The Michiana Aesthetic: Community and Collaboration in an Emerging Pottery Tradition

Abstract

Drawing on extensive ethnographic field research, this dissertation explores the professional lives of a group of potters in Michiana, an informal region centered around the border of northern Indiana and southern Michigan. It focuses on the emergence and ongoing development of a regionally specific pottery tradition, which has been built over the last twenty to thirty years by a growing group of potters, most of whom note that the presence of additional, likeminded potters is a major reason they choose to pursue their craft in this location. While previous material culture studies in folklore have often focused on tracing the social life of a certain type of object, this study looks at professional potters as an occupational group and considers the significance of developing a strong sense of community with others in the same profession. Much of the premise of this dissertation lies in the fact that presence matters; local places, personalized spaces, and face-to-face interactions are crucial to these potters in many ways, even when they do not work in the same studio together. These individual artists rely on numerous social connections: through a shared history, religion, and/or lifestyle preferences; through communal educational spaces and the development of vocational habitus; through the collaborative process of wood firing and liminal experiences; through the objects they exchange, collect, and hold dear. The included chapters each illuminate one of these social connections that is of benefit, and reveals how each aspect has played a role in the development of a sense of community among the potters who share a vocation in Michiana. Throughout the text, embodied experiences such as sense of space, physicality of the work, and the tactile experience of pottery play a key role in the potters’ shared understanding of their work. As a whole, this study suggests a structured approach for the ethnographic study of the social lives of contemporary artists and demonstrates the importance of acknowledging the everyday interpersonal and embodied connections that influence an individual artist.