Travel and traditions of use motivate Darin Gehrke’s profound creations
The drip of Japanese-inspired green glaze on West Greenville potter Darin Gehrke’s stoneware mugs is not happenstance. Nor are his porcelain mugs’ pinches and ridges. Instead, the tactile elements intentionally link his pieces to the people who use them.
“I think as you’re using it, you just kind of subconsciously connect with those things as you feel the parts of the mug,” Gehrke explains. “The mug is simple, but . . . there’s a lot of work and thought that goes into creating it. It’s also the pot people are most intimate with.”
He can throw upwards of two dozen mug forms on his pottery wheel in a day, one of the first steps in a multiphase process to turn lumps of clay into functional works of art. Each of his teapots, canisters, bowls, vases, and other objects are made with “the intention of being used.”
When Gehrke makes pots, he likes to think about how they’re enhancing someone’s day, even if it’s just a simple moment with their morning coffee. “My care and attention to how the pot was made is transferred to how the user then cares for the pot,” he says.
A Pennsylvania native, Gehrke discovered ceramics in a studio class required as part of his art education studies at Penn State University. “The material really drew me in,” he reflects. “As I learned more about the chemistry with glazes and the technology of the firing process, I learned it’s the perfect melding of art and engineering.”
After years as a high school art teacher, he began making pottery full-time in 2005. The career shift came after he and his wife spent a year living in China and traveling throughout Asia. There, Gehrke soaked up the aesthetics of Japanese, Chinese, and Korean ceramics, as well as the traditions involving their use.
“In China, as soon as you enter someone’s home, you are offered tea. You never fill your own cup, and you never let your friend fill their own cup,” he said. “I always saw this as a metaphor for helping others.”
Gehrke felt especially drawn to Japanese, Chinese, and Korean periods when simple forms with minimal decoration were made, and his travels continue to influence his striking organic forms and refined palette of eye-catching glazes.
“My goal is to have these Asian elements, but also mix them in with modern aesthetics and sensibilities,” he explains, noting how he has progressed from experimenting and wrestling with drastically different shapes and large amounts of clay.
“Now, I have settled into my shapes and style, and focus on the micro details. Slight adjustments to the arc of a curve, the angle of the lip of a cup, or how a small change in a handle may alter the feel of a pitcher. These may be unnoticeable to most but keep me wanting to explore,” Gehrke adds.
Rapid-fire Pottery Facts with Darin Gehrke
Rapid-fire Pottery Facts with Darin Gehrke- Gehrke makes blue-and-white botanical patterned mugs for The Village Grind coffee shop using a cobalt material printed on rice paper. “I can transfer the prints onto the wet clay by wetting the rice paper,” he says, adding that the prints come from the Jingdezhen region in China where porcelain was first discovered.
- The inspiration for the signature black stoneware birds found atop Gehrke’s bird jars came from aluminum foil birds he sculpted on outings with his daughter. “I read somewhere that Chinese potters used to make these blackbirds, and they put them on top of jars. And they were called prayer or wishing jars,” he explains. Black-hued birds also figured prominently in the ceramics collaboration he did with artist Glory Day Loflin in 2018.
- Some of Gehrke’s larger vases and vessels are on display and available for purchase at the Grand Bohemian Lodge’s gallery. His dinnerware is used at The Anchorage restaurant.
- Gehrke’s palette of glazes, which are made of minerals that are ground into a fine powder, take their cues from traditional Asian glazes. The celadon green comes from the Song Dynasty and Korean ceramics, while the deeper green is called Oribe. It is a Japanese glaze named after a tea master who considered deep green, black, and white the most harmonious combination of colors.
- Of all the functional objects Gehrke creates, teapots are his favorite. “They’re the most challenging form, with making all the parts. The proportions of the teapot are really important, and usually, if the proportions are correct, it functions best. Form follows function,” he says.
- The round canisters and butter dishes have a registration mark on both the pot and its lid to show “how the pot was born,” Gehrke explains. “Because the piece is fired with the lid on it, if the pot changes shape, the lid changes shape.”
- The small squares found on some of Gehrke’s pieces are pressed into the clay using hand-carved stamps he got from an Alabama woodcarver. Adding tactile elements to the pots “you handle and you use” is a tradition in Japanese ceramics, Gehrke says.
- Gehrke and his family moved from New York City to Greenville in 2014, after he participated in Artisphere for the first time in 2013. “It was the best show I’d ever had,” he says. “Greenville is really an amazing town, because of Artisphere, because of MAC and Open Studios and First Fridays.
To see more of Gehrke’s pottery or to contact him directly, visit drgceramics.com or follow him on Instagram @drgceramics.
