Southern Indiana Living Magazine - Sept / Oct 2023

handle is like an extended hand.
The handle is so important that I
add a little thumb rest on top of all
my handles, so the user’s thumb is
happy to spend time there.”
He often hears stories from
past customers about the lives his
mugs have lived. One person wrote
him a lengthy letter: “I have carried
this mug from South Bend to
Bowling Green, on to Aberdeen,
SouthDakota, and now to Eastern
Michigan University,” the letter
writer wrote. “It has always been
front and center on my desk, and I
hate to think how many thousands
of cups of coffee this art piece has
held over the years. … It is still operational
and as good looking a cup
as anyone could ask for,” the letter
concluded. DeGraaf has saved
this letter because it reinforces his
impression that his mugs have become
part of intimate little daily
rituals across the country, and even
around the world.
Artistic expression also plays a
role in deGraaf’s practice, so that his
pieces are not only useful, but visually
intriguing and compositionally
strong. Dutch painters Vincent van
Gogh and Piet Mondrian, among
others, have inspired his work. A
few paintings by these artists hang
in deGraaf’s gallery where he displays
his own best pieces. The close
proximity of a van Gogh painting
to a deGraaf vase reveals the influence.
Van Gogh’s swirling brushstrokes,
for example, are referenced
in the wavy lines engraved in some
of deGraaf’s pottery.
For a recent exhibit, “Forms,
Functions, and Faces,” at Harrison
County Arts, deGraaf departed
from his norm to create several nonfunctional
clay faces. “They were
playful experiments,” deGraaf said
of these engaging faces. After the
show, when he brought the pieces
back to his studio, he felt compelled
to make them functional by affixing
them to vases.
DeGraaf’s studio is divided
into distinct rooms: a room for tools,
a glazing room where he mixes his
own glazes, a kiln room and his favorite,
the wet clay building room
where he throws pieces on his pottery
wheel or builds them by hand
from slabs. “With my hands immersed
in wet clay,” deGraaf said,
“I am like a kid playing in the
mud.”
One wall of this wet clay room
is lined with large windows, so that
Artistic expression
also plays a role
in deGraaf’s
practice, so that
his pieces are not
only useful, but
visually intriguing
and compositionally
strong. Dutch
painters Vincent
van Gogh and
Piet Mondrian,
among others, have
inspired his work.
Southern Indiana Living • Sept/Oct 2023 • 27