly influenced you a bit on that realm.
• [00:24:07.87] J.T. ABERNATHY: I asked my drawing teachers, when I first started art school about drawing. She says, oh it doesn't matter what you draw with, use a broom stick. I later married her to get my revenge.
• [00:24:26.81] ANDREW: Do you have a pretty solid routine that you follow every day?
• [00:24:30.30] J.T. ABERNATHY: My routine is so solid people set their clocks by it.
• [00:24:36.33] ANDREW: What is that routine? What do you do when you get up in the morning?
• [00:24:39.31] J.T. ABERNATHY: I cook my breakfast.
• [00:24:41.34] STAN BAKER: Well, it's not getting up in the morning, it's getting up in the middle of the night for most of us, when you get up at 4 or 5 o'clock in the morning.
• [00:24:50.79] J.T. ABERNATHY: I got up at 4:15 this morning. But, you see, I quit work at about 2:30 in the afternoon. I think many, I know I've read of many authors who do this. They get up and work early. I spend most of the night thinking about the ceramic problems that I created and then the next day, I spend most of the day trying to solve them.
• [00:25:16.16] I think the ability to analyze the problem, it doesn't matter what it is, you want to do a drawing, you want to build a machine, or whatever. You want to build a house. It's being able to analyze that problems that you face and find a most expedient and economic way to execute it. Every individual approach this in a different matter, according to their talents, their previous experience, and their expectation.
• [00:25:56.05] I don't really divide my effort from anyone else's effort. I am completely sincere in my effort and almost everyone who's involved in anything, is sincere in their effort.
• [00:26:13.31] AMY: I just wanted to know, and I'll ask you both, but first you J.T. What is your favorite memory of the Art Fair?
• [00:26:22.04] J.T. ABERNATHY: I guess it would be telling the people at the Artisan's Shop, it'll never work. I didn't start the Art Fair, by any means, and I didn't have much to do with it being started.
• [00:26:36.70] The Art Fair, to the best of my memory, was started by Bruce Henry and Jim Davies, two young men who owned a gift shop on South University called the Artisan Shop. They started it in conjunction with Mister Ulrich, who owned Ulrich's Bookstore, as an assist to the merchants on the street, to encourage people to come to town and buy stuff during the long days of July, when the merchants need to get rid of their inventory from last season and to restock for the coming season.
• [00:27:19.02] This seems to be the curse for the retail business. I don't think it's true, it certainly isn't true in my business, the older a piece gets, the more valuable it is. And the older it is, the more I charge for it. There are many reasons for this, but some of it is I will never be able to duplicate that particular set of circumstances again. But the Art Fair was started with that premise, and the first two years the merchants on the street put up the booths, built of two-by-fours and sheets of plastic and a little plywood. They put them up and took them down, they did all the work and, in turn for that, the artists brought great crowds of people to town.
• [00:28:18.61] STAN BAKER: Did you have one of the booths in there?
• [00:28:21.43] J.T. ABERNATHY: I've always shown at the Art Fair with the Potter's Guild. And I still do. I started with them.
• [00:28:29.11] STAN BAKER: Were they around? Was Potter's Guild around at the very beginning of the Art Fair?
• [00:28:33.51] J.T. ABERNATHY: Oh yes, the Potter's Guild was around, not a long time, but before I even came to Ann Arbor. I don't enjoy selling, even when I had my own gallery, the Clay Gallery was my gallery 10 years before it was called the Clay Gallery, it was in the Nickels Arcade.
• [00:28:57.50] Even then, I wouldn't sit in and sell them in my own gallery. I don't enjoy selling, I certainly enjoyed talking to people about the work, but I don't like putting a price on it and saying this is what I want. I still have a sense of guilt related to that. I don't know why I should, because certainly I'd done the work, I did the best I could. I need to be paid for it. This is a universal problem with anyone who makes anything.
• [00:29:34.73] I don't like to sell. I enjoy an interaction with the customer, but I don't like taking their money. So the Potter's Guild, they do that, they do all of that work. In the meantime, I try to pay my way with them by doing lifting and moving and -- I don't do as much of that as I used to.
• [00:30:01.25] I didn't really follow through on, I'm sorry, I didn't follow through on your question. After two years, the Art Fair began to grow at such rapid rate, that there was no way in the world the merchants could continue to participate on the same level as they did the first two years. When there's that much money involved, as is now, and every year there's more money involved, I think, there come to be a lot of people get in the act, and everyone is in it, and certainly they deserve every penny they get. But they're in it to make money.
• [00:30:41.88] It wasn't started with that in mind. The artists were there to sell what they could, but they were there to be in assistance to the merchants. I think that has long since disappeared. And I'm not sure it should be continued. I don't have an attitude or an idea about that. But that's how it started anyway.
• [00:31:08.17] Bruce and Jim both came to see me and asked me what I thought of that and I said, oh, I think it's a complete waste of time. Because I was so pessimistic about trying to sell pottery. Of course, I was wrong, that's fine. I've been wrong before. Now it's just an enormous, almost uncontrollable effort, I don't know.
