Page 4 / Sunday, April 10, 2011 Tallahassee Democrat / TLH

He puts a piece of Florida in every potRobin Rodgers’ art-

work is part pottery, part drawing, part sculpture and all Flor-ida.

His imagery includes colorful herons, egrets, manatees, alligators and other Gulf Coast wildlife.

“I like that people say my work looks like Flor-ida. I’ve really enjoyed putting my interest in nature into the pottery,” says Rodgers. “In fact, I saw a hundred white pelicans this weekend, and now I’m dying to make a pot that I can put white pelicans on.”

Rodgers’ drawings are distinctive, almost nar-rative in style.

“If you take a pot

and spin it around, you can see a scene from the Wakulla River, or a school of saltwater fish,” explains Rodgers. “The images on my pots are individual drawings or paintings. Each is dif-ferent. I might do a sea turtle on a pot today, and a piece next week might also have a sea turtle, but they won’t look the same.”

Rodgers came to Tal-lahassee in 1985 to get his MFA in pottery from FSU, but his interest in the art goes back long before that.

“I grew up in Chat-

tahoochee, and I used to find shards of Native American pottery over there on the banks of the Apalachicola River,”

remembers Rodgers. “I had coffee cans full of shards as a kid — they were like puzzle pieces to me.”

When Rodgers fin-ished graduate school, he went to work for Mis-sion San Luis, making replicas of Spanish and

By Randi Atwoodspecial to the democrat if you go

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Robin Rodgers puts images from nature on his pottery.

See POTTER, pAGE 7 /TLH

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TLH / Tallahassee Democrat Sunday, April 10, 2011 / Page 7

Indian pottery based on fragments found at the Mission. In 1992 he founded his own Rab-bit Pond Studio, and now his pots, bowls and vases are shown in museums, galleries and private collections throughout the South-east and the U.S.

Every one of his piec-es starts the same way — with a lump of clay.

“You prepare the clay the way a baker pre-pares dough for bak-ing,” explains Rod-gers. “You roll in it your hands like you’re kneading it. Then you put it on the potter’s wheel, spin it at a cer-tain speed, and form it into the shape you want.”

Once he’s satisfied with the shape, Rod-gers sets the piece aside for two to three hours, until it becomes dry and leathery. At that point it’s ready to be a canvas for his drawings. Next it goes through a preliminary firing, called a bisque firing, in an electric kiln. When it comes out, it’s as hard as a flower pot, but still fragile. The next step is to apply the bright-ly-colored glazes with a brush, after which the piece is fired again.

Rodgers uses a com-bination of techniques for the second firing. The first is a 500-year-old Japanese method called raku, originally used to create bowls for tea ceremonies. This technique involves heating the pots to 2,000 degrees — the temperature at which the glaze melts — in a kiln made out of a

heat-resistant ceramic fiber that was invented by NASA for use in the space shuttles. When the glaze has lique-fied and the pot is red-hot, Rodgers removes it from the kiln. The cool air makes the outside coating expand and form random crackle patterns in the glaze.

Rodgers combines this raku technique with a smoking process used by Native Ameri-cans in the Southwest. He places the crackled pieces of pottery into metal containers filled with combustible mate-rials such as straw or leaves. This material catches fire, and the smoke turns the cracks in the glaze — as well as any unpainted areas — black.

Finally, when the pot has cooled to only a few hundred degrees, Rod-gers removes it from the metal container, quenches it with water and scours off the sooty residue with steel wool.

A large pot takes

about 12 hours of labor to create. But due to the drying and firing

time, the process for each piece takes two weeks from start to fin-ish. In total, Rodgers makes between 300 and 400 pieces a year and sells them at art festivals.

“Last week I was in Cedar Key,” he says, “Before that, Mobile, Ala. Before that, Mount Dora.”

This weekend, Rod-gers will be the fea-tured artist at Le-Moyne Center for the Visual Arts’ 11th Annual Chain of Parks Art Festival, which is spread throughout three downtown Tal-lahassee parks and draws around 40,000 attendees. Artists from all over the U.S. apply for entry, with an independent pan-el of judges selecting the 100-plus artists who participate in the

show.Most art shows in

the Southeast happen in spring and fall. Rod-gers used to travel to shows in other parts of the country during the summer season, but after finding his profits largely eaten up by his travel costs, he decided on a new hot weather activity.

Each summer he takes a hiatus from his own art to teach chil-dren ages 9 and up how to work with clay in his PotteryCamp. He runs morning and after-noon sessions for eight weeks; last summer he taught more than 100 kids to throw pots.

Rodgers teaches the technical aspects of his craft — how to work on the potter’s wheel, how to hand-sculpt forms, and how to fire the results — but the cre-ativity belongs to his students.

“I taught elementa-ry school art for two years in Quincy,” says Rodgers. “I love kids. I love passing my tech-niques on, and the kids love pottery. They are so creative. If you saw the things I have in my shop that were created by 9-year-olds, it would blow your mind.”n Randi Atwood is the associate director for the Council on Culture & Arts.

Robin Rodgers grew up finding Indian pottery shards in Chattahoochee.

POTTERFrom Page 4 / SECTION

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Page 6 / Sunday, April 10, 2011 Tallahassee Democrat / TLH

Rep. Alan Williams is a fan of Hank Williams Jr.

A few artful questions for Rep. Alan Williams.

Q: Can you play a musical instrument?

A: Yes, the tambou-rine and drums.

Q: Do you own any original art?

A: Yes, my own that I painted — acrylic on canvas.

Q: What was the first concert you ever attended?

A: Hank Williams Jr. When I was 8 years old, I was at the Civic Center with my mother for a dinner the same night he played. One of the stagehands took me backstage for about 10 minutes. I guess that is why I am a fan of the Monday Night Football intro featuring good ol’ Hank!

Q: What book is on your nightstand right now?

A: “Decoded,” by Jay-Z and “Lead Like Jesus: Lessons from the Great-est Leadership Role Model of All Time,” by Ken Blanchard and Phil Hodges.

Q: When was the last time you danced?

A: Last week with my wife, daughter and son. We were compet-ing against each other on the “Michael Jackson Experience” game on the Wii, and of course my daughter won. How-ever, I was a close sec-ond.

Q: What was the last live performance you saw?

A: Locally? Tallahas-see Nights Live band at the inaugural (par-ty) for Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll.

Q: What movie has

most affected you?A: “Pay It Forward.”

Yes, I teared up a little bit because Trevor’s sto-ry is what I believe we should all strive for.

Q: What was the last thing you made by hand?

A: A walking stick, with my son at Cub Scout camp. It came in handy, since we did a lot of walking, and my son thought that it made a great sword for fighting off any bears that we may have come in con-tact with.

Q: When was the last time you were on a stage?

A: About two weeks ago at a pension reform rally.

Q: What artistic tal-ent do you wish you had?

A: I wish I could sing. My worst performance was in 2008 while cam-paigning at a church in the Sawdust area of Gadsden County. I sang a gospel song and it was so bad that I got calls all that evening from supporters who said not to do that again. My best performance has been singing “The ABC Song” to my children when they were babies.

By Randi Atwoodspecial to the democrat

MIKE EWEN/democratJohnny Bane gives Florida Representative Alan Williams a high five after a book reading during Children’s Week on Tuesday.

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