John Neely
“There’s a funny mix between control and discovery. You know there is a certain measure of control or a certain attempt to control. There’s also, you know, a certain amount of serendipity. It’s like fishing, you know? If you don’t bait the hook and throw it in you aren’t going to get anything. So chance favors the prepared mind or something like that. It’s finding a balance between those things. It’s part of the pleasure of it, of course, the discovery part of it to do things that you didn’t plan.” -John
John Neely (BFA Alfred University, MFA Ohio University) taught ceramics for over 30 years at Utah State University, where he headed the ceramic arts program. He exhibited widely in the US, New Zealand, China, Korea, Australia, Japan, and Yugoslavia. In his later years, he held workshops across the US and abroad, including in Norway, New Zealand, Australia, China, and Korea. Not only did he write about ceramics in numerous publications, but others also wrote about him. Richard Zakin wrote in Ceramics: Ways of Creation that “it is not easy to say whether John is essentially a utilitarian potter, a potter whose work attests to his immersion in Japanese culture and ceramics, a technical ceramist, or an inventive ceramist. He balances all of these characteristics in his work.”
