Warren MacKenzie Quotes - Page 3

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I've been influenced by someone or [English artists] work. I mentioned Hans Coper as an example.

Warren MacKenzie

Artist, Example

Source: www.aaa.si.edu

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If you take Lucie Rie and Hans Coper, their work didn't even relate to what we were trying to do, because they were moving in a different direction, both of them coming out of Europe and the Viennese school of design, which Lucie came from, and Coper learning from Lucie and then springing off on his own when she encouraged him to explore more widely. So he created his own work instead of just working for her and doing her forms. So that was a wonderful thing.

Warren MacKenzie

Moving, School, Europe

Source: www.aaa.si.edu

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I don't know, it's very difficult if you're in a strange country to just barge in and say, "Hello, I'm Warren MacKenzie, and aren't you happy to have me as a guest," you know? But artists did accept us and we remained friends for many, many years, many of them as long as they lived; like Lucie Rie and Hans Coper were very good friends, and it was wonderful.

Warren MacKenzie

Country, Good Friend, Artist

Source: www.aaa.si.edu

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Friends of Bernard's [Leach] came to visit, and when we went to London, we were given introductions to people like Lucie Rie, Hans Coper, Richard Batram. All these people were, let's say, made available to us by a friendship with Leach. In addition there was a potter's group - what was it called? I think it was called the Cornish Potters Society, but I'm not sure of that. Anyway, they had meetings and we would go with Leach to these meetings and meet other potters, and they would have programs where they would discuss pottery and people would interchange ideas.

Warren MacKenzie

Thinking, Ideas, People

Source: www.aaa.si.edu

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[St. Ives] is a wonderful place to live. It's a small fishing town and one can live there inexpensively. There's a sympathetic population of other artists, where you can exchange ideas, and it's quite rich in artistic thought.

Warren MacKenzie

Artist, Fishing, Ideas

Source: www.aaa.si.edu

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There were a lot of artists in St. Ives. In fact, since the time of Whistler, St. Ives has been noted as an artist colony.

Warren MacKenzie

Artist, Facts, Whistler

Source: www.aaa.si.edu

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Bernard [Leach] knew Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, Terry Frost, Peter Lanyon, Johnny Wells. I can think of a number of people that we met there just because we were living with Bernard. Some of them became our friends, particularly the younger artists, but we were privileged to at least meet and talk with the older artists also. And they would come to dinner, and we would simply be included in the conversation, which was quite fascinating.

Warren MacKenzie

Thinking, Artist, Numbers

Source: www.aaa.si.edu

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We benefited from living with [Bernard] Leach, because suddenly all of his friends became our acquaintances.

Warren MacKenzie

Acquaintance

Source: www.aaa.si.edu

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I think back to some of the pots we made when we first started our pottery, and they were pretty awful pots. We thought at the time they were good; they were the best we could make, but our thinking was so elemental that the pots had that quality also, and so they don't have a richness about them which I look for in my work today. Whether I achieve it all the time, that's another question, because I don't think a person can produce at top level 100 percent of the time.

Warren MacKenzie

Thinking, Quality, Looks

Source: www.aaa.si.edu

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Since your time is your main involvement here - I mean, the clay doesn't cost very much. Even the glaze and the firing doesn't cost a great deal. But your time is the cost, and if you can keep your time to a minimum and still come out with the results you want, that means the pots can be sold for an economic price.

Warren MacKenzie

Mean, Clay, Cost

Source: www.aaa.si.edu

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It was a wonderful opportunity. And so for two and a half years we lived with [Bernard] Leach.

Warren MacKenzie

Opportunity, Years, Two

Source: www.aaa.si.edu

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I was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and I do know from what my parents tell me that I was always interested in art, although not very good at it.

Warren MacKenzie

Art, Cities, Kansas City

Source: www.aaa.si.edu

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I found out later on that was not true, that life drawing tells you a great deal about rhythm, about the structure of a human being or any animate object, and this could be directly translated into thinking about proportion and accent, rhythm in a pot form.

