Karen Kistler

karen.kistler@salisburypost.com

 

SALISBURY — Retired from his dental practice, Robert Mello picked up some new tools for another career, making pottery, one he started 21 years ago as a hobby.

Mello, who will be Pottery 101’s featured artist for April, will be at the shop located at 101 S. Main St., Salisbury for an artist reception on April 11 from 5-7 p.m., giving the community an opportunity to meet him and see his work.

He said he thought that being there at the reception “helps people a lot to talk to the artist and not just look at the work. They can ask questions. They can talk about motivation. They can get the artist’s perspective on the why behind the what, and I think it helps people connect.”

Born in Columbus, Ohio, where he spent his first 30 years and then these last 46 years have been in Charlotte, he said.

A dentist for 50 years, Mello said he has been retired from his clinical practice for the last 12 years and as of last September he has been involved in the art world.

Mello said that it was during a visit he and his wife took to the mountain home of some of his patients, who were Clayworks people, that he saw a pottery wheel in their garage. He said to them, “you’ve got to show me how that works.”

The next day, he said, the director of Clayworks came to have her teeth cleaned, and he thought that’s too much of a coincidence and that he was going to sign up for a class, which he did, and has been doing pottery ever since.

It was at Clayworks that he first met Rachel Gunsch, who owns Pottery 101, and where he will be having his work on display and where it will remain for a time and be available for purchase.

Being one of the featured artists there, Mello said, “it’s very affirming.”

Knowing Gunsch and her knowing him and having seen his work at Clayworks and other shows, he said it was “very affirming for her to call and ask me if I would consider being a featured artist up there for April. So that made me feel real good that someone that I respect likes my work enough to ask me to be in her show.”

Mello has a home studio, has been a Clayworks studio artist for the last 13 years and participates in shows every year from April to December. He said he travels to Blowing Rock and some galleries in the mountains and in Charlotte.

“It’s just something that I really enjoy doing,” he said. 

The artwork that Mello does is decorative because those are fun, and functional because these, he said, he knew he could sell.

In his artist statement, it noted that Mello “creates wheel-thrown stoneware with high-fire gas reduction glazes. He enjoys making classical, sculptural and functional forms using different textures, colors and shapes.”

He also said that he enjoys many mediums and “draws inspiration from the historic, classical ceramics of the Chinese and Greek as well as the whimsical fantasy of Antoni Gaudi’s architecture.”

Some of his pieces are colorful and he said that is in the glaze and comes from adding glass accents. During that process, the glass melts and becomes part of the glaze and makes that accent.

He said it is a fairly long process that begins with making the shape and then depending on the size, noting that he makes some 40-pound jars with lids and he also makes small bowls. Whatever the size, they require a time to dry, be trimmed, more drying and trimming, is bisque fired, waxed, glazed, refired, sanded and then priced. 

“There’s lots of steps,” said Mello.

There is one particular style of pot that he makes, which he calls his Metaphor Series, and plans to bring some to the show.

When making this series, Mello said he will purposefully stretch and tear the pot while making it. This is a very difficult procedure, he said, “because I’m stretching it so thin that it’s going to tear, and it’s on the verge of collapse the whole time I’m making it.”

This requires heat to stiffen it so he can continue stretching and heating it again, and once he has a good size tear in the pot, he heats it once again so he can finish his work, bisque fire, glaze and accent it.

“I purposefully tear it as a metaphor because life can be very difficult and very beautiful simultaneously,” said Mello, “and I make these pots to get people to have real conversations.”

When he places these pots out at his shows, he also puts a card beside them explaining that “brokenness is part of the human condition and should compel us to be compassionate toward one another.”

Mello said we need to remember when we are annoyed by someone else’s brokenness, that we are broken too, and to “be nice.” 

Unaware of any other artist doing this type, he said this is something important to him, “to have people just to take a step back and think for a moment and be nice.”

He said there are multiple counselors and pastors who have one of these pots where they provide counseling, which Mello said symbolizes, “OK, we are all broken, we all need each other, we all need the Lord to help us through and we can’t do it by ourselves.”