Simon Levin Pottery Sale coming up at his wood fire kiln studio in Pawnee Illinois

Jeff Williams:
Welcome to Community Voices, a production of NPR Illinois. I'm your co-host Jeff Williams. In the studio with me today, Simon Levin. How's it going?
Simon Levin:
It's going really great.
Jeff Williams:
What brings you into the studio today?
Simon Levin:
Well, I think self-promotion is probably what brought me in. (laughs)
Jeff Williams:
Self-promotion, all right.
Simon Levin:
So, I'm a potter. We've had our pottery in Pawnee, Illinois for the past eight years.
Jeff Williams:
Right on.
Simon Levin:
And I have apprentices. I've had an apprenticeship program for the past 22 years.
Jeff Williams:
In Pawnee.
Simon Levin:
No, I started the apprenticeship program when we lived up in Wisconsin. We moved down here for my wife's job. Yeah, She's Susan Phillips, the Reverend of First Presbyterian Church.
Jeff Williams:
Right on. I was going to say we can talk about that some too, if you want.
Simon Levin:
Absolutely. She's killing it. Doing such good work. I mean, there's so much work to be done, but yeah. First President is such a welcoming place.
Jeff Williams:
Love it, love it. So what part of Wisconsin were you in then to start with?
Simon Levin:
We were in rural Wisconsin in a town called Gresham, about an hour outside of Green Bay. What I do, the pottery itself is because we fire with wood and we build these big hot fires and these kilns that are very specialized. It's good to have lots of trees and land and a little distance from neighbors and rural zoning. And up in Wisconsin, it was a great place to make work. There wasn't much of A population to sell to. So I'm used to traveling to sell.
Jeff Williams:
So were you near the Bay Area then or was it, is it?
Simon Levin:
Well, Gresham is a town of about 500 people. Outside the big county seat, Shawano, which is 9,000, in the county of Shawano, which is 40,000.
Jeff Williams:
Okay. In the whole county.
Simon Levin:
In the whole county. So, it's not a hub. Right, A lot of people would come up to vacation there in that greater area. It was just, it's a lovely space, a lovely place to live.
Jeff Williams:
Oh, right on. I know I've got some friends who live over, well, in Michigan, just a little bit outside of Traverse City, I'm trying to think of the latitude is not totally similar, but the winters are pretty, it's a winter winter.
Simon Levin:
They're legit.
Jeff Williams:
They're legit winter. It's not this messing around stuff. It's like full committed winters, right?
Simon Levin:
Yeah. We just kind of tuck away for a couple of weeks when it's really, really cold. And a lot more shoveling.
Jeff Williams:
Right on.
Simon Levin:
But.
Jeff Williams:
So then you ended up coming down here?
Simon Levin:
Yeah, and it took some adaptation. I found really good community because I play soccer.
Jeff Williams:
Dude, soccer right on. Yeah.
Simon Levin:
And there's such great soccer in this area. Shout out to Springfield International Soccer Club.
Jeff Williams:
Oh man, yeah, the Internationals.
Simon Levin:
Yeah. Every Sunday morning, there's this group of guys that play. They're from Turkey, Colombia, Ghana, Togo, Nigeria. It's Peru. It's just amazing.
Jeff Williams:
It's crazy, dude. I came out there till I blew my Achilles out, man. I was out there all the time with them. Yeah, totally.
Simon Levin:
Oh, yeah. It's not fast. There's a lot of a lot of us are playing with a single knee.
Jeff Williams:
Right, That's great. Yeah, because way back before this was at UIS, so no, Sangamon State. I mean, they won a couple of NAIA national championships in soccer, and some of the dudes would still, they'd hang around, and just kind of keep it rolling. So, it's been a pretty strong soccer hub for the size of, for 100,000-ish people. So yeah, right on, cool.
Simon Levin:
So that's been a lovely community to connect me with. And then we've been building up and connecting with the arts community. Back to the self-promotion part.
Jeff Williams:
Sure, yep, sorry about that.
Simon Levin:
No, We are having a sale on April 24th and 25th. It's an open house. You can come and check out the pottery. We'll give you a tour of the kilns. They are something to see.
Jeff Williams:
It's in Pawnee, right?
Simon Levin:
In Pawnee.
Jeff Williams:
Yeah, the kilns, yeah.
Simon Levin:
Kilns are pretty amazing. And it's been a sideline of mine to build kilns for other schools. Built a kiln for Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville.
Jeff Williams:
Really? Right.
