Scott McClellan: Cut, Crash, Repeat

This is the second in a three-part series on Scott McClellan, head of ceramics at the Seattle Artist League. While the first explored the weighted forms and grounded presence of his pots, this post moves into the logic behind the motion—how McClellan builds structure from chaos, makes space for noise, and turns repetition into a living, changing language.

McClellan’s pots wear their process: fingerprints, torn rims, seams left in plain view. He’s not chasing finish. For him, a pot isn’t complete when it’s flawless—it’s complete when it feels present.

“You have to make it irregular—but it can’t look forced. The more I pulled back, the more it worked.”

Some forms nod to Mingei traditions—humble, quiet, built for use. Others recall Shigaraki: scarred, torn, elemental. The tension sits between them—elegance interrupted, balance thrown off.

“I was known for a kind of brutalist aesthetic. Simple, minimal. When you do that, any irregularity becomes the thing you notice. You can’t overdo it.”

Sound and Surface

Sonic Youth. Ramones. Motörhead. Bad Brains. Maybe his band shirts aren’t random. The sound is seen in the form—ruptured, layered, off-balance. Raw and immediate, like a live set.

“A music professor once brought students into my show to create a soundscape based on the pots.”

Maybe skating taught him how to read motion—weight shifting underfoot, friction always changing. Balance isn’t held; it adjusts. His pots follow that same logic. They don’t sit still. Forms shift mid-line, catch themselves, tilt back. Pottery, like skating, means reading surface in real time—working with obstruction, not against it.

In the third and final post, we turn to the classroom—not to find student similarities emerging, but to see how McClellan built a studio where no two pots, or people, are coming out the same. His teaching doesn’t imprint a style; it makes space. Variation isn’t the exception—it’s the goal.