WORKING HIS CHARM

"OK then. Make 500!"

Rajeev Sethi to Adil Writer when Adil said, "No! I cannot make a three-meter-cube Treasure Box!"

"But 500 Treasure Boxes, no problem." This is the Adil Writer of the 550 paintings for a hotel in Pune and for Adil just another escapade for his fertile imagination. The 500-piece Treasure Box installation will be mounted permanently in the garden of ceramic sculpture at the Grand Hyatt, Chennai, scheduled to open at the end of the year. Half-way through the making process, Adil confesses, "This is the first time I have made enough of anything to really develop the idea." The richness of this show is in no small part the result of this unusual discipline.

The Treasure Box

"The gift of a decorative box implies permission to conceal one's secrets."
"...the dialectics of inside and outside multiply with countless diversified nuances."
- Gaston Bachelard. The Poetics of Space(1)

These boxes are small. Many fit in the palm of the hand. Intentionally. They are made to be held-close to the heart-to be looked at closely and opened. Inside? There is virtually no inside. This is not a box to be filled with pins, buttons and paperclips. A treasured ring? Or the key to the jewelry box? Perhaps. But what does an Adil Writer Treasure Box really hold? Unquestionably, your imagination. And a kind of rite of passage, if you wish to make the trip-from outside to inside-to Bachelard’s realm of "intimate immensity."

Bachelard reminds us that space is not only mathematical, geometric, scientific, infinite or empty, but imaginal and poetic as well. To paraphrase, poetic image is resonant and reverberates in a loop that intensifies and continually reconstitutes being itself.

Here is the three-meter cube in the palm of your hand.
How can you resist that?

I have two Treasure Boxes on my desk as I write.

Box One is a fireclay and porcelain mix. Understated by normal Writer standards, the dominant porcelain Southern Ice(2), a clean, soft matte white, is embedded on one side with a slab of beige fireclay, flashed to a rusty orange by the flame of a wood-fired kiln. Here Adil’s verve is in his clay work rather than extravagant glaze treatment. An undulating wire-cut "equator" swings across the box, bisecting the spare form with a line as supple and varied as an oriental brush stroke. The pale orange of the fireclay appears again in an ascending tracery of abstract silhouettes, an earthy accent that casually adorns this elegant simplicity. Opened, this is a Treasure Box of breathtaking clarity.

The inner chamber is ovoid, almost spherical. The twisted wire used for the cut has left a furrowed sheer-wall icescape surrounding two frozen bowls. Here the fireclay slab that narrowly borders two edges is a breath of warmth in the eerie silence of this immense interior space. The ice-bound hemispheres on the inside are shadowed by circular orange patches of flame-flashed pattern outside. I do not think this juxtaposition of heat and cold was just the luck of the fire. Or is my imagination getting away from me? Adil says this was not intentional. Either way, the subtlety and restraint exhibited in this piece adds welcome range to the work of this rapidly maturing artist.

Box Two is more robust. Though larger, it does still fit the hand and though still a box, this is a mountain-scape, fissured, furrowed and stamped. The huge fish-fossil escarpments that ascend opposite sides of this mini-mountain geode invoke geologic time and prehistoric life forms. The pattern of a regular grid suggests steeply terraced slopes-agriculture clinging to rock tenuously-a precarious human presence.

The equator is closer to the horizontal than in Box One. And cut above the center. When open, you peer over the edge of a yawning cavern to a coarse sandy bottom where a single, small rectangular floral impression suggests interment.

Adil Writer, the former and still sometimes architect, often invokes the dictum, "form follows function." And I add technique. Dare I say material? Yes. Clay-a chameleon that can mimic just about anything and hide in the guise of almost any other medium. Today many contemporary artists push clay towards the ephemeral, ignoring or rejecting its engaging physicality. "Less is more"? Not for this artist. Born and raised in the Mumbai cacophony-teeming life set against the swelter of several thousand years of history-there is more than a hint of Bollywood exuberance in Writer’s multi-layered treatment of material. It’s as though he has no "delete" key to dampen his expressions of joyous abandon. For me it is difficult to imagine his Treasure Boxes in any other medium. Writer welcomes clay’s unique plasticity-its receptivity and immediate response to his spontaneous handling, recording instantly and faithfully the synergy between material, thought and the artist.

Now living and working in semi-rural South India, Adil Writer is anything but isolated. He is well-traveled, interested in everything and an internet savage. While he will gleefully adopt anything from anywhere and anyone, he is not a slave to the trendy. His work is contemporary without being effete and embraces content without being conceptual. Indian ceramic art, still largely under the radar, is beginning to surface. New paths may emerge that recognize the Western critical model but are not fettered by it.

The Treasure Box series is a repository of memory and imagination in a revel of fired clay-a material that Adil Writer unequivocally loves.

Outside
.

A block of clay
Raw, plastic, malleable,
Often a mix-stoneware and porcelain-
A rolled and tumbled rhomboid,
Irregular, faceted or paddled,
Stamped with a rubber fish-a cat’s toy-a fossil-like impression-
A wealth of what Jim Danisch(3) terms "devious detail"-
Then divided at the equator with a twisted wire,
The dialogue begins.

Inside

Separate
Two halves,
Two faces-a mirrored topography.
Unite-separate-unite-separate.
Press in (or dig out) opposing shallow volumes.
Close-a tiny inner chamber.
Open. Geode. Ovoid. A nucleus.
Adil, with a wily grin, leaves a mark,
"I am inside too."

Then slip and glaze,
Dip, pour, splash,
Brush, incise
Text

And fire.
Anagama-
Rivulets of melted wood ash
Run through crusty subtle-hued slag.
Or gas-fired celadon.
Multiple glazes
Merge, commingle
Unimaginable hues.

Adil the traveler
In Italy
Faenza
Mirta Morigi’s studio,
A confectionery-
Now real color, red, orange, yellow
Candied treasures, frosted,
Festive.

Each box unique,
Many-sided, interactive, convivial.
There is a hint of ritual.
A red dot.
The tilo. The point without dimension.
The generator of all space.
For Adil the tilo recalls his childhood.
How many treasured grains of rice?

Open-close-open-close
Just for the fun of it!

"The mind sees and continues to see objects; the spirit finds the nest of immensity in an object." G.B.

Adil Writer-the imaginal man-working his charm. Poet of serendipity. Improviser. Indian. Open, absorbing and giving back, sharing the treasure trove of his imagination.

Ray Meeker
Pondicherry
September 2010

(1) Bachelard, Gaston. 1884-1962. French philosopher known for his work on poetics and the philosophy of science.

(2) Southern Ice. An Australian porcelain recognized for its plasticity, whiteness and translucency.

(3) Danisch, Jim. American potter now residing in Nepal. Conducted workshop at Golden Bridge Pottery, Pondicherry in 1998.

Ray Meeker studied architecture and ceramics at the University of Southern California. With his wife Deborah Smith he founded the Golden Bridge Pottery in the South Indian town of Pondicherry in 1971. While Deborah now runs the Golden Bridge Pottery production, Ray is best known as a teacher and as the "architect/potter" who pioneered "fired building" technology. More recently he has gained attention for his independent studio work, ranging widely from functional stoneware to monumental ceramic sculpture.