Saint John's Pottery

Body of Clay, Soul of Fire RICHARD BRESNAHAN AND THE ST. JOHN'S POTTERY

by Matthew Welch Foreword by Gerry Williams

Hardcover $75.00 Softcover $39.00       Video $29.95

A FEAST FOR THE EYES and also the spirit, Body of Clay, Soul of Fire will delight art lovers, potters, and collectors, as well as to everyone who is interested in Benedictine traditions. Richard Bresnahan is a preeminent American potter and an ambassador for the natural environment. Reared on a farm in North Dakota, he graduated from Saint John’s University, a Benedictine school in Collegeville, Minnesota, and apprenticed as a potter in Japan. Returning to Saint John’s, where he is an artist in residence, he built a massive wood-burning kiln, which, with its innovative flame flues and water channels, dwarfs all other American kilns. By digging his own clay, using local seeds and hulls as glazing materials, and firing with deadfall, Bresnahan also practices a brand of environmentalism worthy of his Benedictine surroundings. Author Matthew Welch is curator of Japanese and Korean art at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. As a Fulbright scholar at Kyoto University in the 1980s, he developed an abiding passion for traditional Asian ceramics. Body of Clay, Soul of Fire resulted from an ongoing dialogue about pottery between Bresnahan and Welch over the past ten years. "Many artists leave the Midwest and move to New York or L.A. to shun their rural background. But Richard chose to come back here, to create a center, and to promote the very earth of the place as an asset."—Stewart Turnquist, Minneapolis Institute of Arts Body of Clay, Soul of Fire: Richard Bresnahan and the Saint John’s Pottery accompanies a traveling exhibition of Bresnahan’s and his apprentices’ work that opens at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota, in December 2001 and will tour to museums in Minnesota and the Dakotas.

Saint John's Pottery Pieces