Warren MacKenzie

Thinking, Drawing, Pot

Source: www.aaa.si.edu

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[ Bernard] Leach was the one who taught us that, because he, too, had started out as a painter and an etcher and had only gotten into ceramics by chance when he was in Japan trying to teach the Japanese how to do etching, which, as he said, they were not ready for yet.

Warren MacKenzie

Japan, Taught Us, Trying

Source: www.aaa.si.edu

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There was a school in Chicago called the School of Design. This was started by [Laszló] Moholy-Nagy, and it was a wonderful school, but we [with Alix MacKenzie] didn't go to that school. We did have friends who went to that school and we would visit there often, and I'm sure it pushed me in my painting direction very strongly just by association.

Warren MacKenzie

School, Design, Association

Source: www.aaa.si.edu

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We stayed on at the Institute [Chicago called the School of Design] because that was - I don't know, you start at one place and you stay there, I guess. Inertia takes over.

Warren MacKenzie

School, Design, Chicago

Source: www.aaa.si.edu

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I started to do silk-screen in the early days of my painting training, due to a woman who taught art history at the institute, Kathleen Blackshear. She was interested in silk screen and taught a class that I took.

Warren MacKenzie

Art, Class, Training

Source: www.aaa.si.edu

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I got drafted into the army and by pure chance was pushed into a silk-screen shop at this camp where I was, because they could not get training posters fast enough out of a central source in Washington, D.C. So they set up their own shop to print training posters: how to dismantle a machine gun, etc.

Warren MacKenzie

Army, Gun, Training

Source: www.aaa.si.edu

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[I made in army] all sorts of dumb things, but it did teach me a lot about the silk-screen process.

Warren MacKenzie

Army, Dumb, Made

Source: www.aaa.si.edu

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That [silk-screen process experience] carried over when I returned from the Army and took more graphic classes at the Institute. And Alix [MacKenzie] and I actually began to produce a line of textiles, which had silk-screen patterns on them.

Warren MacKenzie

Army, Class, Textiles

Source: www.aaa.si.edu

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When you're young, you think you can do anything, and we thought.

Warren MacKenzie

Thinking, Young, Can Do

Source: www.aaa.si.edu

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I took a number of graphic courses, lithography and etching and wood engraving [at Art Institute]. And particularly as I got more and more into ceramics, I thought, life drawing doesn't have anything to do with ceramics.

Warren MacKenzie

Art, Drawing, Numbers

Source: www.aaa.si.edu

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Alix [MacKenzie], on the other hand, found that her painting would translate much more readily into decoration, and she could play with the spacing and the intensity of imagery on the form in a way which I could not. So that when we established our pottery, I was most unhappy with my decoration.

Warren MacKenzie

Hands, Play, Unhappy

Source: www.aaa.si.edu

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I thought I was going to be able to use my painting ideas as decoration on pottery, but my painting did not translate into decoration on pottery. I thought it was going to, and in fact I made, while still in school, a plate with one of my paintings on it, and that's exactly what it was, it was a plate with a painting on it. It was not a decorated plate; it was just a painting superimposed over a three-dimensional ceramic form.

Warren MacKenzie

School, Ideas, Ceramics

Source: www.aaa.si.edu

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At that [childhood] time, of course, if you were involved in art, it was going to be drawing and painting, because that's the only thing that was taught in the schools.

Warren MacKenzie

Art, School, Drawing

Source: www.aaa.si.edu

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Latest quotes from interviews

"Here is this ability to explore ideas, but with minute changes, and then look at the results. Often you get so excited about what you're doing that you think, "Oh, wow, this is just great." And you look at it a week later and you realize you'd been excited by the act of creation, but what you've created is not really exciting when you look at it in cold blood. And so that, to me, is a valuable lesson also."

- Warren MacKenzie,

www.aaa.si.edu, added Mar 22, 2017

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