By Steve Parks
After 39 years of teaching at his alma mater, the University of Maryland Eastern Shore – then known as Maryland State College – Ernie Satchell retired from its faculty in 2010.
But even now in his 80s, Satchell shows no intention of retiring from shaping life figures and creating pottery that is too handsome, too decorative – and in some cases too large – for anything but admiring.
You can admire some of each in the “Ernie Satchell: Expressions in Clay” show that will catch your eye from the front display window on High Street at the Dorchester Center for the Arts through the end of the shortest month of the year. So don’t wait too long.
Satchell was surrounded by friends and longtime admirers of his work upon arriving for the opening reception on a rainy Saturday night, saying “hi” to the combo of musicians who call themselves the Before Your Time Band. But they’re not before Satchell’s time.
At Northampton High School on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, one of his teachers was impressed with young Satchell’s biology class drawings, and another by his art and storytelling inspired by his love of comic books. After graduation, he enrolled in 1959 at what is now UMES, then part of the University of Maryland’s segregated all-black college system.
There, as he majored in art education, he was mentored by Jimmy Moseley and a visiting professor from Penn State University, Kenneth Beittel, author of “Zen and the Art of Pottery,” who introduced him to ceramics. Within weeks, it became his protege’s heartfelt ambition to make it his life’s work.
But that would have to wait for years, four of them in service to the U.S. Navy, after which he was hired as an illustrator for Boeing. Soon disillusioned with commercial art, he enrolled in graduate school at what was then Towson State University toward a master’s degree in art education with a concentration in ceramics.
But he had to make a living first. So he began his teaching career at UMES in 1971. Returning to Towson University in 1988, he earned a Master’s of Fine Arts in ceramics.
Since then, he has exhibited widely and frequently in solo and invitational shows, often showcasing his flair for pot throwing, which you may recognize from artisans who know how to raise a lump of clay on a spinning wheel and shape it into tall, cylindrical objects with their hands. Satchell, a member of the Clay Guild of the Eastern Shore, is a longtime master of the technique, producing, as you can see at his “Expressions in Clay” exhibit in Cambridge, statuesque vessels nearly five feet tall.
But he has grown far beyond just ceramic stoneware that becomes waterproof and glass-like in its shiny, colorfully gleaming appearance. He’s moved on to figurative human-figure statuary, also in clay, that takes four to six weeks to create.
You’ll see from the raised front window display in the main Dorchester Center for the Arts gallery his aptly named “Labor of Love” – a near life-size young man of clay hunched over a wheel from which Satchell himself might have “thrown a pot” into the shape of a ceramic face. Just across from him is a series of Western-themed objects, including a saddle on a sawhorse that looks fit enough to throw on a live horse’s back if the artist ever creates a piece large enough to ride.
Who knows? Maybe that’ll be next for Ernie Satchell of Princess Anne.
But for now, this is what he says about his own “labor of love”: “In my work, I often portray common folks in a sincere manner with dignity and pride. . . . I view myself as a clay conductor who orchestrates images and presents them in a way that makes life relevant to me.”
‘Ernie Satchell: ‘Expressions in Clay’ – An exhibit of sculptures, both figurative and ornamental, Tuesdays-Saturdays through Feb. 28 at the Dorchester Center for the Arts, 321 High St., Cambridge. dorchesterarts.org
