Jazz, Clay, and the Alchemy of Form

“The background was like a home-movie screen: white and sparkly. Just really bright white. It flickered and shone. The whole moment happened so fast, but I have to describe it slowly. It was something I saw with my inner eye.”

For the late ceramicist Michael Frimkess, this vision—what he continued to call his lodestar—did not originate from training or intention, but arrived unbidden during a peyote ceremony in the late 1950s. It appeared as a metaphysical event: a vessel, emerging from clay, turning itself on an invisible wheel without the intervention of human hands. “It was a narrow cylinder,” he recalled. “And as the cylinder grew, it blossomed out, leaving a funnel lip. It was a beautiful shape... I wasn’t a potter. I had never thrown a pot.”