Two eyes, a nose, and a mouth placed close enough together do something incredible. They form life. I've been hooked on that phenomenon since doodling in the margins of my 7th-grade notebook.
In July 2024, I signed up for a clay handbuilding class. Thirty minutes into my first pinch pot, a dent looked exactly like a cheekbone. Instead of finishing a pot, I added a mouth, then a chin. Over 150 faces later, I still haven't finished a pot.
The faces are imagined, not portraits, but improvisations. Each one begins without a plan. I shape, the clay responds, I follow. Whatever I'm feeling that evening finds its way into the form. I let the process stay visible, fingerprints, tool marks, the texture of the moment. That transparency is the point.
But the sculpture is only half the process; the fire is the rest. I've mixed and tested over two hundred glaze combinations, building an intuition for how colors and surfaces behave. When I glaze a face, the choices are deliberate, but the kiln has the final word. What comes out carries my intention and something the fire decided.
This idea of layers comes from architecture, my other practice. I think about space as accumulations: the designer's intent, the builder's craft, the community's history. I want that same density in the faces: my gesture, the clay's resistance, the glaze's behavior, and finally, whoever the viewer sees looking back at them. The work isn't meant to say one thing, it's meant to offer many ways in.
Jonathan Porat is a Philadelphia-based ceramic artist and a practicing architect. Originally from Oakland, California, he earned his Bachelor of Architecture from Drexel in 2022 and currently works at Interface Studio Architects in the Crane Arts Building. Since taking Handbuilding 101 in 2024, when he's not at work, there's a good chance he's across the street at The Clay Studio.
2016 - 2022
Drexel University
Bachelor of Architecture, 2+4 Program
2024
Clay Studio, Hand building 101
(Fall & Winter quarter)
2022
Senior Project: Michael Pearson Prize Medalist
2020
Ize Prize Competition: “Strangely Extraordinary”
