Tales of a Red Clay Rambler: A pottery and ceramic art podcast · Ben Carter

Nathan Murray on Color Theory

·51 min·3 clips

During grad school, Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown, and Eric Garner shaped Murray’s work.

A commission begins in clay. Nathan Murray talks about staying with water-based clay because that was the material he trusted, even when the piece was headed for bronze. The clock was tight. The bronze came from Omaha the night before the finalist presentation, then had to be photographed and filmed for the Malcolm X project. One job opened onto the next. The host picks up on how the Shirley Tyree commission became part of the road to the Malcolm X Hall of Fame dedication, without making it sound neat or easy. Gesture does a lot of work here. In the Malcolm X portrait, a shift in the hand motion changes how a viewer might meet him as a person. From there, the craft talk gets heavier. Surface, posture, clothing, and implied movement become ways to talk about recognition, threat, dignity, and public memory. Color Theory comes in through Threat. The host points to a woman with her head lowered slightly, wearing a hoodie that cannot sit there as a neutral garment after the killing of Trayvon Martin. The conversation treats the hoodie as something that changed meaning after a teenager was wrongly read as dangerous because of what he wore. LeBron James, Dwayne Wade, and the Miami Heat come up briefly as part of that public response. The episode stays close to the object. A lowered head, a hand position, a piece of clothing: each choice carries pressure. The host gives Murray room to connect bronze casting, finalist presentations, portraiture, and the weight recognizable forms can hold. Craft becomes the way into a harder question: how do viewers learn to see a person before deciding what that person means?

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