John C. Reiger, Pottery
John, the Potter
All right, who is this balding, bearded, bespectacled guy selling pottery on some street
corner? Just another ex-hippie, mired in the sixties, struggling to come to survive and avoid
the corporate cubicle?
I didn't start out to be a potter. Does anyone? I was going to be a car designer, move to Detroit and draw tail fins. Doodling on the margins of my school papers always got me into trouble in grade school, and cars stirred my adolescent blood, so car designing seemed inevitable. Five semesters of Art Center in L.A. showed me that there were people who were much better artists that I was, and the prospect of moving to Detroit became increasingly unappealing.
So I switched to Psychology - it was a time of questing, for me. One B.A. (Psych., San Francisco State) and lots or rejection letters from grad schools later found me working as a Social Worker, and taking night classes at the local junior college to fight the boredom. The pottery class stuck. I became addicted. All I could think about was my pottery class.
I can read the handwriting on the wall, so I quit my job, went back to school (thank you G.I. Bill!) and became a full-time pottery student at San Jose State. Everyone there told me that you couldn't make a living as a potter, you have to teach (they were all teachers and didn't know much about being a potter). So I figured that was the way to go. Luckily I fell into a situation where I was able to begin selling my pottery on the weekends at a local shopping area in Los Gatos. "Hey, I can sell this stuff and make money!"
So I quit school (I'd become involved in all the anti-war activity at the time and my school work was suffering badly anyway) and became a potter (about 1973). You don't need any credentials to sell pots, just good pots.
So here I am, a gently greying potter, with a modicum of success, slowly potting my way through a good life. It's a hard way to make a living, but a wonderful way to live a life!
Oh yeah, there are all kinds of other stuff in my life; family, books, sports cars, politics, Mensa, etc., but if you care about that stuff talk to me in person.