Frank Massarella's Firehouse Pottery, Gallery and Clay School Present A Weekend with Matt Long. Join us for a weekend workshop with the master of surface slip enhancement. Linda Arbuckle calls him a closet cake decorator. Matt is also one of the country's foremost authorities on High Fire Soda.

The fun begins Friday May 16th, time TBA (dependent upon deliver of Frank's new Geil Soda Kiln). There will be a reception and powerpoint presentation regardless.

On Saturday and Sunday May 17th and 18th, a light continental style breakfast will be available by 8am and the shop will go from 9a-4p w/potluck lunch both days.

Registration cost is $200. And depending on the delivery of the soda kiln, for an additional cost, shop participants can bring bisque ware for the firing. ACS and VCPG members receive a $25 discount on registration. Call Dusti at 805 646 9453 or email firehousepottery@sbcglobal.net to reserve space and with questions regarding local accommodations.

Matt Long is on the country's 'A' list of workshop facilitators, you won't want to miss him and Ojai is a lovely place to visit in May.

Ojai potter stills love to explore his craft

By Nicole D'Amore
Correspondent
Friday, July 6, 2007

Special to The Ventura County Star*

Frank Massarella discovered his passion for clay in a high school class during the 1960s. "I was a football player and I had to take an art class so I thought I'd take an easy one, and I took pottery," Massarella explained in a recent interview at his Firehouse Pottery and Gallery in Ojai. "That was it. I fell in love with it. The feeling of the clay, what I could do with it, the expression I could give with my hands on the clay. I was fascinated with it."

Yet, his first experience with the wheel was frustrating, he said." I had no idea how humbling it could be," he said. "You watch it and think, I can do that, but it's a little different when you try to do it. You struggle and all of a sudden it connects. It's quite satisfying and enriching. Still to this day when I get a pot right it's a very warm feeling. It's something you can never get too good at."

Hollywood didn't beckon

In college a friend introduced him to a potter, John Schulps in Calabasas, who needed an apprentice. He worked for Schulps for six years, at the same time following in his father's footsteps as a makeup artist for the film industry."My dad was a makeup man, but I didn't like it," Massarella said. "I decided to just go for it and opened my own studio in Chatsworth in 1977." He made functional pieces and traveled, doing art shows and delivering to galleries including Pebble People, which was in Ojai at the time. "I saw an advertisement for an art show here at the Art Center," he said. "I did that for three or four years and fell in love with Ojai. It was my best show of the year."

In 1982, just before his first daughter was born, Massarella and his wife found a place in Ojai. Right from the beginning, his studio was unique in that visitors could watch the process. Then in 1998 when the historic firehouse next door to his studio on Montgomery Street became available, Massarella got approval from the city to purchase it. He renovated the landmark building, maintaining its original architecture. Now beautifully crafted and glazed pieces fill gallery space where firetrucks once parked. Dutch doors open to a back room where people can take classes to learn how to "throw" a pot themselves. Two kilns are in a courtyard separating the gallery and classroom from Massarella's newly built studio and home. The project received a 2005 Design Award from the city.

Massarella estimates he puts in 60 to 70 hours, working seven days a week. He attends workshops, learning new techniques and experimenting with glazes and forms. In his studio, rows of newly thrown pots, some in irregular shapes, are lined up on shelves waiting to be put in the kiln.

Tweaking the basic form

"I love to manipulate the pot, to make a perfect form and then manipulate it," he said. "Doing it year after year I learn how far you can take the clay. If you think you have the form down, just tweak it a little bit."

Most of his pieces can be identified by a swirl in the center. "You see the swirl throughout nature," Massarella said. "It has a kinetic appearance so I started doing it. I moved it onto the surface of the pot and made it more abstract. It's constantly evolved, it's endless. I like to enrich the surface with decoration and glazes."

He often uses a technique called slip trailing, where he runs a line of soft, liquid clay on the outside of the piece, giving it an extra dimension. "I started to do that as a separation of color," he said. "It just evolves. When you do 200 to 300 pieces a week you do a lot of experiments." His experimentation includes new glaze combinations or formulations. "That is what keeps the passion alive for me," he said. "If I had to do the same thing every week I don't think I could do it. Every week when I open that kiln it's still like Christmas."

Massarella is one of about 30 artists participating in the "One Work/One World" exhibit through Aug. 19 at the Beatrice Wood Center for the Arts, 8560 Ojai-Santa Paula Road, Ojai.

* To recommend an artist to be profiled, contact Nicole D'Amore at ArtProfiles@roadrunner.com or (805) 405-0364.

Exhibition Dates: June 9 - August 19, 2007. The exhibition includes Global Warming from Frank Massarella.

In presenting One Work/One World, the Beatrice Wood Center for the Arts seeks to think globally and act locally in promoting a sense of unity, vision and beauty in the world.

Ceramic work by Frank Massarella is at the Armstrong Gallery in Pomona, CA. David Armstrong can facilitate the perfect acquisition for your collection. His knowledge of historic, modern, post-modern and contemporary art ceramics makes David a professional advisor at your disposal. Armstrong's extensive fine art ceramics selection will provide the perfect fine art ceramic piece.

Frank Massarella, owner, studio potter and teacher at Massarella’s Firehouse Pottery, Gallery and Clay School was awarded 3rd place amongst his peers Saturday evening, May 12th. The event was The American Ceramic Society’s President’s juried showing of “Extreme Clay” held at the American Museum of Ceramic Art in Pamona, CA. Mr. Massarella took 3rd place with his piece titled “Blushing Pride” in a field of 200+ works by California ceramic artists.

Massarella’s Firehouse Pottery and Gallery, in it’s 26th year, housed in Ojai’s Landmark Firehouse, in the heart of Ojai’s South Montgomery (SoMo) Art District, has long been known to locals and visitors alike as THE place for the unique gift of functional pottery as well as ceramic art for the discerning collector.

There will be a reception honoring Mr. Massarella and his new works on May 25th from 6p-9p at Firehouse Pottery, Gallery and Clay School, 109 S. Montgomery St. Ojai.