Studio Potter 2015 Volume 43 Number 2 Summer/Fall 2015 | Page 10

Elenor Wilson: Would you tell me a little bit
about your career and how you came to be doing
what you do now?

10

Studio Potter

Donald Clark: My primary occupation now is project manager for The Marks Project, Inc. I got to this
place after having spent twenty-five years working
in a gallery with Leslie Ferrin and meeting clay
people from all over the country. My background was
important to the development of The Marks Project:
my being able to contact people and say, “Hey, it’s
Donald. Guess what I’m doing now.” My résumé was
having spent all those years in the clay world as a
gallery person and then as a collector.
EW: What is The Marks Project (TMP)?

A CONVERSATION WITH
DONALD CLARK

The following is the edited
version of a conversation
between SP editor, Elenor
Wilson, and The Marks Project
manager, Donald Clark, at
Donald’s home in Springfield,
Massachusetts, on April 8, 2015.

DC: TMP is a searchable online database of the
marks, signatures, slashes, hashes, or whatever is
used by a clay worker to identify his or her work.
Martha Vida, the founding director, was very clear
from the outset that this would be an online venture.
If you write a book, you can’t change it. We wanted
the ability to add information to what already exists,
as artists grow and their work changes and their
marks change. We’ve already had artists come back
and say, “I just got this award. Can you put it in?” or
“I had a piece purchased by the Smithsonian. Here’s
its image. Let’s put it in.” None of that can happen in
printed material. We hope we’ll be able – and people
after us will be able – to keep this growing.
EW: What was the idea, or the conversation
that started it?
DC: That would be a conversation that Martha Vida
had with herself over about ten years. Martha has
been a lifelong collector. Her collection is very strong
in British work, blue-and-white, transferware, and
some contemporary work. Somewhere along the
way, she became interested in contemporary American makers. She’s also very interested in knowing
the background of something. She’s happiest when

she can buy an object and its drawings and a story
about it. But when she went to look for information
about makers, particularly those working in our
period, which is 1946 to the present, there was no
information. The Brits, on the other hand, are into
their second edition of the contemporary ceramic
marks dictionary.
Actually, their procuring editor came to see us at
NCECA last year, and she very much wanted us to
make this into a book. By then, we decided that it
would stay digital. And free! It doesn’t cost anything
for people to list their marks, to update their marks,
or to search. I have books in my library that say
“American Ceramics…to the present” that were published fifteen years ago. What’s the present? TMP will
always be 1946 to the present because we’re digital.
EW: So how did you become involved in this
brainchild of Martha’s?
DC: Well, I’d known Martha indirectly over the years
because she was purchasing things in the gallery. At
first it seemed that it wasn’t going to work for me
because it was very computer-heavy. Then I thought,
you know what, I can learn that. So I went for lunch
with Martha where she served Lobster Newburg on
crepes; this was my interview. I made this point to
her: I can bring to TMP my background in ceramics
and knowledge of people in that field, and I can learn
the computer. She might be able to find a younger
person who’s really computer-savvy, but that person
wouldn’t know what it has taken me thirty-five years
to learn.
Everything started around 1981 when I came to
Northampton and worked with the Thornes on [the
downtown mall that is] Thorne’s Marketplace. Pinch
Pottery, which Ferrin Gallery (now Ferrin Contemporary), grew out of was in the basement of that
building. When I couldn’t handle upstairs anymore,
I’d go down there and hang out and invariably buy
things. There are still things in this apartment that I
bought then.