Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Roger Van De Vanter


I did a "photo essay" recently regarding this fine gentleman.

What i mean by photo essay, is a story in text accompanied by a photo album.
I sent that out to a lot of friends in the form of an email with a link to the photo gallery. We thought this should be posted on the Blog as well. So, if you've been there, done that, ignore. If you haven't, enjoy!

Here is the text with the link to the photos included near the end:

Roger Van De Vanter
So, Tracy saw an add on Maui Craigslist titled something like, “Antique/artiste estate SALE (Haiku)”
Haiku is where we live so Tracy perked right up, next morning we drove right up......and only about 6 blocks up from where we live. Another new adventure had begun!
We arrived at 7:00am and there were only a couple other people there so we were able to meet Roger right away and begin talking, and listening, and finding out things like, nothing had a price tag, only he could tell you a price and it took him a long time, telling stories about the item, eyes darting around and drifting off into other items and their stories and then if he wasn't interrupted too often during all of that, maybe you could come to some price agreement.
His place was covered with a huge collection of his pottery.. It also included shelves of bonsai plants – some that he'd been growing for 45 years, and handmade furniture, rare and valuable Chinese furniture, made, well, by.......Chinese, a long time ago. Also, hand made and painted kites, lot's of potted bamboo and, and.....and just amazing! Everything chaotically placed and piled around his yard on tables and shelves, in boxes and shipping containers – you get the picture. He is the epitome of mad genius, artist-potter.
My mind was reeling with memories of another mad genius artist-potter of whom I was made aware a few years ago by a good friend. My friend and his family have been collecting the works of this potter for several years. Named George Ohr and referred to as the “Mad Potter of Biloxi,”he is a one of a kind, for sure. If you are interested, do an online search for him and check his story and his work. Totally eccentric, totally mad and utterly fascinating.
Who is Roger Van De Vanter, you ask?
He's an artist, a potter, a shoe maker (known for creating the multi-colored, layered rubber in elevated shoes which, at the time, Cher made popular), a self-proclaimed bamboo freak, a bonsai master, a kinetic sculptor aka mobile maker (see more about this in the photo gallery), a kite maker and competition kite flier (more about this in the gallery as well), a wood worker, to include carving and furniture making and a surfer..............but mostly a potter.
Roger's Bio reveals a history of art school study, 3 year apprenticeship with Tasho Shimeoko (master potter and living legend) in Gefu, Japan, owner of pottery studios, a cobblery studio and Professor of Fine Arts/Ceramics at the College of the Desert in Palm Desert, California. In 2000 he left the Laguna Beach area of California and moved to Haiku in Maui. His work has been purchased and exhibited by many private collectors in the United States, Japan, the White House, and the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
Now he is moving back to California to continue his business, “Eccentric Ceramics” in Oceanside. We got to know him really fast, I took a bunch of photos and did several prints as gifts to him and we are sad to have met such a dynamic, interesting character and new but very close friend just days before his departure.
So it goes.
The photo gallery that was created to accompany this writing is located here:
https://neilvonhof.smugmug.com/photos/swfpopup.mg?AlbumKey=XcN29p
Cut and paste this link in your browser. It takes you to a slide show format. You can control the speed or abort the slide show and review the photo's in various other ways by hovering over the show so that the film strip pops up at the top and over to right you can click on “Return to Gallery,” Note that there are comments beneath each photo.