2025 High School Exhibition Juror, Jerry Wagner

2025 High School Exhibition Juror, Jerry Wagner

 

A springtime tradition at Standard Clay is the annual High School Students Exhibition at the ClayPlace@Standard gallery.  Area art students and their teachers look forward to selecting their best pieces, showing them to a wider audience, and facing the scrutiny of a professional juror.  This year’s juror, Jerry Wagner, is a paradoxical mix of artist and technician who is not only an accomplished potter but a veritable fire wizard.  Wagner’s years of experience in the industrial kiln industry lends a unique perspective to his eye for the seemingly mysterious process of combining earth, chemicals, and heat.

 

Wagner studied for three years at Edinboro University in northeastern Pennsylvania before transferring to Alfred University for two more years of study to earn his BFA.  After graduation, he made pottery and made a living teaching stage construction and set design at Alfred and later designing silk screen labels for aircraft interiors at a small custom plane shop in Wellsville, New York.  “I liked making pots, but I was never any good at selling them,” he says.  After two years in New York, he returned to Edinboro to study in their MFA program.   His graduate work involved exploring innovative techniques that focused on the elimination of process.  He fashioned very large greenware pieces, sometimes infused with nylon fibers, and decorated with slip and tempura paints applied thickly and dragged with tools and rags.  “They almost looked like mummies,” he says.

 

    

 

   

At about this time, he found employment with Campbell Pottery in Edinboro.  “All I did was glaze and fire for Bill Campbell,” he recalls.  “It taught me a lot of patience and I started to develop thoughts about how glazes should be applied.  He moved on to work for Bill Strickland at the Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild for about a year before an employment opportunity arose at a large kiln manufacturer in Coraopolis, a Pittsburgh suburb.

 

“I was always intrigued by fire and kilns,” says Wagner.  At the time, Swindell Dressler was manufacturing kilns for industries that produced toilets and house bricks.  “I learned by trial and error,” says Wagner.  As the company’s business expanded and as technology advanced, Wagner was on the forefront of complex digital firing processes in larger and larger kilns.  Today, the company meets the thermal processing requirements for lithium car batteries and large aluminum and iron smelting operations.  Often, the kilns are as large as 60x30x30 feet and are assembled on site by the company.  Wagner explains that though the process is essentially the same as firing a pot, the technology is intricate and complex.  “I’m controlling gas and air to a quarter-second difference through a computerized control system that I can access remotely through my phone,” says Wagner. 

 

 

 

1 kiln car loaded with 165,000 pounds of carbon graphite electrodes for melting steel.  60 feet long x 30 feet wide x 30 feet tall, 

Gas fired in heavy reduction.  48 full size railroad car wheel on 4 tracks to support the load.  Firing is 6 days to 1800 cold to cold.

 

 

With years of this kind of experience, Wagner has a deep understanding of what happens in high temperatures and what can be done to control it.  He transfers that understanding to his own work at a potter.  “I always hear people say how excited they are to be surprised by what they see when they open their kilns,” he says.  “I don’t want to be surprised – I want to say, ‘Look at that!  Damn!  Another perfect firing!’”  Wagner shows that it is possible for potters to control their results with glazes through scientific understanding of the process.  He says that he has built a few kilns for potters over the years, with good success, but that the materials needed are just too expensive for most potters.

Wagner’s kiln is 64 cubic feet of load space.  8 burners firing vertically up and a down draft exhaust system.

Fiber lined kiln with IFB car base

 

 

Wagner’s expertise may be daunting for the young high school potters who will come under his discerning eye this spring.  Wagner concedes he learned perfectionism from Bill Campbell, “who threw out anything with a chip,” and admits that he often walks into a gallery and thinks, “That’s an poorly finished pot!”  He says he has little to no experience being a juror, but he intends to look for what the students have been able to accomplish and is eager to see their work.

 

Though Wagner can be seen as a sort of “techno-geek,” he is at heart, a potter.  He loves to go into his studio and make something.  “If my idea is to make a pasta bowl,” he says, “I go into the studio and make fifty pasta bowls.”  He sees himself as a production potter, with the perfection of the final products safeguarded by his scientific expertise.  Nevertheless, he says, “I’ve never been able to make a living making pots.”

 

Wagner rose to the position of Vice President of Operations at Swindell Dressler International before he retired in February of 2024.  He has plenty of time for making now and continues to experiment in large pieces.  “I don’t know what I want yet,” he admits.  “I need to look into outlets for selling.”  In the meantime, Standard Clay is pleased to have him share his perspective with budding potters at the High School Exhibition this spring.