In this reflective essay, I invite the reader to look at, meaning to see and to think about, pottery differently. I do this by considering place and embodiment in the context of ceramic work created by Mr. Willi Singleton.
‘Place’ has begun to occupy a great deal of thought in the humanities. There are volumes of books, numerous articles and lectures on its various aspects.1 Important themes pertaining to place include issues of identity and attachment. Generally speaking, when we discuss a place, we are talking about a location and its environment. Yi-Fu Tuan, in his seminal book Space and Place (2001), asserts that ‘place’ is established when things are no longer in motion, or have come to a resting place.2 This sense of ‘place’ is created by the perception of object permanence, as in “I know where the front door of the house is.” or, “you know, where those sugar maples have been growing next to the metal toolshed for decades.” Cabinets and drawers guide us to the location, or place, of mixing bowls and silverware in the kitchen. Concreteness and materiality appear to be essential features of a place. From a geographic perspective, we can assign a fixed set of X Y coordinates mapped out on models of planet earth to identify a place. Property boundaries, though subject to change, also identify the location of a place. One’s home or studio address is a common way of thinking about this. However, there is more significance to place than where and what.
From my lived experience, I have come to see ‘place’ as a structure that informs the purpose and organization of human effort. ‘Place’ influences expectations for human interactions or behavior. For example, we may behave or act differently at a sports arena, in a house of
