Dear Friends,
I don’t usually write about this, but I have bills due this week, storage for the original Andersen Design mold collection, a debt negotiation payment, and my internet bill. I need to generate a few hundred dollars in the next few days, and so I am asking for a little help from my friends.

If you’ve ever thought about buying something from the studio, now is truly the time it would make a difference. Whether it’s a print, a ceramic piece, a mug, or a card for someone you love, every single purchase helps me pay the bills and keep the Idea alive.

Shop the collection:

andersenstudio.com

                                                                                                           Nigel Tadyanehondo Unsplash

How will the pieces fall in place as large industries radically reduce the workforce while requiring greater quantities of water and electricity than the resident human population?

A few years ago, an academic concept called psychological ownership was devised, which promoted the psychological illusion of shared ownership among the “workforce” to encourage workers to invest their creative capabilities in the enterprise for the benefit of shareholder profits. That’s out the door now, as the new shareholder objective is to radically reduce the size of the workforce for the same cause, greater profits for shareholders, which is the driving force behind the quagmire of investments in AI. The publicly traded company has always pitted the interests of the ownership class (the shareholders) against the working class (the workforce), and now it has reached its final stand.

The other day, I saw an application for the Joint Economic Development Council on the Boothbay Town Office website, so I decided to apply.

When I delivered my application to the Town Office, I was told that the JECD was no longer in operation, which was consistent with my impression that they disbanded during Covid. I said I am submitting it anyway because the municipal ordinances being enacted by the state need to be addressed.

The signature on a ceramic work identifies the author, but the true signature is in the hand of the artist, which is as unique as handwriting. This one-of-a-kind vintage Emperor Penguin was created when the decoration for the production design was under development. The overall uniformity of the pattern is one of the keys to identifying that the penguin is decorated by Weston and not by Brenda.

The Large Fish is the second-to-last sculpture created by Weston Neil Andersen. At the time, Weston was very involved in the esoteric writings of Carlos Castenaeda. The super-size of the Carp and Weston's ebony glaze with its glossy surface that shimmers in the light gives the fish a powerful, mystical presence.

WHEN I WAS A BOY in the late 1970s and early 1980s, 1 would see my grandparents’ handiwork everywhere: on the windowsill of a doctor’s office, on the coffee table at a stranger’s cottage, on display in countless retail shops from Boston to Bar Harbor.

One of their stoneware sculptures—my grandmother’s seagull, wings tucked for a rest on the ocean’s surface—even showed up on the set of a national morning television show (though nobody in the family can quite remember which one). It seemed to be scrutinizing the show’s hosts from a shelf behind their couch.

I ended my last post with forward-looking hope of a federal administration that understood that work isn’t only about the money. Now we are told Trump won and with every single swing state- no less! I hear pundits saying that Democrats don’t listen to the working class people but Harris was saying something very essential to the values of working people- that work isn’t only about the money, an idea that I have never heard a politician voice before and so she was hearing me and I believe many others in the working classes- because the working classes like to work! We are not just instruments of the plans of institutions. We have our own meaningful lives to guide us and desire work that both produces an income and is aligned with what is meaningful from our internal perspective. Kamala Harris gets that because she is one of us. Unlike Trump, she was not born with a silver spoon in her mouth.

I believe it is more possible to realize the value of the work process in a small-scale working environment, and as misguided as Trump’s policies are, through no fault of his own, his policies may work to the advantage of small-scale American businesses.

If Trump succeeds in implementing his tariff plan, it will create great uncertainty in the global market. Trump believes that by implementing tariffs, it will cause other nations to build factories in the USA creating high-paid jobs for Americans but the reason production was moved overseas in the past was to locate the factories in the low-wage labor markets. Other nations are likely to retaliate against Trump's tariffs by instating tariffs on American-made products, IF products are produced in a high-paying labor market and are subject to tariffs when imported into other countries they will be very high-cost products and so many expect inflation to rise now at 2,4%

With global markets tumbling into an unpredictable state, investments in global corporations will be riskier but the bright side might be an opportunity for small entrepreneurial makers to find support and investments. Andersen Design is a company started in 1952 designing and handcrafting slip-cast ceramics, made from raw materials sourced in America and crafted into original Andersen Design glazes and bodies used to produce our original classic lines of functional forms and wildlife sculpture. Andersen Design did not move its production to low-cost labor markets as most of the Western ceramics companies did in the 1980s. We have an established brand name, an established base of collectors, and a large.line of slip-cast designs. We need to match that with capitalization and a team that can carry Andersen Design into the future.

I was looking around for something ancient and so I started reading old blog pots. This one was written in 2011;

In commencing to write about the art of Ceramics, the question presents itself: What is art?

Art is more than technique and greater than discipline. The social status of a work of art is determined by political and cultural forces and at the same time art is nature expressed through the individual man in the context of time, place, culture, and politics.

Art is more than aesthetics; it also conveys meaning and messages. Before the invention of the printing press painting, pottery, and architecture recorded the stories of history. In modern times art has become inseparable from a continual redefinition of art. Artists make “statements”, artists “shock”, and artists express spiritual, religious, intellectual, and political ideas.

