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Published in, "Ceramics Ireland", 33 2014
Tracing Michael Flynn.

Michael Flynn's forking paths.

Few great minds have the gift of turning everything they are confronted with into elements of their own imagination, into elements of their own vocabulary. It requires a certain capacity for absorbing, accumulating and finally processing the accumulated knowledge. Even though all artists, by definition, are explorers, that inner mind's imperative of constant broadening, the life-long investigation completed by insight and unrestrained imagination, describes just a few of them. It definitely describes Michael Flynn.

Flynn studies existing links and relations, disrupts bonds between notions, reconnecting them anew in his own way to create associations in his own order. From collected gestures, characters, anecdotes and true stories he composes both, his own, imaginary tales and the beautifully disquieting, lively hand built figures that he is so well known for. His sketchbooks, like his mind, are full of the little creatures of all kinds that tend to populate and crowd there exactly as they do in his ceramic pieces. They are breeding in his mind in a continued, unceasing process, fertilized by constant researching, constant reading, thinking, absorbing, merging fictions and non-fictions, creating, making.

He not only breathes his joie de vivre into them, they are endowed with immense wisdom, profound knowledge of human's habits, strengths and weaknesses, failings and successes. Being very much of his mind, they undoubtedly carry the stigma of his personality. At the same time, once they manage to free themselves and as soon as leaving the kiln for good they start to run their own lives carrying their own stories of all kinds- ridiculous, wry, risible, sometimes sublime or prosaic. They are fully fleshed out creations and they know exactly how to draw the viewer into their world, offering the whole spectrum of emotions, though in a particularly lightly and charming way.

Flynn's vision and interests, recorded in each piece, are beautifully eclectic. His thoughts cross as equally smoothly amongst cultures, centuries and belief systems as he, constantly traveling, passes amongst the studios that he works in, amongst techniques and materials that are available there and conditions that they offer. He has been working in studios and residency centers in most of the European countries from Finland and Norway, through Poland, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Hungary, Austria, Czech Republic to Cyprus and Israel as well as Canada, USA and Australia. The pieces may be modeled hollow or solid, may be made of porcelain, stoneware or earthenware, fired in gas or electric kiln, raku fired or even wood-fired.... However they are always distinctly his own.

A few years ago he came across slip casting.

As he creates his own bestiary from the processed excerpts of what was read, seen and rethought, from fragments of different techniques he makes up his own method of work adapting it to his need. Flynn is a type of artist who uses any technical device (without mentioning most of the wooden modeling tools coated with glue!...) in the way that is most convenient for him, in the way that suits best his temperament. He simply rejects what he finds redundant. His own means of expression are too strong to submit to any rules just because there are the rules. He feels and understands clay, so no other rules "how to" and "how not to" need apply.

When modeling a piece from a lump of clay and a sketch in a sketchbook an artist is limited only by a vision. Casting with all its pros and cons provides a very different quality.

Casting in its traditional understanding allows a maker to reproduce identical objects, to make a large number of exact copies of the desired shape formed by the negative mould. To cast means to limit the range of possibilities to the number of specific, repeated shapes corresponding to the number and type of the given moulds. However, instead of varying the pieces as such, casting offers an opportunity to manipulate and to vary the relations between them. The limited number of elements can be transformed into the infinite number of different, unique compositions. Though this may seem to inhibit the range of possibilities, manipulation of the individual casts in relation to each other in fact expands those possibilities.

Somehow it came at the right moment as a natural step in the materialization of a dense forest overgrowing and occupying Flynn's vision. The element of the forest occurred as a result of long-lasting exploration of the relation between Harlequin and Dionysus. Flynn's research into the remains of Dionysian tradition in contemporary culture soon developed into the revelation of remnants of the forest in the urban structure. Slip casting provided the means to develop the idea further and in a new context.

