Studio Potter 2015 Volume 43 Number 2 Summer/Fall 2015 | Page 15

EW: You launched the website in January
2015. Have there been any exciting
discoveries?
DC: Actually our test launch was in January 2015,
the announced launch was at NCECA 2015. What
has been exciting since the site went up is that
more people are coming to us to register on the
site. Just last week, a man told us, “I’ve been collecting Northwestern ceramics my whole life. I’ve
photographed everything, including the marks,
because I was going to write a book, but I never
did. I’d like you to have it all.”
We have a Facebook page, where we might post
a mark asking, “Do you know who . . .?” or “Anybody know anything about this?” I started doing
our Facebook posts, but I’m not the right person to
do that. We need to engage someone who will do
not just Facebook, but . . .
EW: Instagram . . . Pinterest . . .
DC: Yes, and this reminds me of something
Leslie Ferrin said to me, recently when we were
talking about Candice Groot – did you ever know
Candice Groot?
EW: I didn’t know her, but I know that she
passed away recently. I was just at Leslie’s,
and we had a couple of gin-and-tonics in
her honor. And the foundation is an
amazing thing.
DC: Amazing. I was just so saddened [to lose
Candice]. You and I probably will get to know one
another eventually better than I knew Candice,

but I’ve been to her house a number of times,
I’ve drunk plenty of gin-and-tonics with her in
various places. One of my best Candice memories
is when we were in Philadelphia. I’ve been with
her in several places, at NCECAs, and she always
rents a car. For some reason, in Philadelphia – no,
Pittsburgh – she didn’t. It poured the whole time,
and we’re on these buses, getting off, standing on
the sidewalk, dripping wet, waiting for a bus to
pick us up. And I said, “Candice, let’s just get the
bus back to the hotel.” And she said, “No! We have
to see what else is here!” So we’re standing in the
rain, we’re getting off the buses, we’re sloshing
through the galleries, we’re standing in the rain.
But that was Candice. She just needed to see and
do it all. She sort of left a big hole in our field, but
she’s also left a beautiful mountain.
Her collection has to be seen somewhere now
and written about. I think all of that was beginning to happen just at the end of her life. But, I
mean, you’d go to her house and you’re wiggling
your way around, and what you’re wiggling
around is one artisan work after another, and
Viola Freys and just huge pieces and little – those
little Arnesons . . . She had them everywhere, just
lined up. An incredible collection. Deep, deep,
deep, and always true to her rather quirky vision.
It’s just great.
EW: I would imagine her collection will be
documented . . .
DC: But she wasn’t very interested in doing that.
You know, there’s the plates I eat off of and the
cups I drink out of, but then there’s all this other
stuff that falls in another category. Most of what’s
in my apartment now is on Collectify. I used
Collectify to catalog it with my children in mind;
at some point they’re gonna have to deal with
this if I haven’t already. There’s 120 soy bottles up
there [motions to a high shelf on the wall], and there
are another fifty or sixty of them packed in the
basement. There are four or five big boxes of pots

in my basement. Behind this wall is a closet that’s
full of pots. My bedroom has pots everywhere. And
so, I felt I should pass this on documented. What
you see in front of you is important as a group,
because it presents a pretty in-depth look at what
was happening in the last thirty years around here.
That’s not what Candice has collected. Candice
owned major, extremely important pieces by big
players. But my sense is that that she just wanted
to live with all these things . . .
Why did I talk about her? What were we talking
about?
EW: I think we got talking about this because
of exciting discoveries.
DC: Maybe you can send us exciting discoveries.
EW: [laughs] Is there anything else we haven’t talked about that you would like to talk
about, in terms of TMP and your involvement
with that?
DC: I think that in your periodical, that’s the
market. I mean, the readership for SP is potters,
and they’re the people we want. So, I’d like to just
sort of drive home that “we want you” and that it’s
important to do this little project. There are now
five people involved in working on TMP: Martha,
Ali, Caroline and me. In addition Caitlin Brown,
formerly with the Clay Art Center, is our first
volunteer.
EW: Well, I thank you so much for sitting
down with me today and inviting me into your
home. I could probably stay here for four or
five more hours looking at pots, but maybe
some other time.
DC: You’re welcome, and you’re welcome to
come back. 

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user, who maybe bought something at an auction )