'The clay talks to me,' says ceramic business owner, and it told him to quit being an engineer

By Kate Richards

May 5, 2005 | K. Rasmussen may be the potter, but the ceramic business is a whole-family endeavor.

Ever since he left the engineering department at Ricks College to pursue art, Rasmussen has been working to earn his living doing what he loves -- making pottery. His career has become a lifestyle for his whole family, something his wife Kerri says has been hard, but worth it.

Rasmussen and Kerri work together in the studio -- Kerri makes some garden-themed pieces and handles the organization side of the business. Rasmussen is in charge of creating pots. Though none of the Rasmussens' five children have followed their parents' tracks into the world of pottery, they have all been affected by it.

The hardest thing, Kerri said, has been the fluctuating income that goes along with selling pottery for a livelihood and not having much time to spend with their family in the summer.

Rasmussen said he often works 70 to 75 hour weeks during the summer -- the peak time for art shows. It's busy, but he takes time off in the winter months when there aren't any art shows near by.

"I ski as often as I possibly can during January and February," he said. Skiing and snowboarding are activities the entire family participates in -- they often ski together at Beaver Mountain -- so they get to spend more time together in the winter.

Rasmussen has been making pottery full time for 18 years and has a master of fine arts degree from Utah State and a bachelor of fine arts degree from Brigham Young University. He has minors in design, drawing and sculpture. When he started school at Ricks College, Rasmussen planned to earn a degree in engineering and start an engineering firm with his brothers. When he took an art class for non-majors to fill an elective requirement, he was hooked and left engineering.

"I didn't finish because I got so excited about clay."

Originally from Rexburg, Idaho, he now works out of a studio he and Kerri, who is from southern California, built in their back yard in Hyrum, surrounded by their spacious garden, bird feeders and mountain views.

When they started building the studio (it's been his workshop for five years), Rasmussen plopped his chair down in various places in the yard to see what the view would be. They built it so the window in front of his pottery wheel faces the Bear River Mountains. The Wellsville Mountains are visible from an opposite window.

With the wild expanse visible from his windows and his love for outdoor activities like fishing and skiing, it's easy to see why many of Rasmussen's pieces have a nature theme. Many of his pots are imprinted with leaves and grasses and many of his glazes are reminiscent of a landscape.

Stylized landscape, he said.

Cache Valley and its surrounding mountains inspire his work and people can interpret the glaze designs as they wish. "Sunsets or clouds or whatever people see in it," he said.

Because he trained as a painter before getting into pottery, Rasmussen loves to experiment with glazing. He's learned how the glazes will flow and change during firing and many of his pieces are reminiscent of watercolor paintings in blues, reds and browns.

Through his experiments, he came up with a new glaze, which he calls K's Carmel. It's gold with metallic gold sparkles. K's Carmel, he said, was an accident. He was mixing glaze at Utah State and they ran out of the color he needed, so he used another one close to it. It came out with sparkles.

Rasmussen said some of the aspects of his art that make it different from other potters are the carvings he does on the rims of many of his bowls and platters and the imprints he uses leaves and grasses to make in the clay.

The biggest challenge with imprints, he said, is finding the right leaf to press into the clay. After he imprints the leaf, he rubs it with wax, lets it dry and then glazes and fires the piece.

He illustrates the process by cutting clay from a gray, rectangular brick -- just bigger than but obviously significantly heavier than a loaf of bread -- and kneading it on the table. He throws it on the table to flatten it, and rolls it with a rolling pin -- like a chef preparing pizza dough.

He retrieves a bouquet of foxtails he collected to use in the studio and presses them into the clay -- also with the rolling pin. After removing the foxtails from the clay, he carries it to another table, along with a roll of carpet foam.

Rasmussen said he needed a way to mold wall hangings like the foxtail-imprint piece he was working on, and a solution presented itself in the leftover carpet foam from a neighbor who works with carpet. He wraps the clay around the foam to give it shape and lets it set for an hour. When it's dried enough to be able to move, he'll take it off the carpet foam and start the glazing process.

Some commercial ceramic artists, he said, sit down and make 150 pots at a time; they look like they all came from a mold. Rasmussen says he gets bored with that.

"I'm not a production potter," he said. He'll make a dozen bowls at a time and then take a break -- to work in the garden or go fishing. And each piece is different.

"The clay talks to me," he said.

Like a story that takes shape from a few lines, each piece is shaped around the quality of the clay.

"Sometimes it actually tells you what it will do," he said.

Rasmussen fires his pottery in a kiln he built on the patio behind the studio. He said it fires about two times each week year-round. He said he used to throw all of his pottery in one piece, but he's found there's less torque on his arms if he throws in multiple pieces. Finding techniques to make his art easier on his body, he said, make it so he can do this until he dies.

He said he jokes with his family that one day they'll come in and find him with his head on the wheel, rolling around.

Pottery for Rasmussen is more than just a hobby or an art -- it's a way of life. He said he makes pottery not just because he likes it, but because he knows he can sell it. After making pottery professionally for more than 20 years, he said he and Kerri have a good idea for what kinds of colors and styles people will buy. They know how far they can push the style envelope and what they can charge.

This makes him different from most art teachers and faculty members, he said, because he doesn't only care if he likes it, he cares if he can sell it. That means most of his pieces are functional -- tableware or wall hangings -- and not the "punk" ceramics he said you often see in ceramic magazines.

Though he says he's different from most art educators, at one time Rasmussen wanted to teach art to show students they could make a living selling their art. When he was in graduate school, he made large planting pots and sold them wholesale to make a living.

Now he and Kerri sell their art at art shows throughout the West. His first art show was in Park City in 1979, and his favorite place to show is in Boseman, Montana. This year they'll make trips to Wyoming, Idaho and Montana.

Though none of his children want to be artists, Rasmussen has passed his craft onto his family. Kerri said she learned what she knows from her husband; he would teach her how to do the things he didn't have time for and now she loves it, too.

Rasmussen said all his children but one took ceramics in high school. "Which I thought was funny, that they would take a class but they wouldn't take it from me."

His youngest son Zane, though, works with his dad to earn credit for his ceramics class. A senior, he said his dad knows more than his teacher at school and they work well together.

"I know he knows more than I do, so I let him do what he does," he said. Still, Zane wants to go into psychology, a far cry from his father's line of work.

"Probably when we die this'll be the end of it," Kerri said of the business.

Though their life has been unpredictable -- income is affected by the weather and the economy and there's no perpetual income -- the Rasmussens said they wouldn't change their life.

"This is who we are," Kerri said. "It's a lifestyle."

"It's not just a job anymore," her husband agreed.

Though they don't have the insurance and retirement benefits of a regular job, the Rasmussens say it's being able to work together and do what they love make it more than fine.

"I think it's worth it," Kerri said.

Rasmussen sells his pottery at www.raspottery.com

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