About the Artist
John Hess
John Hess was born with an incurable Jones for the
open road. Like plankton—from the Greek for
‘wandering thing’—he was drawn along with the
surges and saw some of the world in half a lifetime or
so before drifting back home to California, inevitably,
to found Plankton Pottery.
As a volunteer teacher in West Africa in the early
1980s, our would-be thrower of pots had his
white feet stained red by the iron-rich earth which
made each cleared field a rusty sea and every jungle
path a meandering red-clay river. Leaping out above
was the impossibly vivid green of infinite flora and the
gem-bright sky, the entire canvas splashed with the
colors of native cloth, birds, fruit and flowers.
After leaving West Africa, Plankton spent a couple of
intense decades studying and practicing medicine. This
meant essentially stripping naked like a newborn and
hurling that soft, pink body through a portal to a
foreign cosmos. There lay a world of microbes,
hierarchies and intestines where ‘a penny saved is a
penny earned’ and ‘honor thy father and mother,’
became ‘see one, do one, teach one,’ and ‘all bleeding
stops eventually’ and one’s dream landscape was filled
with protoplasm, ectoplasm, Ducts of Nuck and Loops
of Henle. Something curious in the pottery of Plankton
reveals the influence of a mind long immersed in the
wonders of the body both inside and out.
Plankton's French cookware line developed primarily
from a passion for eating. Fond of the foods of many
lands, Plankton began designing cassoules and other
traditional French vessels. These are doubly satisfying
to make because of their beauty and the way they
improve the taste of the dishes prepared in them.
Back now at the beach, Plankton likes almost nothing
better than to dig a pit in the sand and fill it with his
undecorated pots festooned with seaweed and
highlighted with copper, iron and various bits of
flotsam and jetsam. He then builds a massive fire
which, over the course of the day, transforms the
pots, urns and vases into lovely, natural murals. These
long days at the beach bring everything back home for
the wanderer. He's returned to his element with sights
and stories from around the globe to enrich his craft.
John Hess was born with an incurable Jones for the
open road. Like plankton—from the Greek for
‘wandering thing’—he was drawn along with the
surges and saw some of the world in half a lifetime or
so before drifting back home to California, inevitably,
to found Plankton Pottery.
As a volunteer teacher in West Africa in the early
1980s, our would-be thrower of pots had his
white feet stained red by the iron-rich earth which
made each cleared field a rusty sea and every jungle
path a meandering red-clay river. Leaping out above
was the impossibly vivid green of infinite flora and the
gem-bright sky, the entire canvas splashed with the
colors of native cloth, birds, fruit and flowers.
After leaving West Africa, Plankton spent a couple of
intense decades studying and practicing medicine. This
meant essentially stripping naked like a newborn and
hurling that soft, pink body through a portal to a
foreign cosmos. There lay a world of microbes,
hierarchies and intestines where ‘a penny saved is a
penny earned’ and ‘honor thy father and mother,’
became ‘see one, do one, teach one,’ and ‘all bleeding
stops eventually’ and one’s dream landscape was filled
with protoplasm, ectoplasm, Ducts of Nuck and Loops
of Henle. Something curious in the pottery of Plankton
reveals the influence of a mind long immersed in the
wonders of the body both inside and out.
Plankton's French cookware line developed primarily
from a passion for eating. Fond of the foods of many
lands, Plankton began designing cassoules and other
traditional French vessels. These are doubly satisfying
to make because of their beauty and the way they
improve the taste of the dishes prepared in them.
Back now at the beach, Plankton likes almost nothing
better than to dig a pit in the sand and fill it with his
undecorated pots festooned with seaweed and
highlighted with copper, iron and various bits of
flotsam and jetsam. He then builds a massive fire
which, over the course of the day, transforms the
pots, urns and vases into lovely, natural murals. These
long days at the beach bring everything back home for
the wanderer. He's returned to his element with sights
and stories from around the globe to enrich his craft.
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