Community Center potter expanding Ceramic Program

Forrest Lesch-Middelton wants to help fellow potters in the community understand their work – “to look at it critically” – so they’ll continue to develop both their art and their craft.
Director of the Ceramic Program at the Sonoma Community Center since May, Lesch-Middelton spends half his time teaching and building the curriculum, and the other half making functional pottery in his studio there.
He’d like to develop Sonoma’s program to the level of other nationally known centers, such as the Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Colorado, Santa Fe Clay in New Mexico, and the Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Tennessee. One way he’s doing this is by scheduling weekend workshops, such as recent ones on firing with wood by potters Marc Lancet and Masakazu Kusakabe, authors of the book Japanese Wood-Fired Ceramics; and others on porcelain by Berkeley potters Sandy Simon and Jess Parker.
Lesch-Middelton “fell in love with clay” as a 14-year-old high school student in the Seattle area. His school required everyone to take art, but because his older brother Jason was an accomplished artist, he took pottery instead. Encouraged by his teachers, he went on to earn a BFA at the New York State School of Ceramics at Alfred University.
After graduation, he was a resident artist at the Watershed Center for Ceramics in Newcastle, on the Maine coast. Then he spent two years teaching pottery at the Mendocino Art Center, supplementing his income by working behind the counter of a local bakery. In 2001, Lesch-Middelton co-founded the Center for Ceramic Arts and Sebastian Ward Gallery in west Berkeley, which exhibited only the work of potters, including his, during its two-year existence. He also had a studio in the same building.
In 2003, he moved to Utah for three years of graduate school at Utah State University in Logan. He chose that MFA program because of its “holistic” approach, teaching the science and technology of ceramics, as well as its creative side. As a potter, Lesch-Middelton is always questioning his methods, looking for ways to improve every time he throws a pot.
While in Utah, he developed a technique to transfer images to his work by silk screening them on paper, then transferring them to a cylinder of clay sitting on his potter’s wheel, which he turns into finished shapes, like pitchers and bowls. He created the technique, which he teaches his students, to avoid the time-consuming process of painting the images on the clay by hand.
Lesch-Middelton uses the method in his current work to reproduce floral patterns from Iznik ware – Islamic ceramics made in the northeastern Turkish town of Iznik, which was known in ancient times as Nicaea, and became a center of pottery production in the 16th and 17th centuries. The blue and white Chinese porcelain that traveled west on the Silk Road from the Ming Dynasty was an early influence on the Turkish potters, who subsequently added more colors to their palette. Lesch-Middelton uses muted colors – blacks, whites and auburn – and rough textures to give his pieces the feeling of relics.
Lesch-Middelton sells his cups, bowls and platters – which cost from $40 to $300 – at the Sonoma Community Center, the Summer House Gallery in Mill Valley, the Trax Gallery in Berkeley, galleries in Iowa and Indiana, and for the past two years at the juried Mill Valley Arts Festival.
Like other potters, Lesch-Middelton values handmade objects, he says, because they help people slow down and be more in the moment. Drinking coffee from an IKEA mug can’t offer the same “intimate interaction.”