• [00:31:36.90] The amount of qualified people to participate -- see, in the beginning it was just local people in Ann Arbor. There might have been a few from Detroit or from Ypsilanti and the various areas around. Now people come from all over. I don't know, I think there are even people who come from abroad, but I'm not sure about that, and I probably shouldn't even mention it.
• [00:32:06.40] STAN BAKER: There's been some people from Europe that have come for the Art Fair, to do the show. And certainly from Canada. I think we have almost all 50 states in the continental United States. I don't know about Alaska. I think we've had everybody from all over the country come to the show, and do the show, at one time or another. It's amazing how much it's grown over the years.
• [00:32:34.47] J.T. ABERNATHY: I asked someone the other day, who should know, I said, how much money does the Art Fair bring to Ann Arbor? I said, surely it's $2 or $3 million? And the guy said, it's enormous, the amount of money that comes to Ann Arbor through the Art Fair. Now, Ann Arbor has a lot of events that bring a lot of money. They have the Book Fair, and they had the music festivals and they have the art festivals, and they have the film festivals. All of these bring money to town, but the Art Fair still, I would think, is very much the event that brings the most people and the most money to town.
• [00:33:17.69] What I think -- I don't take any part in the planning, I don't make any decisions about the Art Fair.
• [00:33:34.74] STAN BAKER: You only make decisions about what pots you sell at the Art Fair, or you display?
• [00:33:41.98] J.T. ABERNATHY: I am often asked for my opinion concerning things , and unfortunately most of the time I don't keep my opinions to myself. It's a big deal.
• [00:33:57.58] AMY: How many pieces will you be showing this year? J.T. ABERNATHY: All I can get made between now and then. But, see, I just had a show at the Clay Gallery, which has been delightful and quite successful. I have a show at the Ann Arbor Potter's Guild at the end of April, and then I try to get ready for the Art Fair. And meantime, I have galleries both in Charlevoix and two places in Ann Arbor that need pottery. And after the Art Fair is Christmas. So, you say, well, do you take a vacation after the Art Fair. I can't afford a vacation.
• [00:34:33.79] STAN BAKER: You've never taken a vacation.
• [00:34:35.54] J.T. ABERNATHY: I did once. We went to Paris, France in '89. It took me six months to get back to work.
• [00:34:45.83] STAN BAKER: Took me six months to get over the shock that you actually went on a vacation.
• [00:34:51.94] ANDREW: Stan, how long have you been showing at the Art Fair?
• [00:34:54.57] STAN BAKER: Well, I think the first year I started showing would have been in '86 or '87. No, no, sorry. '76 or '77. It was right when I first started working for J.T. and he said, oh, you should sell some pots in the show. And I said, well, they're not going to let me in. He said, well, we can set you up a little spot right down at the end of the sidewalk here. On State Street, right in front of the door to the shop.
• [00:35:31.18] I sat down there for the first couple of years, with one shelving unit with about four shelves on it and probably fifty or sixty pieces. And I sat out there and sold my pots and thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. J.T. always kept encouraging me to keep doing more and more, and as time went on I got to sell more there, and then finally got to join into the regular Art Fair and become one of the bonafide artists in the Art Fair.
• [00:36:04.91] I've been doing it ever since, and I haven't missed a year since.
• [00:36:08.16] AMY: What's your favorite memory?
• [00:36:12.14] STAN BAKER: You know, my favorite memory really is, I would have to say selling the pots in the alley. Because after a couple of years after selling at the end of the sidewalk in front of J.T.'s shop, he also had an alleyway that was in between the two. Next to John Leidy's on Liberty Street, and so we set up my booth in the end of the alley that faced out onto Liberty Street. I always remember being there, and my most fun time was right there in the alley.
• [00:36:50.30] People still had to pull in the alley, so I have to make my booth so that you could drive through it. And here I was, out there with all my pots on these shelves, and cars were driving right through my booth at times, and I was moved the back shelf over to the side and all the pots would kind of jiggle. And the cars would pull in and I'd pull it back. J.T. would come out and say, how's it going? Ah, I haven't broken anything, yet. The operative word was yet.
• [00:37:19.28] I think that was one of my most memorable experiences of the Art Fair. There's so many since then, but that one I always look back of, because I certainly always, my time when I spent working in the studio with J.T. has always been my favorite time of making pots. Because the information that I have learned, the camaraderie, having J.T. as a teacher, a mentor. My dad died young, so he pretty much filled that role. I've always said that I'm the surrogate son, others say that I'm the prodigal son, but I say, I was never cast out. Or at least I never felt like I was cast out.
• [00:38:06.53] J.T. ABERNATHY: He's paid all his dues, he's standing on his own feet.
• [00:38:11.57] STAN BAKER: Yeah, but I stand on my own feet only because I had great shoulders to stand on.
• [00:38:17.74] J.T. ABERNATHY: Oh, bullshit.
• [00:38:29.30] AMY: You can see examples of J.T. and Stan's work at www.claygallery.org.
• [00:38:34.78] ANDREW: You've been listening to the AADL production's podcast, from the Ann Arbor district library.