For Mo Dickens, a life surrounded by clay led to not only a household (and truck) full of ceramics but also a collection of stories to last a lifetime.
When Ceramics Monthly asked if I’d be interested in writing an article about collecting ceramics, my first thought was, “Do I collect ceramics?” It took about two minutes of looking around my house, from the kitchen cabinets to the barrister bookcase in the dining room (which has no books), to the pottery and tiles on the front porch and in the yard, to realize that I do have ceramics on, in, and around my house. Heck, for a couple of years I even drove a 1986 Ford F-150, which was covered in about 900 pounds of handmade tiles. But in my mind, I really collected stories about artists. When I looked at that truck, I didn’t think about glazes or firing temperatures, I thought about Tom Binger and his mosaic students at the Kansas City Art Institute (KCAI), who made and applied those tiles onto my truck. When I looked at the Rah Booty Cheerleaders bowl on my front porch, I thought of Johanna Keefe and how she gloriously captured the guerrilla cheerleading squad of the early 2000s. I borrowed my next question from David Byrne, “Well, how did I get here?”
An Introduction to Ceramics
I grew up in eastern North Carolina, about 80 miles from any established art museum. I was into sports, music, and writing as a child. Art in any form was interesting to me, but I certainly wasn’t surrounded and immersed in it like I am today, at age 69 and living in Kansas City, Missouri. In the early 1980s, I worked for a couple of years in a music venue in Carrboro, North Carolina, where I got to meet the band members of REM; Bad Brains; and Pylon, art students from the University of Georgia. Then in 1991, I met my wife, Cary Esser. She told me she was a ceramic artist. I said, “Like Ron Nagle!” She asked how I knew about Ron and I said, “I had his album when I was in high school.” Cary didn’t know anything about Nagle’s music career, so I sang her a little bit of “Marijuana Hell” and then went to the library and looked up an old story in Rolling Stone magazine about the rocking ceramic artist. I guess I impressed her with my research skills, because we’ve been married for nearly 30 years.
Truth be told, Ron Nagle was the only ceramic artist I knew anything about at that time, but that night he saved me. He was my wingman and gave me something to talk about to the most fascinating person I had ever met. Cary was (is) beautiful, talented, smart, and had an incredible work ethic (still does). She held down adjunct teaching jobs at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and Duke during the day and worked in her studio until 3am many nights, producing some large-scale public art projects. She had a lot in common with the young musicians I knew, in that they were driven to create something new, with their own spin, from traditional art forms. Oh, and they stayed up late.
Right before our wedding in Chapel Hill in 1996, Cary was offered her dream job—Ceramics Chair at KCAI. We packed up and headed for a future west of the Mississippi River.
Adding Complexity and Richness to Life
Now, 28 years later, I live in a house full of art. Mostly ceramics. While I came to Kansas City with very little knowledge of the ceramics world, Cary had a big head start. We have a letter that she sent her parents from Penland in the spring of 1974. She was 18. The letter said, “I just sold some pots to some tourists. My career has begun!” While in the mountains of North Carolina, she met Cynthia Bringle, Paulus Berensohn, Don Reitz, Toshiko Takaezu, and others who would make their mark on 20th-century ceramics. We have work by Cary’s old friends like Akio Takamori and Andrew Martin, who she met in the 1970s when she was a student at KCAI.
After her BFA, Cary moved to Montana and shared a tiny studio with Richard Notkin at the Archie Bray Foundation. Notkin traded her a pyramidal skull teapot for a book about Yixing pottery. Mostly we have work by her former students, some of whom still work with clay and others who have gone in different directions. Cary’s late colleague, Victor Babu, said the students, with their various interests and backgrounds, all add flavor to the soup that is the department—“making it richer and more complex.”
When we got to KCAI, the ceramics department had artwork, mostly made by alums, stuffed in every nook and cranny, especially on top of the ductwork. Cary rounded up students to help her get the pieces identified and organized and it now serves as a wonderful teaching collection, which I visit frequently.
