Oak Ridger, The (TN) - Monday, May 22, 2000
Charles Counts, a well-known potter and 1952 graduate of Oak Ridge High School, died in Nigeria on Thursday. He was a professor of ceramics at the University of Maiduguri in Nigeria.
Details of his death and funeral arrangements were not available this morning. A memorial service is being planned at the Oak Ridge Unitarian-Universalist Church where Counts was a member.
In 1999, Counts refurbished "The Hymn to Life" mosaic that he was commissioned to design and create over 25 years ago by Oak Ridge Associated Universities' Medical Sciences Division. The artwork is a memorial to cancer patients who died at the Oak Ridge Institute of Nuclear Studies cancer research facility. ORINS was an ORAU precursor agency.
After being refurbished by Counts and Earl Johannabor of Atlanta, the sculpture was moved to ORAU's Pollard Auditorium.
Oak Ridger, The (TN) - Thursday, May 25, 2000
Charles Counts: Potter, artist, author, teacher and totally, if thoughtfully, an Oak Ridger
Charles Counts, who stunningly blurred the line between artist and craftsman, was known worldwide. Yet his relationship with -- his attachment to -- Oak Ridge was intense and significantly spiritual.
And with many in Oak Ridge, those who remember him from his boyhood -- he was Oak Ridge High School's head cheerleader in the early 1950s -- and those who came to admire and own his ceramic works, the feelings of attachment have been mutual.
Of his many local, area and regional exhibitions, perhaps the most acclaimed was his earliest, "From Beaver Ridge to Rising Fawn," at the Oak Ridge Art Center in February 1973. He and his first wife, Ruby Nelle, had opened their first studio in 1959 in the Karns area. Successful there, they expanded to a Lookout Mountain location in the area known colloquially as "Plum Nelly," for "plumb out of Tennessee and nearly out of Georgia."
Sue Wassom Thomas, in notes for this show, wrote of the "almost familial ardor" with which Oak Ridgers identified with his talent -- how "area residents continue to regard Charles Counts as uniquely their own."
* * *
Charles was a talented writer as well. In his book, "Common Clay," and in numerous articles for pottery journals like Crafts Horizons, he wrote with some passion of how Oak Ridge and its wartime atomic bomb development affected him. He came here from Harlan County, Ky., with his parents in 1944. His mother worked at K-25, his father at Y-12 as a guard.
"A handful of clay -- A memoir on Oak Ridge," published in Studio Potter in December 1993 and perhaps his most introspective piece, includes this paragraph among others in which he confides his mixed emotions about the town in which he matured and would return to often work, to exhibit and to teach:
"Growing up in Oak Ridge made me alive to larger citizen-like responsibility. If there was guilt -- collective guilt -- then there is also a sense of responsibility. Not being a scientist, I turned inwardly to the studio. It is just as important as the laboratory if one considers the whole world and universe. Pottery making allowed me livelihood and a materially practical way to survive, keeping the secret of my own constant protest against all that is ugly and wrong in society. My pots were not protest pots. My way of life itself became a protest."
His way of life in more recent years included regular sojourns in Nigeria where he taught at Ahmadu Bello University. There he inspired young potters with his own unique Appalachia-rooted techniques while also absorbing the excitement of Africa and injecting it into his works on his return home.
* * *
Charles Counts with students at University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in 1970.
His works have been displayed in and are part of the collections of many leading galleries: the High Museum in Atlanta, the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, the Reece Museum on the campus of East Tennessee State University and, of course, at Berea College, his alma mater. And most appropriately of all at the Oak Ridge Art Center, where he conducted several workshops over the years and where four of his pieces are now part of the permanent collection.
Leah Marcum-Estes, art center director, describes his work as remarkable for its "richness out of simplicity" -- richness of color and design and yet simplicity of shape. Dorothy Tredennick, professor of fine arts at Berea, has said, "His honest pots show his love of the earth, as well as his dedication to the discipline of pottery."
