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Lutz ceramic artists, Kim Wellman-Welsch and
Harry Welsch, along with daughter, Adrienne
Wellman-Welsch, take a photo break from their
work producing thousands of functional and
decorative pieces each year, which they sell at
juried art shows and festivals across the
Midwestern and Southeastern United States.
(Photo by Anne W. Anderson)
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Fourth in a series by Anne W. Anderson (the other half of we), who visited with each of the studio owners hosting the 2014 Tampa Bay Tour de Clay, a self-directed series of stops stretching from Palm Harbor to San Antonio.
It’s the middle of
September and Kim Wellman-Welsch and Harry Welsch, owners of
Wellman and Welsch Pottery in Lutz, have just returned from working at their summer studio in
Michigan and from making the rounds of juried art shows and festivals in more
northern states.
Daughter Adrienne
Wellman-Welsch, who keeps the Florida studio running when they are gone, and
Phoebe, the dark gray studio cat, are helping them settle back in.
Not for long,
however. In two weeks, they’ll head to Louisville, Kentucky, for the
St. James Court Art Show, then appear in Winter Park the following weekend and in Ocala two
weekends after that. In between, they produce the thousands of pieces of work
they sell in a year. This, along with Welsch’s teaching high school physics,
has been their life for almost 40 years.
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Lutz potter Harry Welsch throws a small
piece in the Florida studio he and Kim
Wellman-Welsch call home for most of the
year. Welsch, recently retired from Tampa's
Chamberlain High School, where he taught
physics for more than two decades, said the
most successful scientists are the most
creative thinkers.
(Photo by Anne W. Anderson)
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Somewhere along the
line, the line between “her pottery” and “his pottery” blurred, then
disappeared. He/she would start a piece; he/she would trim it and finish it;
together they would fire, glaze, and fire again. For the last few years, a
third pair of hands—daughter Adrienne’s—has joined the chain from wheel to
table to kiln to shelf. Their son lives in Orlando.
Kim Wellman-Welsch
may have started the wheel turning, as it were, by taking a pottery class from
a friend back in the mid-1970s. But Harry Welsch kept the wheel turning and the
kiln firing. In fact, he built the first wheel and kiln.
“That was about the
time Adrienne was born and everyone was hippies,” says
Wellman-Welsch with a laugh, referring to the revival of interest in the
handcrafts during that period. She sewed and had taken basket weaving and loom
weaving classes, and she was working for the phone company in Bradenton.
Working with clay
sounded like fun, so she accepted her friend’s invitation, not knowing how
radically it would alter their lives.
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Earth-toned glazes in shades of blues, rust, and sand flow
across this large platter made by Wellman and Welsch
Pottery in Lutz. Clay holders grasp bundled-reed handles,
suggesting the link between the organic and the inorganic,
the living and the life-giving.
(Photo courtesy of Wellman and Welsch Pottery)
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“She’s what we call
a natural,” says Welsch of his wife. “The first time she sat down to throw, she
could center [the clay]. She was cranking out pots so fast her friend couldn’t
keep up with firing them.”
So Welsch built a
kiln—the first of many, as it turned out. But he knew what he was doing.
“The first serious
job I had was setting up travel trailers—doing the wiring, plumbing, and other
construction,” says Welsch, who also has made all the work tables in the studio
and some of their home furniture.
It also didn’t hurt
that he had studied physics, along with chemistry and biology, in college.
“I built her first clay
wheel from a physicist’s perspective,” Welsch says, speaking of the forces
working on the clay as it spins.
The faster the wheel
spins, the more tendency there is for the clay to be pulled off center and to
fly off the wheel or, if perfectly centered, to flatten and spread evenly
toward the edges. The potter’s job is to counter the force of the spinning
wheel, keep the clay centered, and draw the clay inward and upward. Once the
clay is evenly centered, then the potter must control the rate at which the
piece is opened and at which the walls are pulled outward and upward.
Before long, Welsch
was sitting down at the wheel, too. Then people started buying their work.
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One of the tens of thousands of mugs, bowls, and other
functional pieces Lutz potters Kim Wellman-
Welsch and Harry Welsch have made over their almost 40
years as professional artists. The distended areas recall a
time before silverware when potters added bits of clay to
the drinking vessels so they wouldn’t slip out of greasy
hands. (Photo by Anne W. Anderson)
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“One day, she just
told the phone company, ‘I quit,’ which appalled our parents,” says Welsch.
“But we have always
treated it like a business with accountants and health insurance,” Wellman-Welsch
says. “I have been a working mother since 1976, when I started working in the
studio full time. My kids grew up being around clay.”
Wellman-Welsch says
she finds centering the clay very calming.
“It’s the feeling in
the flow of the clay,” Adrienne adds, as her mother picks up a finished mug and
cradles it in her hands.
The mug
Wellman-Welsch holds isn’t the non-descript, smooth-sided coffee shop variety.
This mug, glazed seafoam green on the bottom and sky blue on the top, grows
smoothly from the base then bulges outward toward the midsection.
“Back in the days
before people used silverware to eat, potters would add bits of clay on the
outside of drinking vessels,” Welsch explains. “That way they wouldn’t slip out
of greasy hands.” He gestures toward the distended area in the mug where lines
carved into the clay have caused the glazes to pool and blend. “We use an
incisor tool to distort the clay and add interest.”
“It gives a more tactile
experience for whoever is using it,” Wellman-Welsch says.
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This graceful, tall, lidded box, created by
Wellman and Welsch Pottery in Lutz, rises
from its base and fans out near the top.
Brown sandy glaze ripples down like a
wave-patterned beach being dragged
out to sea by the aquamarine undertow.
(Photo courtesy of Wellman and Welsch Pottery)
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“We want people to
pick them up, feel the
distortions, spin them around in their hands,” Welsch
says.
“They feel good to
us,” Wellman-Welsch begins.
“And we want them to
feel good to others,” Welsch finishes.
Part of the Wellman
and Welsch artistry is in adding visual and tactile layers to seemingly simple
pieces like mugs and bowls.
Another part is in
the melding of natural elements, especially in the larger-form pieces they
create. Attachments formed into the clay pieces hold, after firing, handles of
wrapped reeds, bamboo, tree branches, and other natural items, linking the wood
and reeds with the earthy clay from which the organic matter grew. The glazes
in shades of blues and browns and sands and greens flow into and around and
through each other, recalling the intertwining of earth and sky and stream and
sea and woods and marsh and desert.
The two may have
been “naturals” when it came to pottery, but Welsch’s thirst for knowledge took
them, in the late 1980s, to Rochester, New York, where he earned an M.F.A. They
returned to this area, thinking Welsch might find a position teaching art. Instead,
he became the physics teacher at Chamberlain High School.
“If you think about
it,” says Welsch, who retired from teaching this past June, “DaVinci,
Michaelangelo, Gallileo, all the heroes from physics, were both great engineers
and great artists. The scientists who are the most successful are the ones who
are the most creative thinkers.”
Hanging out, drinking delicious coffee, talking about art… ahhhh, that’s the life! Well, that IS the life at least for an hour or so each month at the Dunedin Fine Art Center’s Coffee and Conversation series. Enjoy coffee (Presented by the Sterling Society of DFAC) and insights as each month’s invited guest holds forth on their own area of expertise. Admission to these relaxed talks is $5 and is FREE to current DFAC members.