I am working on an inquiry for that is an ask to apply for a grant having to do with architecture

Mission Founded in 1956, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts fosters the development and exchange of diverse and challenging ideas about architecture and its role in the arts, culture, and society. The Graham realizes this vision through making project-based grants to individuals and organizations and producing exhibitions, events, and publications.

Grantmaking Focus Architecture and related spatial practices engage a wide range of cultural, social, political, technological, environmental, and aesthetic issues. We are interested in projects that investigate the contemporary condition, expand historical perspectives, or explore the future of architecture and the designed environment. We support innovative, thought-provoking investigations in architecture; architectural history, theory, and criticism; design; engineering; landscape architecture; urban planning; urban studies; visual arts; and related fields of inquiry. Our interest also extends to work being done in the fine arts, humanities, and sciences that expands the boundaries of thinking about architecture and space.   source

The contemporary condition of work is that it is valued differently in differing contexts including the non-profit world, the state, the free enterprise sector, and the working classes.

I am working on my inquiry proposal for  The Graham Grant For Individuals .

I have gotten through the easiest part that I can do on my own and now I have questions to deal with that are impacted by whether or not I can gather a team to participate in a project. Since this is a community project, the parameters of what can be achieved are limited to advocating for the idea if I am working alone since community, by definition, involves more than one person. Collage by Mackenzie Andersen using Public Domain Clip Art 

I am going through decades of Papers, unearthing unrecorded history such as these old notes written by my Dad as he was developing the concept of Andersen Design"

Sometime in the early 1950s these handwritten instructions were made to tell how to preserve designs for ceramic art by creating original, master, and production molds- 

Greetings!
I am getting ready for The Lincoln Arts Festival Art for Art’s Sake Show & Sale August 23-25, 2024

I prepared an artist biography, that colors outside the lines of conventional artists' biographies but it's the truth about "my brand". I always thought that ultimately one's art is one's life and what one does with it, and so with that brief introduction: Here it is:

Mackenzie Andersen    

A Life’s Work

Peony Drift By Mackenzie Andersen

“Wholeness is the Hidden Variable”- David Bohm

Beginning life in an artist- in residence environment

Mackenzie was raised in an art business in a home. Andersen Design could never have come about if it were not premised on understanding and bringing together complex systems, be they molecular systems that are integral to designing and making ceramics, or human systems, holistic understanding doesn't distinguish. Everything is everything as they said in the 1960s. 

Both used production as an art form and started in the midcentury so how do you tell them apart?

How do you tell the difference between these two styles of popular art? photo of art object on the right by Girl with red hat on Unsplash, photo on the left by the author

How do you tell the difference between Andersen Design Popular Art and Andy Warhol’s Pop Art? Good Question! Let’s see if we can establish some distinctions!

First, there is the startup date. Andersen Design established its production as an art form in 1952 and Andy Warhol made Pop Art more famous using production as an art form in 1961 so Andersen Design was a forerunner of Warhol’s Pop Art. Even though Andy Warhol may have thought he never heard of Andersen Design, he was probably aware of the art production through the collective unconsciousness of mankind, whether he knew it or not, Andy Warhol was, after all, an antenna of human culture.

Revealing that nothing has changed in politics, merely evolved!

About 68 years ago my father tried to create a new form of relationship when he approached a more established local business with a concept for a business-to-business collaboration that involved Dad designing a table-top line that could be sold in conjunction with a food product as a gift package. After the negotiations ended without the project coming to fruition, someone gave Dad the file of the correspondence between the two partners with whom Dad was negotiating, including letters that Dad wrote to them. These letters sat in a box with other papers until I came across them a few days ago. What a twist of fate it was to open a time capsule that my father had buried in this box of papers, connecting 1956 to the present moment in time

Looking beyond the economic realm and examining the sociopolitical role played by specialized craft production

In 2004 anthropologists Edward M. Schortman and Patricia Urban published Modeling the Roles of Craft Production in Ancient Political Economies, a research paper discussing trends in an active archeology debate over the role of craft production during the Bronze Age.

Modeling the Roles of Craft Production in Ancient Political Economies is an interesting read, particularly because it likewise describes contemporary social organization, or perhaps, better said, what was contemporary, yesterday, but is now rapidly unraveling and no one yet knows where it is going.

Contrasts between the centrally managed Sumerian culture and a European egalitarian class of itinerant makers can be applied to contemporary political organization

The Prestige Goods Theory

Modeling the Roles of Craft Production in Ancient Political Economies unfolds the “prestige goods theory” which posits that craft production was employed as an instrument of elite domination strategies in the Sumerian culture. Such strategies have prevailed throughout history in the marketing of every category of goods but are far more prevalent in centrally managed societies, which function as hierarchies.

  I have a group of 15 column Vases and so I posted this on social media

I have a large collection of vintage Andersen Design Column Vases, each one decorated uniquely showing the innovative approach that Andersen Design took to finishing slip vast production ceramics. I would like to do something with these vases as a group. I just don't know what, yet, so I am putting this message in a social media post and letting it float until it lands ashore. . Looking for collaborators!

Industrial Design, Then and Now The Andersen Design journey Reinventing the Online Platform as a B to B experience