Lennie Kesl

I have been making collaborative works in red earthenware with my friend Lennie Kesl for over 28 years now. For a time we both taught at Santa Fe Community College in Gainesville and one day I asked him whether he wanted to paint on some pots and he did. Here is Lennie at the ripe young age of 82.

This is one of the platters from the last batch. It's about 25 inches in diameter and is glazed with underglazes and glazes, used in Lennie's somewhat unique manner. He doesn't know anything about ceramics so he just uses the materials like paints. He might have an underglaze a half inch thick, or he might take dried up underglazes and crush them into little pieces and build little mountains. He really loves the glaze crystals that you get from Amaco.

During the time we were working on this series of 8 platters, our friend Rusty Hammer was making a video and you can watch it by clicking here.  It's called Making Plates.