At the end of February, Heilman visiting artist Robert Turner drew faculty, staff, and students to the Lang Performing Arts Center for a slide-show lecture and List Gallery reception. Sydney Carpenter, associate professor of studio art, introduced the lanky “Rocket Bob”—referring to his ability to go “up there and back while sharing mysteries.”

Noting that Turner came “as a guest but also as one of Swarthmore’s own,” Carpenter recounted his student interests in economics and literature. After studying painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts from 1936-41, Turner received an M.F.A. in 1949 from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, where he worked as a pottery and sculpture instructor from 1958-79 and is now a professor emeritus.

Describing Turner’s “lifetime body of work that is respected and revered,” Carpenter said the potter uses “clay as a kind of second skin.” With work displayed in 25 museum collections, including the Helen Drutt Gallery and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Turner exhibited 13 of his characteristically spare shapes, created during the 1980s and 1990s, in the List Gallery through the end of March.

During the 2002 Heilman lecture, Turner explained his surrender to the creative process: “I start with logic, and gradually intuition starts to move in—until time disappears. I don’t know what a piece is going to be until later.”

Five key principles guide the artist’s approach to ceramics. First, “making connections,” he said. Second, “examining the obvious.” Third, “exploring paradox.” Fourth, “ambiguity involves multiple meanings, not fuzziness; it takes us beyond our mind-set and transports us to new possibilities.” And, fifth, Turner focuses on “strangeness or apparent inconsistencies. Stray surprises or something missing makes us wonder.”

Showing slides of his work, Turner said: “These casserole dishes show the geometry of a circle ...; and the importance of practical use. I love simplicity and geometry, a path that I could always follow.”

Then, the ceramist described the sensation of “deliberately throwing a dome shape and cutting it off the wheel while still damp—gravity, lifting, and forming by itself; an organic movement,” he said. “I try to find ways to let the piece form itself. Some things just

happen.”

As if part of the clay itself, Turner relayed “how air goes past the dampness. I wanted to get down inside it,” he said of one piece.

Along with Board member and wife Sue Thomas Turner ’35, the artist has traveled to Maine, Africa, Italy, and New Mexico, where nature has inspired his work. In addition, “Tree and rock partly see and understand; the tree is being nudged by the rock to know each other’s identity,” Turner said.

Pausing for a moment, he added: “You bring so much more to experience and perceptions. Geometry, simplicity, and meaning all say, ‘This is who we are.’”

Trying to gather the “energy of life,” Turner draws on animals, movement, and poetry to recognize the “is-ness of it.” He believes that utilitarian pieces are “made to reveal the self as sacred objects,” he said.

“Accidents give you where to go,” Turner added.

“Certainty is in contrast to the uncertainty of a piece—the two parts of the way we live.” Showing his use of a stone contrasted against a smooth slab of clay, Turner described the “roundness of the stone not disturbing the space, just letting it be.”

—Andrea Hammer