Gudmund Vigtel, director of the High Museum, wrote at the time of the Counts exhibit there, "His pots grow on the wheel as prolifically as the trees do outside his mountain workshop, and it is plain that his pots hold thoughts as well as liquids. His lifestyle is as forthright as the clay he works with; his ability is as tireless as nature; and the conditions under which he labors are as fragile as the ceramics he creates. This is why Counts is the more important to art because he works to serve and protect art as well as to create it."
* * *
All of Counts' works now take on new significance, in Oak Ridge especially the 12-foot "Hymn to Life" mosaic that now hangs in the lobby of Pollard Auditorium at Oak Ridge Associated Universities. Only last year he returned to restore this assemblage of thousands of one-inch pieces of handmade ceramic tile. It had fallen into disrepair after hanging for years at the entrance to the ORAU Medical Division on Vance Road as a tribute to patients treated at the experimental cancer therapy facility there.
There is also a Counts mosaic on the exterior of the Art Center building, this a memorial to David Blake Selle, Oak Ridge High School student who died in a tragic automobile accident. Also a memorial to Helen Kniseley, first wife of Dr. Ralph Kniseley, which hangs in the foyer of the Oak Ridge Unitarian-Universalist Church.
But surely the most deeply felt remembrances of Charles are those of fellow Oak Ridge potters like Jane Larson, Jean Cole and the late Oddy Curtiss, who worked with him closely over the years. Those also of his former students who are now acclaimed potters in their own right like Bill Capshaw, Paul Menchoffer, Mark Turpin and others.
Gerry Williams, publisher of Studio Potter, writes: "Charles Counts was a man endowed with great talents and gifts. He was a fine writer and essayist. He was a ceramic artist of renown whose work is held in high esteem by his peers and by many private and public collections. He was an ardent teacher of young people and a master instructor in the arts. He was a poet with a profound insight into human nature and a deep love of life."
And he was totally and proudly, if also thoughtfully, an Oak Ridger who significantly imbued his hometown with a special and fulfilling appreciation for not just ceramic works crafted aesthetically from "a handful of clay," but for all things beautiful. -- RDS
Richard D. Smyser is founding editor of The Oak Ridger. You can reach him by e-mail at [email protected]
Charles Counts, a well-known potter and 1952 graduate of Oak Ridge High School, died in Nigeria on Thursday. He was a professor of ceramics at the University of Maiduguri in Nigeria.
Details of his death and funeral arrangements were not available this morning. A memorial service is being planned at the Oak Ridge Unitarian-Universalist Church where Counts was a member.
In 1999, Counts refurbished "The Hymn to Life" mosaic that he was commissioned to design and create over 25 years ago by Oak Ridge Associated Universities' Medical Sciences Division. The artwork is a memorial to cancer patients who died at the Oak Ridge Institute of Nuclear Studies cancer research facility. ORINS was an ORAU precursor agency.
After being refurbished by Counts and Earl Johannabor of Atlanta, the sculpture was moved to ORAU's Pollard Auditorium.
Oak Ridger, The (TN) - Thursday, May 25, 2000
Charles Counts: Potter, artist, author, teacher and totally, if thoughtfully, an Oak Ridger
Charles Counts, who stunningly blurred the line between artist and craftsman, was known worldwide. Yet his relationship with -- his attachment to -- Oak Ridge was intense and significantly spiritual.
And with many in Oak Ridge, those who remember him from his boyhood -- he was Oak Ridge High School's head cheerleader in the early 1950s -- and those who came to admire and own his ceramic works, the feelings of attachment have been mutual.
Of his many local, area and regional exhibitions, perhaps the most acclaimed was his earliest, "From Beaver Ridge to Rising Fawn," at the Oak Ridge Art Center in February 1973. He and his first wife, Ruby Nelle, had opened their first studio in 1959 in the Karns area. Successful there, they expanded to a Lookout Mountain location in the area known colloquially as "Plum Nelly," for "plumb out of Tennessee and nearly out of Georgia."
Sue Wassom Thomas, in notes for this show, wrote of the "almost familial ardor" with which Oak Ridgers identified with his talent -- how "area residents continue to regard Charles Counts as uniquely their own."
