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Mike Helke pottery UWRF

Professor named McKnight Artist Fellowships Program ceramic artist fellow


February 15, 2022 - Mike Helke doesn’t want the pottery he creates to sit in a cupboard.

“I want it to participate in the daily rhythms of home life,” said Helke, a University of Wisconsin-River Falls art assistant professor and ceramics program director. “I want my work not to be hidden. I want it to be out on a table and used. It is visual pottery. For me my work is not passive, it has a presence.

“Ideally, my pots help the user think, feel, question and wonder how things could be rather than how they should be,” he said. “I hope the user’s understanding of the pot evolves along with their personal perception of things while it might also help them imagine or re-imagine their own hopeful future.”

Helke, of Stillwater, Minn., received a 2021 McKnight Artist Fellowships Program ceramic artist fellow. The fellowship continues through July. The fellowship provides support for individual artists and provides $25,000 in unrestricted support for midcareer and discipline-specific artistic and professional development opportunities. He applied and provided a portfolio for the fellowship.

Helke used the funding to help supplement the construction of a 22-foot by 31-foot home pottery studio. Before, he had a smaller basement studio with the kilns outside.

“I am very grateful to the McKnight Foundation and living in an area that is so supportive of the arts,” he noted.

Helke’s mom, Connie, of Marine on the St. Croix, is a functional potter, so he grew up having access to making pottery. He originally planned to study the natural sciences at the University of Minnesota but eventually decided to pursue a bachelor’s degree in ceramics. He also has a Master of Fine Arts from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in Alfred, N.Y.

Trays, troughs, pitchers, pouring pots, bowls, salt dishes, mugs, tumblers and plates are handmade from stoneware, glazed with Shino, slips and stains and fired to about 2,260-degrees Fahrenheit. He also has architectural influences in his pottery.

“My work plays on a lot of different media, some are more sculpture and then others are more utilitarian,” said Helke, who is married to Sarah Millfelt and has two stepsons. “Some things I make are less practical. They might shift to a different realm. The emphasis of those works might be more visual and/or conceptual than practical.”

Art Professor Kaylee Spencer, assistant dean in the College of Arts and Sciences, said Helke is a star in the regional and national arts community. 

“To him, this award gives recognition of the incredible success he has already achieved in terms of pushing the boundaries of creativity within his medium, and it gives him opportunities to explore and discover what’s next,” Spencer said. “Because the McKnight Fellowship is so competitive, it signals that the UWRF Art Department continues to be at the forefront of creativity and innovation. Mike’s award will help us to continue to recruit the best students into our art programs.”

Pots have practical, ritualistic and aesthetic functions. They help share culture, Helke said.

“Art, in general, is always a reflection of culture,” Helke said. “It reflects the environment, materials, technology that a culture has access to as well as their ideologies, ethics, bias’, etc. If you know how, it is a material you can do anything with. Its malleability and strength make it a miracle material. You can make roof tiles and tools.”

When pots live with people, perceptions of the artwork change, Helke noted.

“My perception of objects evolve as I live with them,” Helke said. "I have pots that my kids made when they were little, the way I thought about them ten years ago is completely different than how I perceive them now.  The objects stay the same, but their meaning and function seems to evolve with me -- to me, there is something really profound about that."  

Helke has taught full-time at UWRF for four years and three years before that was an adjunct professor. Teaching impacts his work as classroom discussions with students help stimulate ideas.

“I like the small community at UWRF,” he said. “The students get to know one another. I’m the instructor but they are all resources to each other.”

Spencer said Helke’s work is always evolving. 

“He makes functional pieces that offer subtle nods to the modernist past while delivering refreshingly new takes on familiar objects,” Spencer said. “His work brings together striking forms with beautifully-designed surfaces that charge his work with a sense of play.” 

With the new studio, Helke has seen his work shift in scale to larger pieces because he does not have to walk pieces outside to the kilns.

“The students know and respond to that excitement and energy of change,” he noted. “They know what I am fired up about with something new and they respond to that energy.”

For more information and to learn more about Helke’s pottery, visit his website at  mikehelkepottery.com.

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