The following article appeared in Ceramics Art and Perception, #63.

Article by Patricia Pelehach

“But that is simply impossible,” sputtered the visitor, a distinguished and accomplished potter.

“Yes, it is,” replied Paul Chaleff. “Almost.” Noticing my gape-mouthed, bug-eyed response to his enormous and marvellous Large Free Form, Chaleff, with his usual self-deprecating charm, told the anecdote above, to let me know that I was not the firstto react to his new work with breathless befuddlement. While I attempted to collect my wits and, more importantly, deflect the artist’s attention away from the fact that I was now caressing the sculpture’s invitingly tactile surface, Chaleff told me that this monumental form – more than 2 m (6 ft) in height and in length – was originally a fist-sized maquette, hacked with a hatchet from a raw lump of clay. Once the artist had a shape that spoke to him, he commenced solving the myriad technical and aesthetic challenges implicit in scaling up the form to enormous size. While not fully explaining all of the artist’s techniques for building, drying and firing, I can repeat “internal cylindrical support”, “straps and pulleys”, and “monster gas kiln”.

Work on this scale in clay is rarely seen, and then it is generally achieved by connecting multiple, smaller units, rather than building and firing a monumental form as a single unit. But this is more than just a story of scale, however impressive.

Rather, Chaleff’s achievement is to bring to fruition an artistic vision that combines colossal size with great dynamism, a sensitive paring of masses and voids, and richly attractive and tactile surfaces. Preparation is key. The artist spends days preparing coils and an internal support system of clay, but once he begins to build the form it progresses rapidly. The internal support keeps the soft clay from collapsing under its own weight, while the rapidity with which he works preserves the fresh immediate quality of the clay. He uses found objects and unconventional altered tools to work the surface, resulting in a naturalistic, seemingly inevitable skin, intriguingly pockmarked and raked, yet ultimately silky and inviting to touch.

Chaleff considers his new work as standing materially somewhere between stone and metal, calling to mind the recipes of metalsmiths or the traditional techniques of stonemasons. In this vein, he has developed techniques of firing and glazing that yield surfaces residing visually between stone and metal. The resultant works combine power and elegance, thrust and balance, rawness and nuance, immediacy and a sense of great age.

For the most part, the forms are abstractions. They evoke sensation, emotion and recollection, but not narrative. An exception is Lying with A. Composed of two massive horizontal structures nesting, sometimes uneasily together, this work is a commentary on the quest for intimacy and individuality within relationships. A number of the works are sturdy enough to be installed and exhibited as outdoor sculpture. Whether indoors or out, they call to mind Japanese rock gardens or Chinese scholar’s rocks. These are, however, clearly man-made objects, naturalistic without being natural, and clearly contemporary in their formal vocabulary.

This suite of work, exhibited at Manhattan’s Gallery Pahk and curated by Beatrice Lei Chang, director of Dai Ichi Gallery, an internationally respected authority on fine contemporary and antique Japanese ceramic art, represents an exciting new chapter in an already distinguished career. Chaleff was already an accomplished potter when an encounter with a “small brown pot” by Kitaoji Rosanjin in 1974 led him to travel to Japan. Upon his return to the US he built an anagama kiln and commenced upon a body of work composed primarily of vessels, woodfired in the Japanese manner, for which he received great acclaim. His woodfired vessels, and his recent ‘cauldrons’ and ‘nuts’ and ‘cogs’ have been enthusiastically received and collected.

Already represented in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), Princeton Art Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and other museums and distinguished private collections, Chaleff has nothing to prove except, perhaps, to himself. Unafraid of physical and mental challenges, he rises to meet them. The word that comes to mind is ‘audacious.’ Paul Chaleff’s passion and hunger are such that he has set for himself problems of fabrication, engineering and aesthetics that are daunting and impossible … almost.

Patricia Pelehach is a potter, collector and student of Japanese calligraphy. She resides in Brooklyn, New York, and Pleasant Mount, Pennsylvania. Photographs by Paul Chaleff.

Photos

Top: Large Free Form. 2003. Stoneware ceramic with copper, lead and tin. 172.5 x 132 x 203 cm, 2050 kg (4,500 pounds) weight.

Middle: Three Cog Forms. 2002. Stoneware ceramic with copper lead and tin. 61 x 94 x 91.5 cm each.

Bottom: Lying with A. 2004. Stoneware ceramic with steel, copper, lead and tin. 55.5 x 101.5 x 183 cm.