In the Studio: Matt Merkel Hess

Can you share your background and how you first came to ceramics as a practice?

I had always done creative things, but it was at around age 22 that I discovered the pottery wheel through a community arts class in Lawrence, Kansas. I was hooked but had a slow process of figuring out what I could do with clay. I just knew that I was interested in working with my hands and this material in some way. After college, I moved to the Los Angeles area and almost immediately started taking ceramics and art classes at Pasadena City College and then Cal State Long Beach and ultimately, UCLA where I finished an MFA in 2010.

What led to the development of your Merkel Ware line—was there a specific need or idea that sparked it?

My original interest in clay was working on the wheel, and I thought maybe I'd move to the woods somewhere and make pottery. But as I studied more, I became interested in sculpture, installations and other ways of working. But I was always returning to the wheel to make things for friends or for small student sales. After graduate school, I started making pottery with more intention and decided to call it MerkelWare as a way of distinguishing it from my sculptural practice. The name really clicked when I learned that the inventor of Tupperware was named Earl Tupper.

The first thing I made was ceramic bottles with cork stoppers, along with salad bowls and some sculptural vessels. I also made a variety of flat bottom bowls with angled walls. These were a bit easier to make from a production standpoint—no foot to trim—but they also take up less room in the cupboard and there's not a foot that catches water when they are upside down in the dishwasher. I still love this form, and I think the small bowls are perfect for ice cream or cereal.

A friend connected me to Kristin Dickson-Okuda, who had the store Iko Iko, and I did small show of Merkel Ware there in 2011. Free City stocked a bunch of my pottery for a few years before I moved to New York.

My production of Merkel Ware ebbs and flows, but I have tried to make it clear that it is all handmade by me, usually on the wheel or maybe with slabs or very, very occasionally from a mold. It's a way of honoring my continued interest in making pottery and signaling that these are items made in small batches or multiples, and available at a more modest price than my sculptures.

Your work often balances utility and expression—Is there a different mindset for making sculpture versus functional objects?

I consider myself a vessel maker, so I think the approach is similar and it's just me making everything. But with Merkel Ware pottery, it really must function and it's usually made on the wheel, while in my sculptural practice I use a lot of plaster molds and slabs of clay.

With pottery, I tend to go for simple, functional forms and I'm thinking about glaze durability, ability to clean the pieces, and how it can live and be used. Sculptures have different considerations, usually I am more focused on what questions the piece is asking and how it looks. Function may be implied and even possible, such as with my 5-gallon buckets, but I think of them as sculptures of vessels.

When I teach, I tell my students that a mug is one of the hardest things to make because it has to function and deliver a hot beverage while you are holding it in your hand and touching the rim with your lips. Usually, we aren't touching a sculpture or putting our lips on it, so functional pottery just has a more intimate connection with the human body, and you have to take that into consideration.

Can you talk about your approach to glazing? How do surface and finish contribute to the identity of the work?

Glaze can carry so much meaning, especially with pottery which is touched and handled. I love referencing classic glazes such as celadon, cobalt blue on white, or heavy iron glazes such as Tenmoku. I have also embraced the explosion of color possibilities we have now. With Merkel Ware, it is generally a white glaze on the inside and then the outside is finished in a pigmented slip or underglaze and generally left raw or with just a bit of a treatment to give it a satin finish. I want the pieces to feel good in your hands, but I also want the color to be matte without that slight, glassy refraction that a layer of clear glaze will give you. Ceramics can go glossy and overly decorative very easily, so finding that balance where a piece has a contrast of gloss and matte/satin is something that's very intentional in my work.

With my sculptures, which are often copies of everyday, plastic vessels, I purposely make overloaded, drippy, colorful finishes to take it fully into the realm of glaze possibilities. Lately, I have added a lot of crawl and texture glazes to the mix, and I'll just keep firing and reglazing pieces until they feel done.

How does Merkel Ware differ from your more singular or sculptural pieces?

I think of Merkel Ware as functional pottery for the table or maybe flower vases or other functional items, and it is handmade by me in small batches and priced around the same as other artisanal pottery. In my sculptural practice, I am often copying mass-produced consumer goods, sometimes in a mold, but I make the glazes different every time and try not to repeat myself, and these are usually made for the context of an art gallery or museum. I also make a lot of novelties, which I'll sell at the occasional sale such as the recent NADA Ceramics Market in NYC. I love making work for different contexts and I think the 19th century potter George Ohr is a great model, as he made novelties for fairs, everyday wares for his Biloxi, Mississippi community, and he also made what he called Art Pottery, which was barely sold in his lifetime but is what we celebrate him for today.