* * *
Charles was a talented writer as well. In his book, "Common Clay," and in numerous articles for pottery journals like Crafts Horizons, he wrote with some passion of how Oak Ridge and its wartime atomic bomb development affected him. He came here from Harlan County, Ky., with his parents in 1944. His mother worked at K-25, his father at Y-12 as a guard.
"A handful of clay -- A memoir on Oak Ridge," published in Studio Potter in December 1993 and perhaps his most introspective piece, includes this paragraph among others in which he confides his mixed emotions about the town in which he matured and would return to often work, to exhibit and to teach:
"Growing up in Oak Ridge made me alive to larger citizen-like responsibility. If there was guilt -- collective guilt -- then there is also a sense of responsibility. Not being a scientist, I turned inwardly to the studio. It is just as important as the laboratory if one considers the whole world and universe. Pottery making allowed me livelihood and a materially practical way to survive, keeping the secret of my own constant protest against all that is ugly and wrong in society. My pots were not protest pots. My way of life itself became a protest."
His way of life in more recent years included regular sojourns in Nigeria where he taught at Ahmadu Bello University. There he inspired young potters with his own unique Appalachia-rooted techniques while also absorbing the excitement of Africa and injecting it into his works on his return home.
* * *
Charles Counts with students at University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in 1970.
His works have been displayed in and are part of the collections of many leading galleries: the High Museum in Atlanta, the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, the Reece Museum on the campus of East Tennessee State University and, of course, at Berea College, his alma mater. And most appropriately of all at the Oak Ridge Art Center, where he conducted several workshops over the years and where four of his pieces are now part of the permanent collection.
Leah Marcum-Estes, art center director, describes his work as remarkable for its "richness out of simplicity" -- richness of color and design and yet simplicity of shape. Dorothy Tredennick, professor of fine arts at Berea, has said, "His honest pots show his love of the earth, as well as his dedication to the discipline of pottery."
Gudmund Vigtel, director of the High Museum, wrote at the time of the Counts exhibit there, "His pots grow on the wheel as prolifically as the trees do outside his mountain workshop, and it is plain that his pots hold thoughts as well as liquids. His lifestyle is as forthright as the clay he works with; his ability is as tireless as nature; and the conditions under which he labors are as fragile as the ceramics he creates. This is why Counts is the more important to art because he works to serve and protect art as well as to create it."
* * *
All of Counts' works now take on new significance, in Oak Ridge especially the 12-foot "Hymn to Life" mosaic that now hangs in the lobby of Pollard Auditorium at Oak Ridge Associated Universities. Only last year he returned to restore this assemblage of thousands of one-inch pieces of handmade ceramic tile. It had fallen into disrepair after hanging for years at the entrance to the ORAU Medical Division on Vance Road as a tribute to patients treated at the experimental cancer therapy facility there.
There is also a Counts mosaic on the exterior of the Art Center building, this a memorial to David Blake Selle, Oak Ridge High School student who died in a tragic automobile accident. Also a memorial to Helen Kniseley, first wife of Dr. Ralph Kniseley, which hangs in the foyer of the Oak Ridge Unitarian-Universalist Church.
But surely the most deeply felt remembrances of Charles are those of fellow Oak Ridge potters like Jane Larson, Jean Cole and the late Oddy Curtiss, who worked with him closely over the years. Those also of his former students who are now acclaimed potters in their own right like Bill Capshaw, Paul Menchoffer, Mark Turpin and others.
Gerry Williams, publisher of Studio Potter, writes: "Charles Counts was a man endowed with great talents and gifts. He was a fine writer and essayist. He was a ceramic artist of renown whose work is held in high esteem by his peers and by many private and public collections. He was an ardent teacher of young people and a master instructor in the arts. He was a poet with a profound insight into human nature and a deep love of life."
And he was totally and proudly, if also thoughtfully, an Oak Ridger who significantly imbued his hometown with a special and fulfilling appreciation for not just ceramic works crafted aesthetically from "a handful of clay," but for all things beautiful. -- RDS
Richard D. Smyser is founding editor of The Oak Ridger. You can reach him by e-mail at [email protected]
Oak Ridger, The (TN) - Monday, May 22, 2000
Charles Counts, a well-known potter and 1952 graduate of Oak Ridge High School, died in Nigeria on Thursday. He was a professor of ceramics at the University of Maiduguri in Nigeria.
