Doug Rochelle is the new Potter of the Month. His work will be featured in the front window for all of May.
Age: 43
Location: Long Island City
Occupation: General Manager 7A Café, East Village
Favorite Glaze: All or none
Current Book: Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
Best Recent Movie: Stranger Than Paradise
What inspires me? I like to learn new things, see and have life experiences. After which, I go to the studio, work on a sculpture and think about what I’ve watched, done, read, and listened to. Since I visit the studio right after my shift, I also think the sculptures reflect what I call “the madness and the mayhem” of working a New York City graveyard shift where fights, barf, homeless and drunks cyclone the edge. Occasionally after an unusually hectic night at the café I talk to myself as I draw, dig and scrape away at the sculpture.
Where does the imagery come from? I was thirteen. Much time was spent after school on the phone with my girlfriend. She talked about her celebrity crushes, her favorite teacher’s hairy legs and the cutest Kansas City Royal ballplayer (George Brett). While holding the phone I doodled all over the Yellow Pages. From these doodles, figures and heads emerged. In and out of college I did try all the other isms of art; Abstract Expressionism, Impressionism, Fauvism, and Surrealism but I was always drawn back to the doodle figure/head. I like sculpting heads. They are made of abstract shapes yet easily recognizable.
Why have I chosen to work in clay? In 1985 I took a ceramics course at Johnson County Community College. I don’t know why, I just couldn’t get into it. The clay did not call my name. However, in 1997 working on my B.F.A., I was making lithographs based on busts of Caesar and other ancient Greek and Roman emperors. I realized I would soon run out of images to copy. My solution was to make my own sculptures so I could continue the series of lithographs. Someday I would like to do more lithographs. Until then I make sculptures. My dream is to have a show with the sculptures in the middle of a gallery surrounded by the lithographs made from drawings of the sculptures.
Last, did you choose or were you chosen to create art? Initially I thought “I am going to be an artist!” was my choice. I have come to realize that art/creation is a force of nature. You can try to control it but eventually there is going to be a flood, an earthquake or volcanic eruption. I think the subject matter and media I use flows with nature.