"Doc Rickets" Steinbeck Inspired Large Stoneware Lidded Jar by Mattie Leeds -

Description

This wonderful lidded jar is a tribute to Ed “Doc” Rickets a marine biologist with his laboratory on Cannery Row … more This wonderful lidded jar is a tribute to Ed “Doc” Rickets a marine biologist with his laboratory on Cannery Row in Monterey CA. He co-authored the 1941 book "Sea of Cortez” with John Steinbeck. This jar depicts many images including a large portrait of Doc Rickets, his Western Flyer boat, Doc’s Cannery Row Lab entrance, automobiles of the era, and Doc again holding an octopus with another wrapped around his laboratory sign. Octopus and squid are images that Mattie often adds to his works.

This was thrown on a potter’s wheel with high-fire stoneware and royal blue brush-painted underglazes and a green lid and textural pattered neck. It has the artist’s signature stamp on the neck and near the foot and painted near the foot with the title as well.

Mattie’s General Bio:
Working in his magnificent and expansive garden studio in the Santa Cruz CA redwood Mountains Mattie Leeds has a strong innovative and complex style that incorporates serious spiritualism with a witty sense of humor. His work is in museums and private collections internationally and is extensively exhibited.

With a multidisciplinary approach, he is constantly experimenting with the mix of abstract modernism and his formal studies in ancient Asian artistic traditions defining his powerful and colorful individual style.

Coordinating with the mountain microclimate Mattie generally throws pots in the winter and paints in the summer. Each work consists of multiple layers of application. Beginning at the potter's wheel this master potter builds monumental vessels of stoneware up to 8’ high as well as fine diminutive utilitarian porcelain pieces. 

Employing his varied innovative techniques some phases could be embossing a texture achieved with custom patterned rollers or applying raised cartouches and novelties, totem lids, and undulating handles. Sometimes there are distorted manipulations of dynamic pops and punctures in the walls of the pot at the early wet stage. The larger pieces can take days to dry thoroughly and then they might be high-fired in his giant walk-in kiln or in his huge salt-fire kiln. This may be followed by lower temperature firings to achieve the intense color and texture in the layers of underglazes depicting provocative and animated imagery of man and beast as well as abundant patterning using his fluid brush painting style and deconstructed modernism to express his limitless creative imagination. less