Details of his death and funeral arrangements were not available this morning. A memorial service is being planned at the Oak Ridge Unitarian-Universalist Church where Counts was a member.
In 1999, Counts refurbished "The Hymn to Life" mosaic that he was commissioned to design and create over 25 years ago by Oak Ridge Associated Universities' Medical Sciences Division. The artwork is a memorial to cancer patients who died at the Oak Ridge Institute of Nuclear Studies cancer research facility. ORINS was an ORAU precursor agency.
After being refurbished by Counts and Earl Johannabor of Atlanta, the sculpture was moved to ORAU's Pollard Auditorium.
Oak Ridger, The (TN) - Thursday, May 25, 2000
Charles Counts: Potter, artist, author, teacher and totally, if thoughtfully, an Oak Ridger
Charles Counts, who stunningly blurred the line between artist and craftsman, was known worldwide. Yet his relationship with -- his attachment to -- Oak Ridge was intense and significantly spiritual.
And with many in Oak Ridge, those who remember him from his boyhood -- he was Oak Ridge High School's head cheerleader in the early 1950s -- and those who came to admire and own his ceramic works, the feelings of attachment have been mutual.
Of his many local, area and regional exhibitions, perhaps the most acclaimed was his earliest, "From Beaver Ridge to Rising Fawn," at the Oak Ridge Art Center in February 1973. He and his first wife, Ruby Nelle, had opened their first studio in 1959 in the Karns area. Successful there, they expanded to a Lookout Mountain location in the area known colloquially as "Plum Nelly," for "plumb out of Tennessee and nearly out of Georgia."
Sue Wassom Thomas, in notes for this show, wrote of the "almost familial ardor" with which Oak Ridgers identified with his talent -- how "area residents continue to regard Charles Counts as uniquely their own."
* * *
Charles was a talented writer as well. In his book, "Common Clay," and in numerous articles for pottery journals like Crafts Horizons, he wrote with some passion of how Oak Ridge and its wartime atomic bomb development affected him. He came here from Harlan County, Ky., with his parents in 1944. His mother worked at K-25, his father at Y-12 as a guard.
"A handful of clay -- A memoir on Oak Ridge," published in Studio Potter in December 1993 and perhaps his most introspective piece, includes this paragraph among others in which he confides his mixed emotions about the town in which he matured and would return to often work, to exhibit and to teach:
"Growing up in Oak Ridge made me alive to larger citizen-like responsibility. If there was guilt -- collective guilt -- then there is also a sense of responsibility. Not being a scientist, I turned inwardly to the studio. It is just as important as the laboratory if one considers the whole world and universe. Pottery making allowed me livelihood and a materially practical way to survive, keeping the secret of my own constant protest against all that is ugly and wrong in society. My pots were not protest pots. My way of life itself became a protest."
His way of life in more recent years included regular sojourns in Nigeria where he taught at Ahmadu Bello University. There he inspired young potters with his own unique Appalachia-rooted techniques while also absorbing the excitement of Africa and injecting it into his works on his return home.
* * *
Charles Counts with students at University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in 1970.
His works have been displayed in and are part of the collections of many leading galleries: the High Museum in Atlanta, the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, the Reece Museum on the campus of East Tennessee State University and, of course, at Berea College, his alma mater. And most appropriately of all at the Oak Ridge Art Center, where he conducted several workshops over the years and where four of his pieces are now part of the permanent collection.
Leah Marcum-Estes, art center director, describes his work as remarkable for its "richness out of simplicity" -- richness of color and design and yet simplicity of shape. Dorothy Tredennick, professor of fine arts at Berea, has said, "His honest pots show his love of the earth, as well as his dedication to the discipline of pottery."
