Mark's thoughts on apprenticeships when he was preparing for a panel he moderated at NCECA in 2005:

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As a non-degreed potter I have always been interested in non-academic tracks, and while I myself didn’t apprentice, I wish I had. Setting up my studio I spent a lot of time with my collaborators inventing systems and technologies. Had we known any one system well, it would have saved us plenty of missteps and bumbling. (The first firing was a kiln disaster and I remember trips to the corner store in the early days of send out pots poking around for grocery boxes that might somehow nest—no one told me you could order boxes.) I did have information from lots of reading and a few very helpful stints in workshops at the Penland and Haystack Schools. But there is a wide gap between that kind of experience and a practicum where one sees first hand the good, bad, and ugly of an artist making a living producing work. I think it was only blind faith, luck and persistence, that enabled me able to establish my studio and career.

I came to having apprentices as a natural evolution from the team-based practice in which I stated out. While it was more freely structured than the way I now organize the give and take with my apprentice, the decision to explore working with an apprentice flowed from the satisfactions I lived with, and the challenges I lived through, working together over a dozen or so years in collaboration with Aaron Weissblum, Sam Taylor, and Michael Kline. Sam and Aaron had their own studio together offsite, but glazed and fired with me, and Michael Kline was house mate and studio mate at first, and finally studio mate until he moved to North Carolina. We were a bunch of hungry and clay-ignorant young men with a large wood kiln and distracting day jobs, figuring it out as we went along, learning from each other’s mistakes and successes, encouraging and pushing each other—competing too. As Aaron moved on to inventing games professionally, and Sam and Michael to their own kilns and studios and families, I needed the help that the wood-firing process demands and wanted the stimulation and fun of working along side others. While this occurs as a matter of course during firings of a large kiln, when a team comes together for several days, the consistency of interaction through the whole making cycle had always felt fruitful. In short, I knew from working with the boys that my creative process is sustained and nourished by community—apprenticeship was an avenue to continue to explore that possibility.

It’s quite a jump from working a democratic collaborative, constantly negotiating how why and when things should be done to being in charge. These are very different roles, each with their unique pleasures and difficulties, which is to say that my years working collaboratively prepared me in some ways for the complex dynamic of working over time in proximity to other creative minds. I eased into apprenticeship, beginning with paid assistants like Ellen Huie and Chuck DeWolfe. With Jeff Shapiro’s encouragement and help in setting up a model, I began take apprentices. There seemed to be a lot of responsibility—financial, personal—the pressure to be some kind of role model—which I was reticent at first to embrace. On a logistical level, one thing that helped make the whole thing work was that as Michael Kline and I were becoming more professional and phasing out of our day jobs and needing more pots at deadlines in the early 90’s we began bumping into each other in my studio. In the mid-1990s I built an addition to be my own studio and a small soda/salt propane kiln, which gave us both the space and flexibility Michael and I then needed. When Michael moved, the semi-separate studio space and possibility of firing the small kiln became assets to offer as part of the package I am able to offer my apprentice.

The way I set it up:

    * Three-year commitment. First year is investment teaching how the studio is run, second and third thing should run without need for much explanation.
    * Responsibilities include: Cutting, splitting, and stacking wood for studio heat and kiln, cleaning, recycling and making clay, shipping, bisque firing, wadding, some glazing, scheduling. All are tasks I help with when necessary, and the work mostly benefits both of us, since the apprentice shares the studio. I have no production ware made by apprentice (though I did try some slabware at the beginning).
    * Amount of work for the apprentice depends on their efficiency. It can be as much as 50 hrs around firing (but includes own work). Generally it is about 15hrs/wk. (Maya, my current apprentice, rolls her eyes at my own inefficiencies). I offer a small year-round stipend, regardless of what’s happening in studio. I shut down for about a month in late December and during summer workshops. (Penland/Haystack etc.), which I encourage apprentices to take to get alternative influences. Probably 10 months/yr work.
    * Rest of time for own work. Apprentice sets own hours and brings their own tools, is responsible for own housing.
    * Free materials, treadle-wheel for use, and semi-separate space, 24-hr access
    * Encourage movement toward making bodies of work to show and sell at first at home sales and eventually shows.
    * Usually have part-time job to supplement. Michael McCarthy worked at a nearby deli for two years before supporting himself with his pots the third; Maya Machin worked in the mornings teaching pre-school and came out to the pottery in the afternoons.
    * Occasional crits, encouragement, now and then a sharper challenge. Suggestions and support about how to move on.
    * Access to my community of potters, dealers, collectors etc. (For example, Michael now works for and exhibits with my main dealer Leslie Ferrin.) Often if I teach a workshop where an assistant is required, my apprentice comes along.
    * My goal is for the apprentice to evolve into a studio manager—understanding the whole picture well enough to be involved in planning.

