How this Valley-based artist came to love ceramics: Made in Arizona

MARK BRODIE: And now let’s meet the next maker in our series — Made in Arizona.

Today, we’re heading to Mesa Arts Center. That’s where Ali Schorman works. She’s a ceramic artist and takes care of all of the glazes there, in addition to teaching classes to kids.

Ceramics, though, were not Schorman’s first artistic love; she went to ASU to study drawing. She says as she was getting ready to finish her degree, she needed to take some classes she’d been putting off. One of those was a 3D art class — she thought ceramics might be, as she put it, mildly interesting. And was she ever right — she says she was completely hooked right away.

When I spoke with her about her work — and her journey to get here — I asked what it is about ceramics that she finds so appealing.

ALI SCHORMAN: It was so different from the drawings type of work that I was doing before. It was fun. It was play. It wasn't so, I wasn't so focused on the end result. I was just making stuff. It was kind of like my original love for art kind of came out just in the act of making stuff.

BRODIE: It's interesting because if you're drawing, you're still kind of making stuff, right? I mean, it's two-dimensional. It's on a paper. I guess maybe you're not creating something new, but you're still making something, right?

SCHORMAN: Certainly, you're making stuff. But I think I had gotten myself into this idea of what things should be. And maybe I had thought that there was. I was just so tied to how things turned out, I think, that I had kind of gotten myself into a tizzy about things.

BRODIE: So after you realized that you really were into ceramics, am I right that you didn't really start doing it full-time right away? Like it took a little while and a couple trips to really moves, I guess, to get you to a place where you're here now and really doing this.

SCHORMAN: Yes, it took a long while, actually. So I graduated from Arizona State in 2002, and I would take classes at Phoenix Center for the Arts, ceramics classes. But then, I graduated from school and I just felt pressure to make money and to earn a living. And as things went, ceramics kind of just dropped off.

And then I got married and had children and got busy with things. And it kind of went away for a while. But I always knew I'd go back to it. So I had mentioned to you that I had moved a few times across the country and I would take my potter's wheel with me every time I left to go to a new place and I would bring it back and so it was always a part of me. I always knew I'd go back to it.

Mark Brodie

/

KJZZ

BRODIE: OK, so let's talk about the outsides of your vessels because they're super interesting and they're very, like, almost looks like a raised relief map, like from if you remember in junior high when you were looking at maps, like how do you describe what your pieces are and what they look like?

SCHORMAN: That's an interesting question. I would describe them as being kind of a sumptuous surface. I like to see a lot of detail, and I like to have a tactile quality to my art. So there's a tactile quality of the subtractive parts that I've carved away, but also the raised dots of the slip trailing gives it another element of surface.

BRODIE: Where do you come up with the ideas for those designs?

SCHORMAN: I've always really liked pattern, especially when it comes to geometric pattern. It's just something that I think is really interesting and lights up my brain.

Also I sit down with a bullet journal which is basically a journal that has dots laid out on a grid and I make a grid because to me like a blank page is just chaos. I don't want anything to do with it. So I start out with a grid and I'm able to make these designs.

Mark Brodie

/

KJZZ

BRODIE: That's really interesting. I mean, you hear a lot of times when you give an artist or a non-artist a blank piece of paper and say, OK, draw something. The blank piece of paper can be very overwhelming, like, Oh my gosh, what do I do? It sounds like to some extent that's what you go through.

SCHORMAN: Yeah, and that's just been my way of counteracting that. I just draw the grid and it anchors me, it gives me something to start from.

BRODIE: What is so appealing to you about having sort of that tactile feature to your work?

SCHORMAN: I think I'm a person with high sensory needs, and so I really appreciate that about work, something that you can touch, that you can feel. You know, ceramics is inherently very tactile, but I like to really amplify that on my surfaces.

When I use my pottery, I tend to rub my finger along the dots. It's kind of like a, it becomes kind of like a fidget toy, you know, where it's something that where I can, you know, aim my extra energy.

BRODIE: Like while you're drinking your coffee or tea or something, you're playing with your mug?