Simon Levin:
And I built kilns in Taiwan and China and all over because they're such niche specialty kind of objects, right?
Jeff Williams:
Are they all wood fire kilns?
Simon Levin:
Yeah, that's always been my interest.
Jeff Williams:
Yeah, no, for sure.
Simon Levin:
But we're also featuring Mary Rhein, who is a ceramicist. I think she was originally from St. Louis, went to Edwardsville. She's now the director of the ceramics program at Springfield Art Association and makes really exciting, beautiful, disturbing work, also Mike Gesiakowski and Anthony Carrillo.
Jeff Williams:
Right, love that.
Simon Levin:
Yeah, She's really cool. I'm glad she's kind of moved to this area. And then my 2 apprentices, (the aforementioned) Anthony Carrillo and Sina Clover. will also have their own work. They're finishing up their apprenticeship program after almost two years and I'm making their own kind of wonderful work.
Jeff Williams:
So how does the apprenticeship program work?
Simon Levin:
It's this thing, it's relational learning. So they, in exchange for 18 hours of work for me a week, provide them materials, (and) facilities. They have their own wheels and space that they can work. Instruction and feedback. Like right now, they're applying for jobs and I'm like helping them with their artist statement and cover letters and resume. Both of them wanted to learn kiln building as a process. And so we've been working through that. But they help with all the stuff around that, you know, packing, shipping, work off to galleries or shows. they help take care of the things that get in the way. And then wood firing is so labor intensive. We spend a lot of time splitting and stacking wood.
Jeff Williams:
I've got some friends who covet, I guess you'd say, the wood process. You know, it's like, oh, I wish I, you know, but they don't. So is it cool to get into some of the details with that? Like as far as the wood kiln versus...
Simon Levin:
Sure.
Jeff Williams:
Yeah.
Simon Levin:
So wood firing, it makes no sense in practical terms, right? Like, we will spend, we'll go through about 3 full cords of wood in a firing. It's all waste wood. It's cut down trees from tree services or cut off from a pallet factory. It takes about two, day and a half to two days just to load the kiln and then about 56 hours to fire it. And someone's there full time firing it. So we go on shifts. And then about two, three days to cool down and the day to unload and clean up and put everything away. And then we hand sand all the pots so that they feel soft and smooth. But the reason we're doing it is this sort of love of this process. We call it a narrative process. You get hot enough in the kiln to melt the ash and turn it to glass.
Jeff Williams:
It's crazy.
Simon Levin:
It's crazy, melting trees, right?
Jeff Williams:
Yeah, it's crazy.
Simon Levin:
And that ash is flowing through the kiln as you fire, and the pots that are closest to the fire and the sides that are closest to the fire get more ash and more glass. And downwind, you get a leeward side, and you can tell that it's You can see that drift of glossy to less glossy. But then you can also map flame path because the flame is like this river running past all the pots and it swirls and eddies. And as you, over time, you're etching those pathways into the pots. Rather than applying a glaze and painting on colored decorations, we're painting with that fire and that flame path. So we load to set it up and the clay bodies are designed To be reactive to the process, each piece, they're exactly the same clay, exactly the same form, and right next to each other, will be marked differently by their experience, right? Exactly, yeah, so it's incredibly one-off, right? Each piece has its own... kind of quality. And I love this idea that a set is more like a family instead of clones. Yeah, And each is marked by its experience.
Jeff Williams:
Exactly. Yeah, that's very cool. And this is partially, so it's different than, I guess, another like electric firing, right? That's another one. And that is more of a, There's less dynamics in that, I guess you'd say. Is that correct or am I?
Simon Levin:
Yeah, electric firing has its own qualities, but it's not as narrative. Even calling in a firing is a little bit archaic because it's a ‘heating’. There's no fire. It's just a big toaster oven. It goes to similar temperatures. But in electric fire kilns, people will do much more You might say it's reliable work or scalable work. Yeah, It's almost made so reproduction is more consistent, which is lovely as an artist, in a way, to have a consistent product.
Jeff Williams:
But there is some other organic thing in a way, like you say, it's giving it a different life or something like that, I guess. I don't know a better way to say it because it is somewhat random, but in a way it's not totally random because you in a way know how to load. And when we say load means the actual, the pieces go into or come out of the kiln. But the kiln itself is part of the, is a big part of the process because where you put is depends on what the effects, which is what you talked about earlier anyhow. Yeah, I'll let you talk about it.