With Sam and Michael we had to learn to work to one another’s strengths, and it’s hard to be honest about one’s weaknesses. To be successful potter you need so many strengths: great work, technical knowledge, self-presentation skills, writing, bookkeeping, follow through, etc—few of us have them all. I am challenged to be flexible in bending myself to work with the unique qualities of different individuals who come here. I try to accommodate the particular interests, strengths and commitments of my apprentices—whether Steve Theberge’s political activism or Maya’s soccer team, which Stonepool Pottery sponsored. As my own career changes the apprentice’s job description changes too. I am spending less time doing shows now, and I have worked a lot this winter writing about ceramics. It’s been interesting to think about what the apprentice’s role should be through these transitions.

Here are some other apprenticeship situations I know of, (though some use other terms for their helpers), with some notes from conversations with the potters offer them. (In all but Chris Gustin’s and Mark Hewitt’s, the apprentice does not make work for the studio to sell).

John Glick, Michigan

    * Interns since 1967—so far 26 interns
    * One-year internship he says he keeps it short for fear of over influencing.
    * No pay or housing
    * He expects 20-30 hrs studio work, all chores are done together
    * He mentions, humor, music, companionship
    * Intern’s work is sold during open houses

Sylvie Granatelli, Floyd VA

    * Interns since 1995
    * Two-year commitment (8 months to settle in)
    * No money exchanged or housing provided
    * 12 hrs/week average studio chores
    * Separate studio materials and kiln fuel and wear and tear paid

Sylvia sees her situation as a springboard toward beginning a career—giving back to the field. She tries to be helpful but not too helpful and guards her own privacy. Most of her interns have gone on to graduate programs.

Mark Hewitt, Pittsboro, North Carolina

    * Two-year commitment
    * Stipend and housing provided. Apprentices make work sold by the studio.

Usually 2 apprentices at any given time.

Jeff Shapiro, Accord NY

    * Two-year minimum
    * Monthly stipend; apprentice supplements income from outside source.
    * 40 hrs/week
    * Lunches and some dinners provided
    * Studio use evenings and use of small wood and salt kilns. (Gas and wood provided “within reason”)
    * Studio chores/skills: sweeping mopping, making tea, wedging, making coils and slabs, glaze preparation, and loading and firing kiln twice a year.

Tim Rowan, Catskills, New York

    * One-year minimum
    * No money exchanged
    * Housing in trailer on property
    * Current apprentice is working 20-35hrs/wk a construction job to make ends meet.
    * Unlimited use of 14 cu/ft cross draft kiln apprentice provides wood and some space in anagama fired twice a year.

Chris Gustin, N. Dartmouth, Massachusetts

    * Two-year internship after a 4 month probation period; 2 apprentices at a time.
    * 40 hrs/wk; ½ day off during the week for own work
    * Living space, utilities, 300sq/ft separate studio space; apprentices paid on the books as employees.
    * Clay/glaze, prep, clean, office work, and making tiles.
    * Materials not provided. Free firing if in Chris’s kiln, pay for gas if own firing. Managing of teams of participants in anagama firing
    * Crits if desired

      Chris stressed his intern’s engagement in the process of making a living. He spoke of the two-year limit stressing his desire to encourage their independence. He “doesn’t want to be their parent.”

Anxiety of influence

Many have commented about the perils of influence and the apprentice/master relationship has the potential to be a very powerful for both parties—especially jarring for a young person who wants to do this work badly enough to place themselves in the demanding and lightly compensated situation of apprentice. How can the apprentice survive the master’s artistic vision to themselves become a master? We “masters” seem to have everything—the long and faltering way we came into our own artistic voices and established our up-and-running studios is unseen. Sometimes apprentices just have to get away. (Michael McCarthy, for example, the year after his apprenticeship ended went to residencies at Anderson Ranch and in the Dominican Republic, two places just about as far away as he could get. Though now he is back in Western Massachusetts and will still fire the wood-kiln with me.)

The question of how influence can be a nurturing rather than a crushing force in the development of self is of course an age-old problem, and takes a lot of intention, time, persistence and maybe a few good breaks. I think is better to have models of excellence deeply internalized and to be engaged in the struggle to meet that standard on your own way, than not. As Pedro Martinez, the BoSox pitching ace, said on not being able to beat the Yankees in last year’s (2004) play-offs, “They’re my daddy”.

That was the year that Pedro and Boston went on to win the World Series.

- Mark Shapiro. 2005.