SEAVIEW --- On Friday afternoon Aug. 12, from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m., and from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., on Saturday, Aug. 13 and Sunday, Aug. 13, the historic Sou'wester Lodge in Seaview is privileged to host a pottery show by Carol Marians. Marians is certainly not your typical potter -- she may be the sole potter ever to have traveled the road less traveled, in her pursuit of the potter's craft. When other potters could not explain to her how to recreate the glazes she most admired, she went back to school -- not to earn an MFA in a pottery program, but to earn a Ph.D. in materials science at MIT. Committed to her craft, as a new bride her first demand was her own potter's wheel and studio. The summer her daughter was born was spent studying ceramics with F. Carlton Ball at the University of Puget Sound. By the time she was professor of mathematics at the University of Puerto Rico, she was also running a small pottery, making hand-thrown porcelain and stoneware. Her fascination with ceramics infected her teaching of mathematics as well. She was one of the earliest potters to use computers in glaze computations, and taking advantage of her understanding of matrices and linear equations she wrote a program for finding new glazes that has still not been equaled. Her fascination with ceramics led her back to MIT to earn a second Ph.D. Her original impulse was to study the science underlying classic Chinese glazes. This vied with her passion for mathematics, and to earn her second doctorate she wrote her dissertation on "A Language for the Study of Silica Networks" bringing mathematics to bear on a study of silica glass. In Portland, Marians has been associated with the Fifth Element Pottery, and the cooperative ceramics studio Basic Fire. Everyone is welcome to stop by The Artist's Porch at the Sou'wester Lodge on the corner of 38th and J Place. For info, call 642-2542. Reprinted from the Chinook Observer of Long Beach, Washington, with permission. Back to Carol's Home Page Last modified on 14 February 2008 |
