| Roddy Reed | ||
| Birth Date: March 14, 1947 |
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| Death Date: October 27, 2005 Artist Gallery |
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| Roddy Brownlee Reed was born in 1916, served in the Korean War, was a truck driver, dishwasher, rug cleaner, records clerk, construction worker and Roddy and his brother owned a business selling Hobie Cat sailboats, until they lost the business before Reed decided to go back to school on his GI bill, where he ended up taking studio art classes. Reed realized he just wanted to make art and experiment as much as possible.
In 1973 he moved into the second floor of a 16 room commercial building in Ibor City, Florida, the then-deserted cigar-making neighborhood near Tampa. Reed then invited three other artists to live there and they began showing their work.
By 1974 he began concentrating on wheel-thrown functional work. After his GI Bill ran out, he restored homes that were built from 1880 to 1920 to supplement his income. Reed did this combination for 11 years, and then he decided to dedicate himself to creating works of clay exclusively, giving up all his other means of support. He displayed his work throughout Florida first, then throughout the country at art fairs. What eventually produced the most income and acclaim was a series of “pinch pots,” (vessels literally pinched from a single small ball of clay) in the form of bowls and other small vessels which Reed decorated in the most dense and skillful manner, sometimes using trompe l'oeils effects. An individual piece often took many days of painstaking closeup decorative work. One small pot he covered with more than 3000 colored dots aligned in descending size. With works such as these, he began to win awards which he felt they validated his work. Plus, the prize money supplemented his income. To fire these works, Reed placed a small kiln on the roof of a single story part of his apartment building which he could access by climbing through a window at the end of the hall. It was just one example of his persistence in making art no matter what the limitations.
“Creating art has been the only lasting thing that has given me satisfaction, a challenge and a sense of accomplishment” said Reed.
This “Presentation Bowl” was meticulously decorated to simulate a crackled or crazed glaze, with gold luster lozenges outside. The crackle glaze on the interior of this bowl seems to have happened naturally in the kiln. It did not. Instead, it was meticulously painted with the knowledge of what ceramic crackle looks like! Additionally, Reed serendipitously added a small dot in each enclosed crackle space.
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