SCHORMAN: Precisely, yes. Yeah.

BRODIE: So my understanding is that your dad was an architect, is that right?

SCHORMAN: Yes, he was.

BRODIE: And does that play anything into your sort of love of geometric forms, or at least maybe your exposure to them?

SCHORMAN: I think it does, actually. He would work out of the house, and so I would, when I was a child, I would kind of look over at his drawings and just really appreciate the meticulousness of it all and just the precision. And I feel like I've definitely carried that through into my own work. I think that's something that I've manifested in my own art practice.

BRODIE: Let me ask you about glaze making, because that's something else that you do here. What is the process for doing that? And I guess, how do you go about trying to do that?

SCHORMAN: Glaze making is remarkably easy. It's just taking different materials and putting them together as a recipe. So it's quite an interesting thing, a pretty easy thing. But it can be very, if you're making your own glazes, it can be very difficult to do that and a lot of testing involved in that and a lot of failure.

Mark Brodie

/

Handout

BRODIE: So I know you also teach classes here. What age range do you personally teach?

SCHORMAN: They're usually about 10 to 12 years old.

BRODIE: And what is that experience like for you?

SCHORMAN: I really love to teach the kids because it's taught me a lot of different things. Kids are just amazing. You teach them the rules, how to do, how to successfully work with clay. And they obviously break those rules. And the thing is that's amazing about it is that it oftentimes works out.

Those things oftentimes succeed even though they shouldn't have succeeded. So it really teaches me to like look at myself and think about how I view things and to see, or maybe my perceptions can be a little self-limiting.

BRODIE: So it's interesting when you talk about, you know, you teach the kids the rules and they kind of break the rules either intentionally or not, but based on what you said earlier about how like a blank piece of paper is just kind of chaos. I would think that watching kids break the rules like that might sort of set you on edge a little bit. It might be like, no, that's not how you're supposed to do it. Please do it this way.

SCHORMAN: It does. And I tell them, hey, that's probably not going to work. And then they come back with it and it works. And then they're like, what do you say now? It's just ...

BRODIE: Has that helped you sort of become a little, and I don't use this word pejoratively, but maybe a little less rigid about how you go about doing your work?

SCHORMAN: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Because it really does. Sometimes I make a mistake and sometimes I leave it, because it becomes a part of the process of that pot.

BRODIE: So tell me about the process of making the molds, because you showed me downstairs, you have a 3D printer that you use, and I'm really fascinated by the use of different technologies to come up with what you're doing.

SCHORMAN: Yeah, at first I was not into the whole idea of the 3D printing, because to me it didn't seem like, I don't know, maybe it needed to be, it didn't seem like it was from me as much. But then I've kind of decided that it really does help me more than hinder me.

The 3D printer allows me to really work on the shape that I want to use for the pottery. I can go back and forth. When I'm making something on the potter's wheel, at a certain point, if you've taken out too much clay, you can't add that back in. But with a 3D design program, you can just mess with it all day long. And when you're happy with the end result, then you can make that the thing you want. So it just led for me to have better forms, I believe.

BRODIE: Is there anything that you have wanted to do that you haven't been able to do for whatever reason yet, art-wise?

SCHORMAN: Well, it's funny. I actually just tackled a project that I'm pretty interested in. My dad asked me to make an urn for my mother after she passed four years ago. And urns are pretty big things. And so it's something that I haven't attempted to do until recently. But yet again, it's a pretty big mold. It's one of those 75-pound things. And so that's something that I've accomplished recently that I know you said what I haven't been able to do, but I feel like I just did something I wasn't able to do.

BRODIE: No, that's amazing. What was that like for you to create something that was so personal to your family?

SCHORMAN: It was hard, and it's been four years, but at the same time, I think it's time, and I think that it's something that I can make more than one piece from this mold, and I feel like it's something that other people could definitely use too, and I think it would be a nice thing to put out into the world.

BRODIE: All right, Ali, thanks so much. I really appreciate it.

SCHORMAN: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

BRODIE: Ali Schorman is a Valley-based ceramic artist.