Simon Levin:
No, you got it. So the idea for me as a maker is I want people to connect to the work. And I mean, we connect to work all the time in different ways. Like maybe that mug has world's greatest dad written on it or and it's connected to the person who gave it to you because and hopefully you didn't buy it for yourself, but you're connected to it because of what it means, right? You can also connect to an object because of the intent and the beauty that was put into it and understanding this process. And this mug is the only one in the world that's like that. And that's, you know, that connects us to objects in a special way. I had a dear friend who learned about pottery through knowing me and then got into buying and collecting pots. And when he broke his first pot, that he was really, really loved. He was kind of devastated. Right, And he wrote me a lovely letter where he said, basically, he was so sad that it broke because it had fed him every day when he took it out and used it every day and washed it every day and every day he got so much joy out of it. He hadn't realized how much it had added to his every day until he had lost it.
Jeff Williams:
Right. Yeah, exactly.
Simon Levin:
And that's the that's the idea that I think we I value and want to get across is surround yourself with things you love, not with the replaceable.
Jeff Williams:
Absolutely.
Simon Levin:
Connect to friends that you care about.
Jeff Williams:
Right. The ones that make your heart rate go up in a bad way or something like that. Exactly. That's well, that's the thing is like if you're in, we'll keep it with in the world of ceramics and you can be standing next to a person, you know, another person. and you just see a piece and you're like, my God, look at this. You look at like a certain pattern and it's like, I love how this looks. The person standing next to you is like, oh, that is cool, but look at this. I really like this one just, and it is this strange thing where it's like, you just connect to this, what if you just saw just a portion of it, it's just a non-objective or highly abstracted just thing that your eyes are seeing and you can touch, but there's something, it's just sometimes it's just, this one is really cool, but this one's, it's doing something different for me. And everybody will have a different one, you know?
Simon Levin:
Yeah, there is this lovely thing that people have their own experiences and what they will relate to. So backing up a little bit to the apprenticeship program, I find that kind of teaching my favorite type of teaching because I'm trying to evoke, pull out from the students what their own system, what their own voice is. And so Cena and Anthony's work doesn't look at all like mine. Even though it's fired in the same kiln, they have their own kind of voices. And it's so exciting to see as a teacher they are re-envisioning this process I've been doing for over 30 years in their own way.
Jeff Williams:
Love it.
Simon Levin:
And yeah, so please, back to the self-promotion, come to the sale, come hang out, come visit, come talk to us, talk to Sina and Anthony, and I think you'll start to see this idea, the as one-off pieces.
Jeff Williams:
Right.
Simon Levin:
And I've been thinking a lot about AI in this age. And what AI is, scalable, right? Anybody can do those things. This is so not scalable. And I think the value is in that space.
Jeff Williams:
Absolutely. Well, once again, we're in the studio with Simon Levin. And he's come in, talked about, as he just mentioned, the spring pottery sale. So that's going to be, I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, Friday, April 24th, and that's 4 to 8 P.m. And then Saturday, April 25th, 10 A.m. to 4 P.m. And this is out in Pawnee where...
Simon Levin:
So it's 10220 North Pawnee Road, about 5 miles off of north of Pawnee, downtown Pawnee. You can check out my website, which is simonlevin.com.
Jeff Williams:
Okay.
Simon Levin:
Or on Instagram, I'm at Woodfire. W-O-O-D-F-I-R-E is my Instagram. There's gonna be posters up around town. If you stop by Springfield Art Association, somebody else hopefully can direct you there. You can meet Mary Ryan, who's just tremendous artist.
Jeff Williams:
Yeah, love it. Well, once again, Simon, thanks a lot for coming out. Everybody get out to this show. I've seen some of the pieces. It's gonna be a remarkable show. And I'm sure you'd be able to kind of talk to people about the process and stuff too, right?
Simon Levin:
We'll give you a kiln tour. We show you the studio. We'll answer your questions. There's just be some snacks. Yeah, it's sort of, I mean, it is a sale in the sense that that's how we make our living, but it's also an open house because we want, we are part of the community and we're trying to connect with you.
Jeff Williams:
Love it.
Simon Levin:
So come.
Jeff Williams:
Love it. Spring pottery sale in Pawnee. Tell them how to get a hold of, come and see it again.
Simon Levin:
So the easiest way is go to my website, simonlevin.com.
Jeff Williams:
There you go.
Simon Levin:
Or on Instagram at Woodfire.
Jeff Williams:
Right on. All right, Simon, thanks. Thanks so much for coming in. It's been great talking to you.
Simon Levin:
Great talking to you too.
Jeff Williams:
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