Along the way, he began to realize that he needed to get an education and focused on math and science; he expended a lot of energy working his way through textbooks. It was pretty hard. As a kid, math had been his worst subject, but he was driven by a desire to understand science. One thing led to another and soon he earned a degree in math, physics and marine biology. Soon after graduating from The Evergreen State College, he started to work at Seattle Academy, where he landed in IT and became the school’s technology director. Throughout his life, he had a yen to design and thought about finding solutions to design questions. Looking back on the time he spent working in a glass factory, he remembered inventing the idea of a spin-cast telescope mirror. The common thread woven through all of the things he has done is the desire to make things. Then a fortuitous event occurred that set him on a new journey.
One winter about six years ago, his wife bought a Christmas present that turned out to be a basic pottery class at an Arts and Recreation Center. The way Greg describes his newfound discovery is, “I was hooked, or infatuated, then hooked. I learned everything that I could about the field, from science, to history to techniques; that is an ongoing process.” The class had a huge social component to it and eventually Greg pursued greater challenge and had the opportunity to work alongside master potters, many of whom are well known throughout the Northwest. In one instance, he took a three-day workshop with a potter who is a local luminary. He describes himself as an intense observer and stays in communication with the best ceramic artists in the region.
The Potter’s Way
Today Greg Relaford’s one-car garage is a pottery studio and crammed with a kiln, a wheel and many of the raw materials that he needs to create his pottery. For several years he has taken his craft to Seattle Academy, where he’s been increasingly involved with ceramics and pottery instruction. Often he teaches the students how to use the wheel or some other technique. Through pottery he gets to know the kids and faculty a lot better. He has also had the opportunity to look closely at kilns and found that a lot of how the way things work draws directly from his background in chemistry and physics. In many ways, the whole process has come full circle, the same way the potter’s wheel keeps turning. Greg describes what he loves most about the process. “I love the whole process of making something with your hands. I enter a half dream state when I’m making something.”
PR4P: Is there a correlation between the potter’s creative process and life?
GR: You have to learn how to throw stuff away. Everyone who does pottery throws stuff away. That wasn’t a hard thing for me but it was for many others. That’s a life skill and if they don’t have it. They keep trying to hold on to stuff that isn’t going to stay no matter what you do. People learn more from doing repetition in pottery and that’s a skill that is useful in many areas. It’s very rare that If you have great talent you just do it. With few exceptions that’s not how it happens. By spending a lot of time doing the repetition, there’s a lot of philosophical stuff going on.
PR4P: What has been the greatest influence on your work?
GR: There is an influential book published in Japan 70 to 80 years ago by a famous master, Soetsu Yanagi. The book was translated from Japanese to English by another famous potter Bernard Leach. You can’t underestimate the influence Bernard Leach had on U.S. pottery—huge! A lot of people actually worked in his factory, a small craft studio. Many came back, became professors and trained other people. Some of these influencers are still around. Then on the other hand, there is a potter in Minnesota who said that it took him a year to unlearn some of the stuff he learned there. There is a whole other wave of people who are not thinking the same way as Bernard Leach and yet they have respect for his influence.
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Greg Relaford