At my job for twenty years as a gallery assistant with Belger Arts, I was able to share major ceramic works by Viola Frey, Don Reitz, Robert Arneson, Ron Nagle, and others with visitors from six continents. Within the Belger Collection, in addition to the works by legendary artists, there are several works that Evelyn Belger picked up from end of semester exhibitions. During the 2009–10 school year, she picked up several nice teapots by sophomores, including two by Roberto Lugo and Shae Bishop. Lugo did not sign his pot, but told Mrs. Belger that he had left a magic marker inside the teapot and when he had made his mark in the clay world he would return and sign the pot with that marker. He kept his word. It was great to see his work in the Metropolitan Museum of Art last summer while visiting New York City. Bishop and Lugo have kept in touch and collaborated on some work in the intervening years. They’ve both shown work at the Belger Crane Yard Studios Gallery. They do grow up, these young artists. Another former student I’ve enjoyed following over the years is Lauren Mabry. In our dining room is a tiny ceramic seedpod sculpture she made as a student. Later she scaled up and we showed some of her larger works at the Belger Crane Yard Studios.
Living a Life Surrounded by Clay
Riding around Kansas City, if you pay attention, you’ll see terracotta ornament on many of the historical buildings, like Cary did when she was a student from 1974–1978. It changed her desire to be a potter into a career reflecting on ceramics as architectural ornament. On our front porch is a brick from a public art project that Cary did in central North Carolina. She showed locals how to carve bricks, which were eventually fired and used to create a wall in a park. Not only do I live in a house full of clay, but have worked in buildings full of clay, and live in a city full of clay.
I could go on and on, but let’s wrap this up: “Well, how did I get here?” I married into the clay family. The ceramics in my house and around Kansas City represent my in-laws. I collect their amazing stories. As a child, I never dreamed of being a clay spouse, but I’ve had a pretty good career. You never know.
the author Mo Dickens recently retired from Belger Arts in Kansas City after 20 years. He oversaw exhibitions of works by El Anatsui, Jasper Johns, Renee Stout, and dozens of other notables of the 20th and 21st centuries. He plans to spend his retirement looking at, and talking about, more art.
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For Mo Dickens, a life surrounded by clay led to not only a household (and truck) full of ceramics but also a collection of stories to last a lifetime.
When Ceramics Monthly asked if I’d be interested in writing an article about collecting ceramics, my first thought was, “Do I collect ceramics?” It took about two minutes of looking around my house, from the kitchen cabinets to the barrister bookcase in the dining room (which has no books), to the pottery and tiles on the front porch and in the yard, to realize that I do have ceramics on, in, and around my house. Heck, for a couple of years I even drove a 1986 Ford F-150, which was covered in about 900 pounds of handmade tiles. But in my mind, I really collected stories about artists. When I looked at that truck, I didn’t think about glazes or firing temperatures, I thought about Tom Binger and his mosaic students at the Kansas City Art Institute (KCAI), who made and applied those tiles onto my truck. When I looked at the Rah Booty Cheerleaders bowl on my front porch, I thought of Johanna Keefe and how she gloriously captured the guerrilla cheerleading squad of the early 2000s. I borrowed my next question from David Byrne, “Well, how did I get here?”
An Introduction to Ceramics
I grew up in eastern North Carolina, about 80 miles from any established art museum. I was into sports, music, and writing as a child. Art in any form was interesting to me, but I certainly wasn’t surrounded and immersed in it like I am today, at age 69 and living in Kansas City, Missouri. In the early 1980s, I worked for a couple of years in a music venue in Carrboro, North Carolina, where I got to meet the band members of REM; Bad Brains; and Pylon, art students from the University of Georgia. Then in 1991, I met my wife, Cary Esser. She told me she was a ceramic artist. I said, “Like Ron Nagle!” She asked how I knew about Ron and I said, “I had his album when I was in high school.” Cary didn’t know anything about Nagle’s music career, so I sang her a little bit of “Marijuana Hell” and then went to the library and looked up an old story in Rolling Stone magazine about the rocking ceramic artist. I guess I impressed her with my research skills, because we’ve been married for nearly 30 years.