Gudmund Vigtel, director of the High Museum, wrote at the time of the Counts exhibit there, "His pots grow on the wheel as prolifically as the trees do outside his mountain workshop, and it is plain that his pots hold thoughts as well as liquids. His lifestyle is as forthright as the clay he works with; his ability is as tireless as nature; and the conditions under which he labors are as fragile as the ceramics he creates. This is why Counts is the more important to art because he works to serve and protect art as well as to create it."
* * *
All of Counts' works now take on new significance, in Oak Ridge especially the 12-foot "Hymn to Life" mosaic that now hangs in the lobby of Pollard Auditorium at Oak Ridge Associated Universities. Only last year he returned to restore this assemblage of thousands of one-inch pieces of handmade ceramic tile. It had fallen into disrepair after hanging for years at the entrance to the ORAU Medical Division on Vance Road as a tribute to patients treated at the experimental cancer therapy facility there.
There is also a Counts mosaic on the exterior of the Art Center building, this a memorial to David Blake Selle, Oak Ridge High School student who died in a tragic automobile accident. Also a memorial to Helen Kniseley, first wife of Dr. Ralph Kniseley, which hangs in the foyer of the Oak Ridge Unitarian-Universalist Church.
But surely the most deeply felt remembrances of Charles are those of fellow Oak Ridge potters like Jane Larson, Jean Cole and the late Oddy Curtiss, who worked with him closely over the years. Those also of his former students who are now acclaimed potters in their own right like Bill Capshaw, Paul Menchoffer, Mark Turpin and others.
Gerry Williams, publisher of Studio Potter, writes: "Charles Counts was a man endowed with great talents and gifts. He was a fine writer and essayist. He was a ceramic artist of renown whose work is held in high esteem by his peers and by many private and public collections. He was an ardent teacher of young people and a master instructor in the arts. He was a poet with a profound insight into human nature and a deep love of life."
And he was totally and proudly, if also thoughtfully, an Oak Ridger who significantly imbued his hometown with a special and fulfilling appreciation for not just ceramic works crafted aesthetically from "a handful of clay," but for all things beautiful. -- RDS
Richard D. Smyser is founding editor of The Oak Ridger. You can reach him by e-mail at [email protected]
Charles Counts, a well-known potter and 1952 graduate of Oak Ridge High School, died in Nigeria on Thursday. He was a professor of ceramics at the University of Maiduguri in Nigeria.
Details of his death and funeral arrangements were not available this morning. A memorial service is being planned at the Oak Ridge Unitarian-Universalist Church where Counts was a member.
In 1999, Counts refurbished "The Hymn to Life" mosaic that he was commissioned to design and create over 25 years ago by Oak Ridge Associated Universities' Medical Sciences Division. The artwork is a memorial to cancer patients who died at the Oak Ridge Institute of Nuclear Studies cancer research facility. ORINS was an ORAU precursor agency.
After being refurbished by Counts and Earl Johannabor of Atlanta, the sculpture was moved to ORAU's Pollard Auditorium.
Oak Ridger, The (TN) - Thursday, May 25, 2000
Charles Counts: Potter, artist, author, teacher and totally, if thoughtfully, an Oak Ridger
Charles Counts, who stunningly blurred the line between artist and craftsman, was known worldwide. Yet his relationship with -- his attachment to -- Oak Ridge was intense and significantly spiritual.
And with many in Oak Ridge, those who remember him from his boyhood -- he was Oak Ridge High School's head cheerleader in the early 1950s -- and those who came to admire and own his ceramic works, the feelings of attachment have been mutual.
Of his many local, area and regional exhibitions, perhaps the most acclaimed was his earliest, "From Beaver Ridge to Rising Fawn," at the Oak Ridge Art Center in February 1973. He and his first wife, Ruby Nelle, had opened their first studio in 1959 in the Karns area. Successful there, they expanded to a Lookout Mountain location in the area known colloquially as "Plum Nelly," for "plumb out of Tennessee and nearly out of Georgia."
Sue Wassom Thomas, in notes for this show, wrote of the "almost familial ardor" with which Oak Ridgers identified with his talent -- how "area residents continue to regard Charles Counts as uniquely their own."
