From the artist's website:
I make a wide array of pottery forms that are both functional and decorative. My pots are an expression of my love for the process and medium of clay, slips, and glazes; all of which I have formulated and continue to make from the raw materials. Firing to cone 10 reduction, the outcome is never 100% predictable; leaving room for chance, which I find very exciting and rewarding. Mine is a non self-conscious approach to art using simple tools and materials; spontaneously allowing the ongoing process of the work to suggest its own variations, and encouraging a more intuitive approach to creativity.
I am inspired by standing at the wheel and pulling a form out of a lump of soft clay, shaping it as close to collapse as it will allow... then doing it again. Next, I apply wet slips on the form to provide contrast and accent the form—they are beautiful when wet and shiny, and still impressionable. When the pot is dry enough to handle again, I slip trail linear designs in a gestural motion to record repetitive but distinct patterns affected by the firmness of the pot and the slips being trailed. This is when the world feels right to me. The feeling is often repeated when handling and inspecting the pots pulled from the kiln while still warm. The firing brings its own conclusion to the process.
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1979-1987: My first studio in the Pond Branch Community near Leesville, SC. Converted from an old pole barn with recycled materials in 1979 after successfully completing an MFA program at USC in Columbia, SC. I mixed my clay in a horse trough and air dried to throwing consistency. The pots were fired to cone 10 (high-fired stoneware) in a sprung-arch wood burning kiln. My work was moving from slip trailing and celadon glazes to slip trailing on colored slips that were unglazed.
1987-1999: The second studio built in Green Mountain, NC in 1987. The kiln was moved and reassembled, it was fired with propane to cone 9. I used a clay mixer to mix my own clay formula and a pugmill to wedge it before throwing it on the potter's wheel. I was accepted to exhibit in the Southern Highland Craft Guild in 1989 and exhibit in the Guild Fairs and sell through their galleries. Unglazed ware was giving out to celadons and glaze trailing on colored slips under celadons, and glaze trailing over celadon.
1999-2018: The present studio on Cane Branch Road was built in 1999. My clay and glazes are still prepared by myself according to my own formula which has evolved over the years I have used them. The kiln has been moved and reassembled again, disassembled and rebuilt in February 2018, sharing firings with Ruth Fischer Rutkowsky— my wife and partner in Rutkowsky Pottery. It is fired to cone 10 in a reduction atmosphere, burning propane fuel. Now I am slip and glaze trailing on glazed and unglazed pots, combining colored slips with celadons and applying slips and glazes with my fingers to achieve multiple layers of varying colors.
2018-Present: For 39 years Michael Rutkowsky’s studio practice was known as Pond Branch Pottery. It is now in its third location and in 2018 was renamed Rutkowsky Pottery.