Truth be told, Ron Nagle was the only ceramic artist I knew anything about at that time, but that night he saved me. He was my wingman and gave me something to talk about to the most fascinating person I had ever met. Cary was (is) beautiful, talented, smart, and had an incredible work ethic (still does). She held down adjunct teaching jobs at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and Duke during the day and worked in her studio until 3am many nights, producing some large-scale public art projects. She had a lot in common with the young musicians I knew, in that they were driven to create something new, with their own spin, from traditional art forms. Oh, and they stayed up late.
Right before our wedding in Chapel Hill in 1996, Cary was offered her dream job—Ceramics Chair at KCAI. We packed up and headed for a future west of the Mississippi River.
Adding Complexity and Richness to Life
Now, 28 years later, I live in a house full of art. Mostly ceramics. While I came to Kansas City with very little knowledge of the ceramics world, Cary had a big head start. We have a letter that she sent her parents from Penland in the spring of 1974. She was 18. The letter said, “I just sold some pots to some tourists. My career has begun!” While in the mountains of North Carolina, she met Cynthia Bringle, Paulus Berensohn, Don Reitz, Toshiko Takaezu, and others who would make their mark on 20th-century ceramics. We have work by Cary’s old friends like Akio Takamori and Andrew Martin, who she met in the 1970s when she was a student at KCAI.
After her BFA, Cary moved to Montana and shared a tiny studio with Richard Notkin at the Archie Bray Foundation. Notkin traded her a pyramidal skull teapot for a book about Yixing pottery. Mostly we have work by her former students, some of whom still work with clay and others who have gone in different directions. Cary’s late colleague, Victor Babu, said the students, with their various interests and backgrounds, all add flavor to the soup that is the department—“making it richer and more complex.”
When we got to KCAI, the ceramics department had artwork, mostly made by alums, stuffed in every nook and cranny, especially on top of the ductwork. Cary rounded up students to help her get the pieces identified and organized and it now serves as a wonderful teaching collection, which I visit frequently.
At my job for twenty years as a gallery assistant with Belger Arts, I was able to share major ceramic works by Viola Frey, Don Reitz, Robert Arneson, Ron Nagle, and others with visitors from six continents. Within the Belger Collection, in addition to the works by legendary artists, there are several works that Evelyn Belger picked up from end of semester exhibitions. During the 2009–10 school year, she picked up several nice teapots by sophomores, including two by Roberto Lugo and Shae Bishop. Lugo did not sign his pot, but told Mrs. Belger that he had left a magic marker inside the teapot and when he had made his mark in the clay world he would return and sign the pot with that marker. He kept his word. It was great to see his work in the Metropolitan Museum of Art last summer while visiting New York City. Bishop and Lugo have kept in touch and collaborated on some work in the intervening years. They’ve both shown work at the Belger Crane Yard Studios Gallery. They do grow up, these young artists. Another former student I’ve enjoyed following over the years is Lauren Mabry. In our dining room is a tiny ceramic seedpod sculpture she made as a student. Later she scaled up and we showed some of her larger works at the Belger Crane Yard Studios.
Living a Life Surrounded by Clay
Riding around Kansas City, if you pay attention, you’ll see terracotta ornament on many of the historical buildings, like Cary did when she was a student from 1974–1978. It changed her desire to be a potter into a career reflecting on ceramics as architectural ornament. On our front porch is a brick from a public art project that Cary did in central North Carolina. She showed locals how to carve bricks, which were eventually fired and used to create a wall in a park. Not only do I live in a house full of clay, but have worked in buildings full of clay, and live in a city full of clay.
I could go on and on, but let’s wrap this up: “Well, how did I get here?” I married into the clay family. The ceramics in my house and around Kansas City represent my in-laws. I collect their amazing stories. As a child, I never dreamed of being a clay spouse, but I’ve had a pretty good career. You never know.
the author Mo Dickens recently retired from Belger Arts in Kansas City after 20 years. He oversaw exhibitions of works by El Anatsui, Jasper Johns, Renee Stout, and dozens of other notables of the 20th and 21st centuries. He plans to spend his retirement looking at, and talking about, more art.
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