* * *
Charles was a talented writer as well. In his book, "Common Clay," and in numerous articles for pottery journals like Crafts Horizons, he wrote with some passion of how Oak Ridge and its wartime atomic bomb development affected him. He came here from Harlan County, Ky., with his parents in 1944. His mother worked at K-25, his father at Y-12 as a guard.
"A handful of clay -- A memoir on Oak Ridge," published in Studio Potter in December 1993 and perhaps his most introspective piece, includes this paragraph among others in which he confides his mixed emotions about the town in which he matured and would return to often work, to exhibit and to teach:
"Growing up in Oak Ridge made me alive to larger citizen-like responsibility. If there was guilt -- collective guilt -- then there is also a sense of responsibility. Not being a scientist, I turned inwardly to the studio. It is just as important as the laboratory if one considers the whole world and universe. Pottery making allowed me livelihood and a materially practical way to survive, keeping the secret of my own constant protest against all that is ugly and wrong in society. My pots were not protest pots. My way of life itself became a protest."
His way of life in more recent years included regular sojourns in Nigeria where he taught at Ahmadu Bello University. There he inspired young potters with his own unique Appalachia-rooted techniques while also absorbing the excitement of Africa and injecting it into his works on his return home.
* * *
Charles Counts with students at University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in 1970.
His works have been displayed in and are part of the collections of many leading galleries: the High Museum in Atlanta, the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, the Reece Museum on the campus of East Tennessee State University and, of course, at Berea College, his alma mater. And most appropriately of all at the Oak Ridge Art Center, where he conducted several workshops over the years and where four of his pieces are now part of the permanent collection.
Leah Marcum-Estes, art center director, describes his work as remarkable for its "richness out of simplicity" -- richness of color and design and yet simplicity of shape. Dorothy Tredennick, professor of fine arts at Berea, has said, "His honest pots show his love of the earth, as well as his dedication to the discipline of pottery."
Gudmund Vigtel, director of the High Museum, wrote at the time of the Counts exhibit there, "His pots grow on the wheel as prolifically as the trees do outside his mountain workshop, and it is plain that his pots hold thoughts as well as liquids. His lifestyle is as forthright as the clay he works with; his ability is as tireless as nature; and the conditions under which he labors are as fragile as the ceramics he creates. This is why Counts is the more important to art because he works to serve and protect art as well as to create it."
* * *
All of Counts' works now take on new significance, in Oak Ridge especially the 12-foot "Hymn to Life" mosaic that now hangs in the lobby of Pollard Auditorium at Oak Ridge Associated Universities. Only last year he returned to restore this assemblage of thousands of one-inch pieces of handmade ceramic tile. It had fallen into disrepair after hanging for years at the entrance to the ORAU Medical Division on Vance Road as a tribute to patients treated at the experimental cancer therapy facility there.
There is also a Counts mosaic on the exterior of the Art Center building, this a memorial to David Blake Selle, Oak Ridge High School student who died in a tragic automobile accident. Also a memorial to Helen Kniseley, first wife of Dr. Ralph Kniseley, which hangs in the foyer of the Oak Ridge Unitarian-Universalist Church.
But surely the most deeply felt remembrances of Charles are those of fellow Oak Ridge potters like Jane Larson, Jean Cole and the late Oddy Curtiss, who worked with him closely over the years. Those also of his former students who are now acclaimed potters in their own right like Bill Capshaw, Paul Menchoffer, Mark Turpin and others.
Gerry Williams, publisher of Studio Potter, writes: "Charles Counts was a man endowed with great talents and gifts. He was a fine writer and essayist. He was a ceramic artist of renown whose work is held in high esteem by his peers and by many private and public collections. He was an ardent teacher of young people and a master instructor in the arts. He was a poet with a profound insight into human nature and a deep love of life."
And he was totally and proudly, if also thoughtfully, an Oak Ridger who significantly imbued his hometown with a special and fulfilling appreciation for not just ceramic works crafted aesthetically from "a handful of clay," but for all things beautiful. -- RDS
Richard D. Smyser is founding editor of The Oak Ridger. You can reach him by e-mail at [email protected]
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