George Metropoulos McCauley: Mistakes Make the Magic Brandon Reintjes

Appears in the February 2022 issue of Ceramics Monthly.

George Metropoulos McCauley is an irascible figure in ceramics, known for his irreverent antics and playfulness as much as he is for his superb pots. He is restlessly inventive, creating in numerous media simultaneously (ceramic, metal, paint)—an impulse that extends to social media, where he’s developed a mischievous avatar who often appears as a well-groomed gentleman rancher. McCauley’s posts regularly include his standard poodles—Skippy (now deceased) and Jimmy (still with us)—posing with freshly fired pots. 

McCauley’s persona is larger than life, codified as George’s House of Clay (GHOC)—the brand under which all of his endeavors fall. For instance, McCauley markets his workshop under the banner of GHOC world tours and promotes a rare GHOC first edition—a hand-painted book cover wrapped around a tattered Marc Chagall monograph (an artist who is one of his frequent touchpoints), a farce for which he still receives mail-order requests. There is also the popular “GHOC Wednesday Night Videos Series” on Instagram and YouTube, which focuses on his practice. In addition, his surface treatments are dubbed GHOC Redneck Majolica, while he describes the process of firing pieces a third or fourth time to get the effect he seeks as pots “taking a trip to the Bling Department of GHOC International, LLC.” All in all, McCauley uses tongue-in-cheek boosterism to promote pots and the efforts of an accomplished potter. He’s been making pots for, in his words, “more than half a dad gum century.”

Gesture and Personality

As such, McCauley is a persistent and consummate craftsman. He is known for his functional pottery and narrative sculpture—raucous assemblages of figurative and animal elements combined into impossible candelabras, tableaus, and altars. His work can be characterized as uninhibited, folksy, unapologetically handmade, sincere but self-effacing, earnest, and with heart. Notable is McCauley’s art-for-art’s-sake approach. He intuitively makes loose forms that are heavy on gesture and personality. McCauley once said, “I make pots for the same reason children make mud pies.” This approach—spontaneous, expressive, playful, and purposefully imperfect—places McCauley’s work in the same category as French ceramic artist Jean-Nicolas Gérard or longtime Kent State University professor Kirk Mangus. The resulting work is emotional instead of esoteric, physical rather than philosophical. 

McCauley takes three approaches in his work—decorated, high-temperature wood fired, and low-temperature wood fired. He creates forms that are wood fired, covered in slip, washed with iron, and decorated with Amaco underglazes, which are manipulated by hand while wet. Typically, his pots are decorated with colorful, non-literal floral designs applied with his fingers or large brushes. For his high- and low-temperature wood firing, McCauley recently built a kiln with Perry Haas in Clancy, outside of Helena, Montana. 

In addition, some of McCauley’s recent work is what he calls “hammer and chisel ware,” in which he roughs forms out of leather-hard clay—using the namesake tools to create a distinctive handcrafted aesthetic. The results are Seussical, slab-like flowerpots that lean and droop comically, but fulfill, perfectly, the function for which they were created—framing a bouquet or a couple of odd garden trimmings so beautifully and wonderfully that it is hard to imagine a more perfect solution. 

Providing an Experience

After McCauley laboriously creates pieces, he determines or emphasizes their function, often with handmade, non-ceramic additions crafted from wood or metal, such as spoons, custom wooden tea boxes, or slabs of wood that serve as trays for cream and sugar sets. His impulse to include these is threefold. First, this approach is in keeping with McCauley’s belief that he is providing a total aesthetic experience for the user, not just an object. Second, it arises out of his inquisitive need to ceaselessly invent and create. Third, it comes out of his practice of making his own tools or repurposing household tools for use with clay—scoring forks, calipers (bent wire), and recently, a broomstick.

Unsurprisingly, given his public persona, McCauley’s work feels fresh and, to a degree, even theatrical. However, this manifests not as shtick or bravura, but registers as pure and fluid expression, creative action, and humble sincerity. Like the best theater, in McCauley’s work there is no feeling of artifice, but the audience is impressed by real, lived experience.

Influences and Possibilities

McCauley often acknowledges that his work reflects his cultural influences of Southern US folk pottery and his Greek heritage, but it is his adopted touchstones of Japanese Mino and Bizen wares from the Momoyama period (1573–1615 CE) that stand out most predominately. In fact, looking at Bizen-ware waterpots from the Kamajirushi kiln with their uneven, rough bodies decorated with meandering incised lines provokes a shock of recognition when seen adjacent to McCauley’s covered jars, as if the two were twins separated by more than four centuries. Bizen kilns have been in operation since the 6th century, but in the Momoyama period, showcasing the unglazed clay body became the preferred aesthetic of tea drinkers. A Momoyama revival in the Showa Era (1926–1989) helped solidify modern appreciation of these rustic forms, and it is possible to see both early and late influences in McCauley’s work. He does not stop there but preserves the immediacy of making through to the final piece by celebrating every fingerprint, scratch, gouge, and chip.

McCauley is difficult to place within ceramic tradition. On one hand, he comes out of the raw expressionism of Peter Voulkos, who expanded the sculptural possibilities of ceramics beyond functional work. McCauley assisted Voulkos in workshops, but they also became friends through their mutual love of clay, tendency toward iconoclasm, and shared Greek ancestry. On the other hand, McCauley is also a product of his education with noted potter Ron Meyers, with whom McCauley first studied in 1967 before becoming one of Meyers’ graduate students at the University of Georgia in 1976. Meyers says, “I have known George since he showed up in my Ceramics 101 class at the University of South Carolina . . . I had just started teaching and I always refer to George as my first student. Over these many years, George has had a productive career as a clay maker. He continues to explore the possibilities of the materials and produce a very impressive body of work.” 

McCauley, in turn, maintains a relationship with Meyers that is not necessarily possible between professors and students today, and took the opportunity to help Meyers build a new studio, while also conducting four workshops this year at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina; the University of Georgia-Athens; the Savannah Clay Community; and Callanwolde Fine Art Center in Atlanta, Georgia. 

McCauley is also a longtime friend of Australian ceramic artist Owen Rye, with whom he shares a wood-firing affinity. Rye, author of The Art of Woodfire (2011), is renowned for being at the forefront of the contemporary wood-firing movement internationally. Reflecting on McCauley’s work, Rye says, “I have tried over many years, with many stumbles, to make a pot that is reduced to the absolute fundamentals, so there is nothing that can be taken away. George seems to do this with ease, frequently. George’s work has that apparent naiveté and rawness of the work of a child; but it comes not from innocence but from deep awareness, totally sublimated. Those wonderful loosely erratic forms and those just-so daubs of color are the work of a master. When I grow up, I want to make work like George does.”

McCauley deserves our respect, attention, and celebration. His boisterous veneer and public persona only enhance the dedicated practice of an elder maker, a deeply intentional and considered craftsman who has both a long record of accomplishment and an abiding practice. 

McCauley is represented by the Schaller Gallery, Saint Joseph, Michigan; Red Lodge Clay Center, Red Lodge, Montana; and Plinth Gallery, Denver, Colorado.

the author Brandon Reintjes is senior curator at the Missoula Art Museum. He writes about contemporary ceramics for Ceramics Monthly and Ceramics Art and Perception, and recently wrote about the postwar craft movement in Montana for The Journal of Modern Craft.