December 3, 2007
Pots, People, Places: The Relationships of Dennis Maust
by Chad Martin | Read Comments (0)
Ask Dennis Maust about his pots and he will
likely respond with stories about people and places; he might tell you about Spain, Tanzania,
Bangladesh, Pakistan, Peru
or Egypt.
And he would talk about friends, “enemies,” neighbors and uncles. After hearing
such stories, I have quickly learned to know Maust as a ceramics artist whose
aesthetic sensibilities derive more from the variety of international locales
where he has lived and traveled than from trends in North American ceramics.
INSPIRATION
His inspiration comes as much from conversations
with humble potters around the globe working to eek out a living from their
craft, as from the art world of Western culture. This unusual range of experiences
and influences has motivated Maust to develop a palette of ceramic techniques
that results in work centering on two key characteristics. He attends to
aesthetic detail, showing a love for compelling juxtapositions—complimentary
colors against each other; deteriorated surfaces against polished finishes;
simple forms against layered textures; natural materials against manufactured
objects—and always intends to reveal beauty.
 ANTIQUING
Throughout the last couple of decades, Maust’s
work combines forms, textures and colors that embody his travels. He employs
skillfully thrown forms, intricate carvings and manipulated slips he calls
“antiquing.” The resulting pots are a study in design as well as a celebration
of his memory of architectural forms and images of nature. While the style and
substance of this work comes largely from his travels, Maust’s M.F.A. from the
Rochester Institute of Technology shows through in his attention to detail and
his willingness to experiment with techniques to achieve a desired end.
EXPLORING HUMAN, POLITICAL RELATIONSHIPS
Maust has been creating such technically and
aesthetically developed work for years, but only recently has he begun
exploring the nature of human and political relationships with this work. With
a series of pieces created in 2004, he took a deliberately conceptual turn.
Maust’s frustration with the war in Iraq
and his critique of U.S.
foreign policy throughout the Middle East
spurred him on. He started making forms that were aesthetically similar to his
previous work, but he added provocative titles, Arabic script and a bit of
performance art to his palette of techniques. He explains, “Before, I was
responding to visual stimuli—divorced from my view of rightness or wrongness.
No one had described my work as powerful before.” He continues to wrestle with
complex questions as he makes pots. “I’ve heard from many people about how this
work has moved them. It felt good and is motivating me to continue.”
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