“Your goal in life is that your apprentices become better than you. If I can do that, then that’s the legacy.”
Serving the community The Saint John’s Pottery has continued to evolve since then, attracting visitors from around the world while enhancing artistic innovation, supporting apprenticeships and community outreach, fostering religious and academic environment and promoting natural and environmentally friendly artistry. “Saint John’s is a community of highly diverse groups. They’re coming to learn about the culture of the clay world from this perspective. It’s a much more organic perspective,” Bresnahan said. “The Saint John’s Pottery never has been simply about pottery,” Welch wrote. “It stimulates thinking, prompts psychic investment, even moves one to positive action.” In a nationwide academic climate where many cash-strapped universities are shuttering art departments, Bresnahan has been careful to cultivate a financially self-sufficient program with a vibrantly creative legacy. “We’re the only university in America that’s got a designated endowment for environmental artists,” said Bresnahan, ever mindful of the program’s generational survival. “The studio becomes an identity for all creativity within the university. “Historically, what’s going to be the biggest thing 20 or 30 years out? It’s going to be environmental artists communicating about the nature of what’s happened to the planet.” Some of those artists will be on hand for the latest firing of the Johanna Kiln, which was inaugurated in 1995. At 87 feet long with a 37-foot backpressure tunnel, it’s the largest woodfired kiln of its kind in North America.
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It’s being loaded with everything from fine art to dinner plates, which in itself makes a statement about the mission of The Saint John’s Pottery. “If your neighbors are not eating out of your dishes,” Bresnahan said, “you have defeated the purpose of building culture. “That’s been a main focus of the studio – it’s been more of a direction of community than it has Richard Bresnahan becoming famous.”
Looking ahead So, what’s next? “I wake up in the morning and I’m absolutely, totally consumed by that thought process,” said Bresnahan, who in addition to preparing for the kiln firing has been commissioned to craft the centerpiece for the Jon Hassler Sculpture Garden outside the Reinhart Learning Commons. “The feeling is you cannot wait to get to the next step of your work.” Bresnahan recovered from major back surgery in 1988-90, and from quintuple bypass heart surgery in 2017, and has balky knees. He couldn’t wait to get back to work, but he won’t be making art forever. “There can be only one Richard Bresnahan. The man himself is irreplaceable,” Lemke said. “You’ve got to think about legacy, Richard,” Bresnahan said, basically to himself. “Who’s going to take this over when you’re done? “You don’t spend 40 years building something just to have