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Dick McGee was born in Kansas City, Missouri, but
has spent most of his adult life in Tennessee and Florida. A
graduate of Drury College in Springfield, Missouri, he went on to
Vanderbilt University in Nashville to earn an M.A. and Ph.D.
Thereafter, for more than 30 years, Dick pursued a career in
clinical psychology, including a professorship at the
University of Florida in Gainesville for 12 years. While in
Florida, he consulted in the development of suicide prevention
and crisis intervention centers in the Southeast and organized
the Alachua County Crisis Center in Gainesville. Later, Dick
moved to the Tennessee Valley Authority in Chattanooga where he
managed employee counseling services and psychological screening
of workers in the nuclear power program.
Since 1992 Dick has studied raku pottery, first with Harry
Hearne in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and later at the Appalachian
Center for Crafts and at the John C. Campbell Folk School in
Brasstown, North Carolina. A series of classes in glaze
formulation at the Campbell school under the tutelage of Steven
Forbes-deSoule have contributed most to the development of his
current work.
Dick opened his PsychoCeramic Studio Pottery
and began full-time production in 1996. He sells at about 30
craft fairs a year and wholesales his work to galleries in five
states. People always want to know, "What is psychoceramic
pottery?," and Dick has several answers to that
question. Usually he explains that it means he makes dysfunctional
pottery–no coffee mugs or tooth brush holders–since raku is
generally a decorative, as opposed to functional, ceramic. And
it’s also a way of taking a bit of his earlier identity into
retirement.
To Dick, raku is more than a method for
firing pottery; it also represents a metaphor for living. Every
potter is challenged to use all of his/her technical skills and
artistic senses to form the piece, apply the glaze and otherwise
prepare the piece for the kiln. But that’s where the raku
potter’s control ends. It is the fire in the reduction can
that works its magic on the glazed surface, and no two pieces
come out the same. After a few years, one learns how to influence
the result somewhat, but Dick insists that "if you have to
control every outcome, you’d better do something more
reliable, like the stock market! When you can accept what the
fire gives you and go on to the next piece, you can make it as a
raku artist."
Any part of a raku piece that is not glazed
will turn black in the reduction phase of the firing process,
and most raku potters will use these black areas to contrast and
accentuate the color in their glazes. The raku pot is a daily
reminder that it is those darkest, black periods that we have
all been through in our lives that can give definition, meaning,
and beauty to our lives today.
Dick was taught in graduate school that the
diligent and skillful application of his skills as a
psychotherapist would help patients achieve happiness in their
troubled lives. Thirty years of practice taught him that there
is more to it than that. Now he finds his own satisfaction in
making something that someone can find happiness in if they
choose to!
Now that you’ve met the artist and know where he’s been,
what he’s done and how he thinks, come by his booth and get
acquainted in person. Check the Show
Schedule page to find out when and where he will be in your
area. |
