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Goshen clay artist Bruce Bishop weaves advocacy into work

Gabe Miller Correspondent Feb 20, 2020

GOSHEN — Bruce Bishop is not a potter.

“I think of production pottery as basically utilitarian,” Bishop said.

Instead, the soft-spoken man with a salt-and-pepper goatee considers himself a clay artist.

His work includes a tall, black urn with humpback whales diving in swirling surf, a 24-inch rainbow salmon with a spiral tattoo and a jet-black cat, commemorating a solar eclipse.

“My pieces are one of a kind,” he said.

Bishop speaks slowly and thoughtfully, with the patience of someone accustomed to walking long distances and spending hours at a time behind a potter’s wheel. When he’s in the studio, dried clay is caked on his knuckles, fingernails and apron. He wears a silver Navajo wristband set with a pea-sized, turquoise oval.

Bishop spends three to four hours in the studio every day of the week. He’s a member of the Clay Artists Guild, a group of Goshen-based ceramicists who share a working space and exchange techniques and ideas. The studio is bright and open, with large windows overlooking a quiet stretch of the millrace canal.

Goshen clay artist Bruce Bishop works Feb. 13 inside the Goshen Clay Artists Guild studio.

Gabe Miller | Correspondent

Goshen clay artist Bruce Bishop works Feb. 13 inside the Goshen Clay Artists Guild studio.

Gabe Miller | Correspondent

On Feb. 13, Bishop was finishing the final touches on the form of a 14-inch platter. He sat behind the wheel with his legs spread apart, his right foot controlling the pedal that spun the clay in front of him.

“This one dried unevenly,” Bishop said, noting the slight variance in height around the circumference of the spinning platter.

Gripping a painter’s wedge with both hands, Bishop held the blade steady along the lip of the plate. Brown petals of clay curled out from behind the wedge where the lip met the blade. Minutes later, it was finished.

Once the clay becomes cool and firm but soft enough to mark — known as “leather-hard” — Bishop will add his signature element to the piece; he’ll use a cobalt-blue gosu glaze to coat the parts of the piece that will become his canvass.

Bishop will mix the gosu and applies two coats with a fine-bristled hake brush. Once hardened, the gosu slip gives Bishop a dark blue layer that he can mark with a metal tool, exposing the clay beneath. He etches images, symbols, patterns and words onto his pieces, adding a two-dimensional element to the 3D forms.

With the carving complete, Bishop will give the piece its first bake — a lower-intensity process known as bisque firing that opens up pores in the clay to allow glaze to take hold. Then he might add more glaze, using wax to protect the areas he wants without, and fire it a second time.

The result of Bishop’s dayslong process is a striking, intricately detailed ceramic piece, distinct from every other he’s ever made.

The spirals, waves and lines that characterize Bishop’s markings are heavily inspired by his love of the natural world and indigenous designs from the southwestern United States.

“My love of ceramics goes back to Native American pottery,” Bishop said.

Like many of Bishop’s pieces, indigenous ceramics from the Southwest featured carved or painted images that told stories, he said.

A piece by Goshen clay artist Bruce Bishop is on display Feb. 13 inside the Goshen Clay Artists Guild studio.

Gabe Miller | Correspondent

Adélie penguin clay sculpture.

Gabe Miller | Correspondent

But while many of the images depicted in Hopi and Zuni ceramics tell creation stories, the animals Bishop carves into his pieces are part of a story of destruction. The sea turtles, humpback whales and other animals he chooses to depict are in danger of going extinct. Of the seven species of sea turtles that exist, nearly all are endangered and three are critically endangered, according to the World Wildlife Foundation.

One of Bishop’s most striking pieces is a life-sized likeness of an Adélie penguin. It stands 14 inches tall, glazed glossy black, and its coat is embossed with swirls and stripes.

Adélie penguins play a vital role in their food chain in the Antarctic, and their numbers are increasing after having been close to endangered status. But climate change, an increasing global threat, means trouble for the penguins, whose numbers have fallen by two-thirds in 25 years in areas where global warming is felt more strongly, according to WWF.

“We are not the only species on this planet,” Bishop said. “Climate catastrophe means more than the death of just humans.”

Text on rim of carved platter.

Gabe Miller | Correspondent

In addition to animal rights and ecological health, Bishop is a lifelong advocate for peace. Between teaching art at a high school in Iowa and ceramics at a community college in Washington, Bishop has led an active life outside of the studio, from working with a homeless community in Atlanta to protesting nuclear war.

In 1986, Bishop was one of hundreds who walked across the country in The Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament. Bishop and the others began in Los Angeles and, nine months, 3,700 miles and two pairs of shoes later, finished in Washington D.C.

The following summer, Bishop participated in a similar march, this time from St. Petersburg, Russia, to Moscow, a 440-mile trip in the company of a few hundred Soviet protesters. Bishop remembers the day they arrived at the stone wall of the fortress in Novgorod and were greeted by some 100,000 local people bearing the traditional welcome of dark, round loaves of bread and salt.

Bishop considers his lifetime of political involvement an “outgrowth” of his faith, he said.

“Christianity is about peacemaking,” he said.

Bishop said his peace work and artwork are “the two poles” of his life, and that the two pursuits also share much in common.

Both are “about communication and sharing what it means to be human on a personal level,” Bishop said. “It’s a way of celebrating our common humanity, bringing out the best of what it means to be human.”

Reprinted with permission.

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