Racine, Wisconsin ARTIST STATEMENTMy current work seeks to perfect the very essence of making ceramics by focusing on just clay, water, and fire. The saggar firing process relies on the skill and experience I have developed over thirty years to create an environment of combustible materials that will use the fire as a painter uses a brush. Unlike raku or glazing, the coloring of a saggar-fired pot occurs from the moment the kiln is lit until the pot has completely cooled.To accentuate this unique coloring, I use a vocabulary of forms built with a foundation from the traditions of ancient ceramics cultures and then honed with my intuitive understanding of form.I believe that saggar firing approaches the very heart of ceramics as a medium—the fusion of clay, water, and fire. By eliminating everything that is not these three components, my work unites surface and form. BIOGRAPHYBorn in 1952 in Racine, Wisconsin, Alex Mandli has lived in southeastern Wisconsin for most of his life. At an early age, he became aware of something called “mud crack”—a crack formed in viscous mud beds in the course of drying and shrinking. As a free-range child, Mandli spent many hours playing in open fields with his cousins and neighbors, often playing army in foxholes they dug. He soon became aware of the distinctive smell of damp soil. After it would rain and the ground would just begin to dry, he would return to the mud fields. The sun would bake the mud puddles, making them shrink and crack, which reminded him of potato chips. Mandli’s PF Flyers left footprints in the mud, and after a few days, he could hold that footprint in his hand. Mandli has been working as a potter and an art teacher since 1974.