In the November issue of Studio Potter, Harry Levenstein wrote Wonderfully Wild in Alabama: An Interview with Zach Sierke. Harry currently lives in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts and works as the artist in residence and lab technician at the Bard College at Simon’s Rock. A practitioner of wood-firing, Harry interned with Peter Olson, apprenticed with Simon Levin, and was a resident at Golden Bridge Pottery in Pondicherry, India. You can follow his adventures in clay on his blog, Chop Water, Carry Wood. Zach lives and works in Fairhope, Alabama where he has taken up the mantle of his family’s history, digging clay, working as a potter, teaching wood-firing workshops, and investigating the history of the place where his great-great grandfather, Homer Howard made pots in the late 1800s. Harry, Zach, and Jill enjoyed a meandering conversation that began with an admission of her own nervousness about engaging a conversation with folks who are engrossed in material and process. Any concerns were swept away by the allure of clay, and they quickly moved on to considering the tangled layers of history in Mobile Bay, looking at that history against a premise set by author Robin Wall Kimmerer in her book, Braiding Sweetgrass.

Music provided courtesy of Satsang. www.satsangmovement.com