There has always been a strongly theatrical element in Flynn's work. The presentation of ideas as actually on a stage really began years ago. Casting made it possible to turn the forest into the theatrical stage. It allows Flynn to distance himself from the emerging characters, to build a piece as a play, using them as actors. The role of a major player, essential character, stressed by the use of colour, belongs to the forest. Its denizens remain white, somehow stiff and literal, emphasizing the fact that this time they are just notions, actors on the stage of Flynn's theatre whereas the forest wears a pattern of transfers like a theatrical costume. There are just a few actors in that theatre; a dog, a man, a woman and a baby, they might be given different roles, might wear masks or even somebody else’s head or body. They can play the part of a man or a bear, an idol or just a wannabe god, a dog or a wolf. The cast branch might turn into a trunk and a tree or just a piece of bark. The actors and their parts as well as the scenery are redefined and set anew every time a new piece is being created. It is Flynn who directs, who gives them the new functions and distributes the roles. He decides upon the characters and the parts that are being played.

All the moulds used by Flynn have been made after his designs, some from branches carefully selected in the woods. These molds are cast and then - voila! transferred into the trees again. Unlike in his earlier works where colours were painted on the cast pieces, the patches of colour and lines are applied with transfers. Although just like casting, decals are commonly considered as mass-production rather than artistic method, they fit perfectly into the new concept. Not merely decoration, they express the abundance of life in the forest. The images of insects, creepers and plants are as much Flynn's as his moulds- just like them made after his designs. He mixes them with the patches of colourful transfers found in the factories' stocks.

Although I have accompanied from the beginning the entire process of Flynn's imagination embracing the casting technique, he never ceases to amaze me. Flynn casts in a way that would be probably considered sacrilege by casting purists. Luckily, I am not into puristic casting at all, so I can just enjoy observing him working, absorbing the free spirit of his attitude, observing his casts developing into fascinating, crowded, knotty structures of trees and people...

Again with casting Flynn absorbs as much knowledge as he needs to make the technique work for him, in his own, specific way. Perfection seems not to a notion in Flynn's vocabulary. Like a child who will rather slip or roll down the steep hill if it finds it the most convenient way to get down instead of conventional climbing down, even if that is seen to be improper ("the proper way"- another notion that belongs to others, not to Flynn's world).

Flynn is endowed with an enormous imagination and an entrancing ability to bring its effects into being but he is definitely not endowed with the patience and the massive, unwieldy blocks of plaster seem to be very much on his way at times. Being tied to the particular studio where the moulds are, does not really suit somebody, who would not take anything but a sketchbook with him, hopping across the borders and oceans from one studio to another! The experience of casting would not be a true Flynn's one however if it had not induced him to explore further possibilities of the reversed or inverted methods of forming. Luckily branches, which are essential in the Forest project, can be found nearly everywhere, either in Poland, Wales or Germany. Previously used as models for making the moulds- they become the moulds themselves, the slabs of clay are being pressed straight onto their bark and reversed inside out afterwards to obtain the reflection of trees.

The change of a method, followed by the change of process, provides a good artist with further possibilities of expression without inhibiting his individuality. Flynn is undoubtedly an Absolute Artist, the Maker who redefines existing relations and rules in the territory of notions as well as in the domain of techniques, picking the suitable tools to materialize new worlds conceived in his mind. Fully aware of developments in the art world, he enriches his works, his means of expression with elements of all of them, drawing information and inspiration from everything that surrounds him.

I am constantly fascinated by his passion and enthusiasm for making and learning, his immense, profound versatility and individuality. A technique usually is of great importance for ceramic artists. It lets them define themselves. Usually it is the choice of method, choice of material or the way of firing that places them on the map of the ceramic profession, makes them a part of a bigger society, lets them "belong". These decisions usually determine the whole artistic practice, influencing the language of expression, the vision and motivate the artist's subsequent esthetic choices.

Any time you try to define Michael Flynn however, you can be sure to spot just one, unchanging fact: "it is just a stage in the ongoing process"* to quote the artist's statement published in the catalogue of the first exhibition of the Forest project. Or, as another great Maker, Jorge Louis Borges said (and I can not stop thinking of Borges and Flynn as twin minds as there is something extremely congenial in the linking abilities of both their minds that let them embrace and convert excerpts of the real into wonder):"A work of this kind is unavoidably incomplete; each new edition forms the basis of future editions, which themselves may grow on endlessly."**

Flynn eludes any easy, clear definition. You would have to stop him from working to be able to pin him down by any definition that would be enduringly accurate...

*Michael Flynn, No Return, BWA Galleries of Contemporary Art, 2010

** Jorge Louis Borges, Preface to the 1957 Edition of Handbook of Fantastic Zoology


Monika Patuszynska, 2012,

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