Though potter Mark Goertzen no longer lives on the farm, the work he will exhibit Feb. 6 in Bethel College’s Fine Arts Center Gallery clearly shows a rural influence, he says.
The first gallery exhibit of the new year is the fourth in a series honoring professor of art, Gail Lutsch.
Goertzen, a Goessel native who now lives in Constantine, Mich., will open “Of the Earth,” vessel-oriented forms in wood-fired stoneware and porcelain at the show.
There will be a reception for the artist that afternoon from 3-6 p.m. outside the FAC Gallery. The public is invited.
“The creative side of me was formed on the family farm east of Goessel,” Goertzen said. “I was the last of five children and liked exploring the fields, pastures and ponds of my home place while on ‘chore avoidance.’
“It was good to grow up on a farm even if I knew in my heart I was not a farmer.”
As a native of Goessel, where his parents, Linda and Milton Goertzen still live, Goertzen looks forward to seeing family at his exhibit opening.
His brothers, Myron, Steve, and Tim, live with their families near Goessel and his sister, Lynette Penner with husband Stuart, lives in Hillsboro.
“I didn’t realize the influence that farming had on my creativity until relatively recently,” Goertzen said. “It came to me that my full-time work is dealing with earth, as my family’s work is. We both need to pay attention to our earth or we will not be pleased with the results.”
For the Bethel College show “Of the Earth,” there is another connection to farming, Goertzen said, and that is plants — more specifically, trees.
“The majority of the work in this show is wood-fired and I have harvested wood to complete these vessels,” he said. “Wood not only heats the kiln — the ash from the wood fire lands on the pot’s surface and forms a glaze or, where the pot is pre-glazed, alters the glaze. I made most of these pots a little uneven or rough to capture more wood ash as it goes through the kiln.”
Goertzen is a 1988 graduate of Bethel College with a bachelor’s degree in art.
Since 1989 he has worked as a potter at The Old Bag Factory in Goshen, Ind., a three-story, 1890s-vintage building originally constructed as a soap factory and until 1982 the home of two different bag factories.
The Old Bag Factory currently hosts a number of working artists and craftspeople. Goertzen collaborates with Dick Lehman to produce the Lehman-Goertzen pottery line, creating and firing more than 100 different functional and utilitarian ceramic works on-site.
Goertzen has participated in pottery workshops in Tokoname, Japan, and Christchurch, New Zealand. His work is in private collections in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, Sweden, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
He was part of the Carnegie Juried Show at the Carnegie Center for the Arts in Three Rivers, Mich., in 2008 and the “20 + 1” International Invitational Wood-Fire Exhibition at the Northern Arizona University Art Museum in Flagstaff in 2006.
Since 2006, Goertzen’s work has been available at the Red Lodge Clay Gallery in Red Lodge, Mont., the Open Door Gallery in Sturgis, Mich., and Village Pottery Gallery in Intercourse, Penn.
“Of This Earth” will be on display through March 6. Regular hours for the Bethel College Fine Arts Center Gallery are Monday-Friday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m., and Sunday, 2-4 p.m. There is no admission charge.