Deciding on how to sign work always fraught for me, until I came up with this idea of separating my pottery and sculptural practices. As an art student 20 years ago, I also had professors who said that making pottery would get in the way of a sculptural practice or vice versa, and that it was best to decide on one or the other. I don't think we really live with those restrictions anymore.

The art critic Harold Rosenberg has a famous line, "An artist is a person who has invented an artist," which is something that really stuck with me as an art student. I have also always loved musicians who use alter egos for different projects. So, with all that in mind, the breakdown of my practice would be:

Merkel Ware pottery is by Matt Merkel Hess (everyone calls me Matt) Matthias Merkel Hess studio is artwork by Matthias Merkel Hess (my given name, or the artist I "invented") Merkel Craft Arts & Novelties or sometimes just Merkel are the small pieces I make for sales.

I recently made a tote bag that sort of outlined this idea, and it was based on a label that Marc Jacobs had done (seemingly in jest). I think it is really important that artists stay true to themselves and for me, that is making things by hand, embracing color, function, humor, and trying to ask questions about what it means to make things by hand in the 21st century.

How did your relationship with Commune Design first begin?

Around the time I was finishing my graduate studies at UCLA in 2010, I met the painter Monique van Genderen, who introduced me to Nina Garduno at Free City. I made small batches of pottery for Free City for a few years, and it was either through Monique or at a Free City opening that I met Roman. He invited Monique and I to propose custom planters for a hotel project and while that project didn't work out, I started making a few small pieces for the Commune Shop. (Should also mention textile artist Adam Pogue was my main contact when I worked with Free City!)

Moving from LA to NYC in mid-2015 really threw me for a loop production wise. I also had two small children ages 1 and 4 at the time we moved, so life kind of got in the way. In NYC, I did a variety of things, including managing ceramic studios and teaching before setting up the studio I have now in East Harlem in 2021. I reached out to Commune and we were able to pick up the collaboration again, including making Merkel Ware and ceramic stools.

Has collaborating with a design studio changed how you think about function or context for your ceramics?

Yes, I think it has completely changed my approach. As a student, I saw the model of potters, artists, and educators as the only option. I really had no idea what was going on in the design world and how my ideas and skills might line up with that. I really appreciate having discussions about what designers are looking for and what will work for a project, and how my skills might contribute to a project.

I have also been lucky to collaborate with design studios such as Valle de Valle here in NYC and Ashley Botten in Toronto, and these projects have pushed me to learn even more about ceramics and take clay in directions I would have never attempted. Sometimes, I am making work under my own name and other times I am fabricating other people's ideas, but in the past few years I have made tiles, fireplace surrounds, ceramic furniture, pottery, and my own sculptures. This type of studio practice wasn't something I could conceive of even 10 years ago.

Looking ahead, how do you see your work evolving—are there new forms or directions you’re interested in exploring?

I recently made a bunch of small models of ceramic stools, so I am planning to make a few of those full sized and see how they look.

Recently, I also made a few vases that combined multiple Potato Head faces into one vase. I have been making Potato Head sculptures for almost 15 years but never thought to combine them. That one switch has given me a bunch of ideas with combining shapes and forms made in molds into larger vessels, so I'll be testing that out in the next few months. And when I find the time, I'd like to work on some looser, funkier wheel Merkel Ware pieces that are thrown on the wheel.

Do you have a dream collaboration?

I would love to make pottery for a restaurant, and I can tell you why. In 2003 or maybe early 2004, I was very lucky to attend a day-long pottery demonstration by Goro Suzuki, who is a master potter from Japan. The demonstration was somewhat randomly at a community pottery studio in Monorovia, California and Goro was in LA for an exhibition at Frank Lloyd gallery. I was at a moment of maybe drifting away from the pottery wheel but Goro's amazing skill and loose style while being completely locked in on the wheel was lifechanging. Later, my instructor Karen Sullivan told me that Junzo Mori, the kiln tech at the Xiem Clay Center in Pasadena, had a video of Goro that was worth seeing. So I was able to borrow this much-dubbed VHS which had about a 30-minute feature on Goro, including a tour of his studio and my memory is it finished with him eating at a restaurant near his studio where he had made all the pottery. They were funky, bulbous platters and plates and cups in the style of the teapots and cups he made. My own style on the wheel is not that loose, or at least not yet, but since then it has been a dream to collaborate with a restauranteur.

Interview by David Kasprzak
Photography by Matt Merkel Hess

See Matt's available work on Commune Shop!