Ceramic artist Steven Forbes-deSoule has grown rather comfortable with uncertainty. The clay-throwing wheel in his 1,100-square-foot studio faces a breathtaking mountain panorama including Bull Mountain and other Weaverville-area peaks. From here, he can watch the weather patterns gather and shift—taking in the change of the seasons.
He and his wife Lynn Powell-Forbes built their passive-solar house in 1992. Backed up against Vance Knob on a dizzyingly steep road, their home is part of the Ballard Branch Land Company, one of the region’s oldest intentional green communities.
Finding their place in this lovely setting was itself a leap of faith: the couple had to ditch lucrative jobs in the Atlanta area, where Powell-Forbes was a teacher and Forbes-deSoule a successful studio potter and an adjunct professor of ceramics at Agnes Scott College.
But trusting the process is part of his credo. All along the way, the artist has shaped his career by balancing control with spontaneity—blending tactical maneuvers with sweet surrender. It’s the same philosophy that informs his chosen medium: raku.
American raku pottery is a modification of an old Japanese form that was used to make vessels for tea ceremonies. In standard pottery, numerous pots are glazed slowly in a large kiln. Like other ceramics, raku pieces are formed carefully on the wheel or hand built. But then they are glaze fired rapidly, one or two at a time, at high temperature in a small custom kiln. Removed blazing hot, they’re placed in metal containers with combustible materials (Forbes-deSoule uses strips of newspaper) and sealed off. Finally, they are quick-cooled in a water bath. Under this wild treatment, the porous raku clay rebels against preconceived notions: what emerges is never, ever what went in.
He calls all his pieces “pots,” although almost none of his work is functional. And the basic shape of each pot does not change under raku firing—it’s the evolution of texture and glaze that brands each piece uniquely.
“The oxygen-starved atmosphere causes all kinds of surprises—you never know what you’re going to get,” says the imperturbable potter. Forbes-deSoule is as laid back as only a man wholly submerged in his calling can be. He chose raku, he says, because the “richness of the glaze and [the firing technique] open up so many possibilities. Every time you open that metal can, it’s like Christmas.” Still, he goes slowly when he teaches his numerous workshops, held everywhere from Brasstown to British Columbia. “I try to be patient and understanding.”
Like most serious ceramists, Forbes-deSoule creates his own proprietary recipes for glaze colors. “It’s the skin of the pot,” he says simply. “Glaze development is something I try to interject in all my workshops.” He doesn’t share all his tricks, however. The formula for his newly created “halo/opal glaze” isn’t available to students.
“It’s my one secret recipe,” the artist says with a slow smile. Halo/opal is an uplifting iridescence used solo or enhanced with melted colored glass. The look completes such recent works as the wavy-edged Winged Bowl and Big Red Apple, one in a series of alluringly touchable fruit. The most daring pot he attempts is an elliptical ovoid, a vessel complicated on either end by descending peaks that are hard to stabilize.
Making signature colors and shapes is one way to stand out in the fine-craft world. But alas, it takes more than skill to professionally distinguish oneself. For this potter, attending an art-marketing class increased his sales at indoor exhibitions. A decade before that, Forbes-deSoule vowed never again to hawk his wares at street shows. “It gave me a sick feeling,” he says.
His main venues today are the Craft Fair of the Southern Highlands, held twice a year; select museums and galleries; his website; during the Weaverville Art Safari, a driving studio tour; and via such invitation-only home shows as his 50th Firing Kiln Opening last August. The 50th pot of the title was the last in a series he finished live, firing it as a demo and awarding it by drawing to a lucky attendee.
“It was the best show I ever had,” says Forbes-deSoule. During the six-hour event, a walkie-talkie setup connected a guide in the studio to one standing in the pasture below the house, insuring that no one got lost on the ascent.
Such grassroots measures seem in keeping with Forbes-deSoule’s long-range artistic vision. He’s fired a lot of pots, and he’s seen a lot of seasons creep up and down Bull Mountain. He knows it’s no good having set goals with iffy raku. And yet learning to embrace the unpredictable can still take practice. “It’s natural to have expectations, though you try not to. These pots,” he explains, “are like my children.”