Robert Jewett

The New England poet Stanley Kunitz calls personal subject matter “key images”. In his essay, “From Feathers to Iron”, published in his collection, "Next To The Last Things", Kunitz states: "My own feeling is that the object is not so much to cut oneself off from one's past as to learn to live with the inner child you were. The cluster of key images is the purest concentration of the self, the individuating node, the place where the persona starts. When fresh thoughts and sensations enter the mind, some of them are drawn into the gravitational field of the old life and cohere to it. Out of these combining elements, the more resistant the better, poetry happens". And, I would add, art is made.

The key images in my art come from growing up on Martha’s Vineyard. Engagement with the sea naturally generates an awareness of the layers of an ever-changing nautical landscape. As a sailor and an artist, I am interested not only in the surface of the water, but in what happens beneath. The incredible power that remains mostly hidden from our view is a dynamic force, revealing itself in its fluid interactions with surfaces, objects, and light. We see its power exposed on the surface waters of Woods Hole and the Middle Ground, in the tidal pull on buoys, and in the turbulent swirls around the hull of a boat.
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I studied pottery with renowned potter Warren Mackenzie at the University of Minnesota where I received an M.F.A. in ceramics and sculpture in 1972. Since that time I have taught ceramics at St. Paul Academy and Summit School. I am associated with the Grand Hand Gallery in St Paul MN and have shown my work throughout the Midwest, including one-person exhibitions at the Minneapolis Art Institute and the Tweed Museum. I am currently showing in the exhibition “25 Professional American Potters” opening in January at St. Olaf College. I now live with my wife Peggy as a year-round resident of the Vineyard.