Meet Animal Meat - Antennae The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture

Patz Fowle
Pork Pie, 1980 © Patz Fowle
“childhood memories of pressing soft pastry
between finger and thumb to make the fluted
rims on apple pies.” (qtd. in Jackson and Malone,
2003, p. 13). The significance of all of these
techniques can be as personal and direct as
cooking and baking processes. While common
practices (recipes) exist to guide the clay artist,
aspects of forming the clay by hand are
individualized to suit the artist’s “taste.” The doughlike
associations of clay mentioned earlier in this
paper, combined with the tools and techniques
of clay being shared with kitchen spaces,
suggests culinary connection in ceramic work.
Food Parallels in the Studio
For studio potters who do not make these
kitchen connections, different food associations
may still abound, not necessarily within
techniques, but rather surrounding ceramic tools
and equipment. In larger studios, unused and
unsuitable clay is often remixed and recycled
using a pug mill, which churns the clay and expels
it in chunks not unlike those produced by an
20
industrial meat processor. Further, like many meat
items, ceramic ware is cooked in an oven.
Pyrometric cones, which potters employ to
monitor the oven (or kiln) temperatures for glazing
purposes, could be likened to the meat
thermometer.
To return to particular gendered visions of
ceramics in terms of the kiln, Vincentelli (2000)
mentions low-fire, pit-fired pottery done by women
historically and potential links between the kiln and
the womb, as parallel warm spaces that give life
to an object. However, even for a potter that
never creates meat-related ceramic art, some
associations with meat can be made within these
studio processes. As an aside relating to issues of
exhibitions, the Meat Market Craft Center is a
popular venue for many ceramic artists, while
some of New York’s Chelsea’s artists have moved
into the meatpacking district. Clay artist Tashima
Hirotsune created a series exhibited in Tokyo,
called The Meat Market, with platters of food atop
the bottom halves of a male and female figure
shaking hands.