ON HIS ART

Sams' remarks about his art from his writings.

Sams’ letter to Lamar Harrington, quoted in her book, Ceramics in the Pacific Northwest, a History, which was briefly quoted in Artist and Art.

“The printmaking process, especially the ‘collagraph’, taught me more about abstract two-dimensional surface texture than any other work done before that time. I applied this knowledge directly to my ceramics. Then during 1965-66 I began to understand building with slabs of clay, which was directly derived from Rudy Autio’s abstract slab idea. I wanted to maintain the vitality of the abstract yet add, definite, recognizable figurative modeling to the forms. . . . The question always arose, How can one truly abstract anything before he has tried to make that thing. Imagine now, that my ‘real thing’ the thing I learned first, was the abstract pot. I . . . followed my native humor. Visual puns helped. A vase, for example, has a foot, a body, a lip, a hand, which are all verbal personifications of that pottery form. I explored visually the possibility of the foot having toes, the body having breasts, the handle with arms and hands.

I think my most important contribution to ceramic sculpture was getting the visual weight of the ceramic form off the ground -- the idea of a built-in base which became the leg section for my figures —the necessity to section the sculpture to be and to take the body and the head off those legs during firing so that the weight didn’t crush the leg area. Once the sectioning started to develop, I could make each section as large as I could physically carry alone. This gave me the method of making monumental ceramic sculpture. The early sculptural images I made did not reveal if I was pushing reality toward abstraction or abstraction toward reality, and the resolution of my problems always remained visually exciting.”

Sams and Ceramics, unidentified, but most likely written while he was in Washington:

“At the age of seventeen or eighteen. I wanted to be an artist. From that time on I've concentrated most of my energy into developing skills, techniques and knowledge to use in the production of my art objects. In essence I have become my own work.”

“An opportunity is presented to create a personal visual narrative using a tactile vocabulary in clay starting with abstraction, moving through textured patterns towards a motif that is personified, characterized, and finalized with a molded anatomical personality, all existing within a single unit of ceramic sculpture. To arrive at this point I have refined or invented various building techniques and tool assemblages which properly shared with students may improve the quality of handmade ceramics from that of craft to fine art in this century which is my long time personal goal.”

“To balance the complex imagery I’ve researched glaze composition. Glazes and glass represent a very separate discipline. . . . The development of glaze and glass colors involves continuous experiments into applied chemistry.”

Fellowship Application, 1977:

“The thrust of my ceramic sculpture ideas provide a combination of abstract hollow built forms developed from both slab and coil base clay units; and naturalistic figure modeling. The sculptures are completely glazed.  My glaze application is intricate, utilizing many colored glazes which I have formulated myself. The sculptures range in size from 5 inches to over 6 feet tall.”

“The abstract surfaces are usually highly textured with embossed relief patterns suggesting: cloth, lace, alphabetical figures, numerals, organic material and cultural material combined to stimulate a visual narrative. Inorganic clay + glaze, thus, reflect organic growth + decay and provide the atmosphere for suggested figurative forms to emerge. I try to visually express that these figures are capable of hatching from the abstraction, or sprouting plant-like from the initial arrangement of clay slabs + coils.”

As previously noted, Sams also comments on his art in several videos.