Job Heykamp
Roads of discovery. Article on Job Heykamp, published in the international ceramics magazine Neue Keramik/New Ceramics in September/October 2024.
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Roads of discovery
Job Heykamp might be one of the most popular, amicable personalities working in ceramics in north-west Europe, but he is also anything but an open book. Behind his warm, approachable demeanour lies a pensive, reflective thinker at heart. Before we agreed to meet at his workshop-studio in the rural, agricultural landscape of the “Achterhoek” to talk about his life working in ceramics, he handed me a collection of individual slips of paper that he hoped might serve as an entry point for our later discussion. Each slip contained short pithy texts typed on a mechanical typewriter, poetic in their brevity, aphoristic and abstract in their message. For Job Heykamp, they provide doorways into spaces for dialogue and discourse, for making associations and connections, and to help give meaning to his own thoughts, experiences and memories. They reflect the contemplative, enigmatic nature of his persona and his creative working methods. It is easy to see why, under different circumstances, he could easily have turned to painting or poetry or another form of creative expression to articulate his artistic talents. Fortunately for us, he chose ceramics.
Job Heykamp is a person who is fascinated by how the experiences and impressions of the past are imprinted on your memory, how they are assimilated and become part of your subconscious, only to resurface again at a later time in your own mannerisms and idiosyncrasies, and how they carry significance into the present, providing relevance and context. His childhood and the fact that he grew up on a farm are indicative of the things that have left a lasting impression on him, especially as he has grown older. He can recall the resolute movements his father made when physically digging out rows of sugar beet by hand: intuitive, reflexive motions that he now recognises in himself when he works bent over his potter’s wheel. Or the particular smell of potash in a sack of fertiliser, which he can now pick up in his own wood-ash glaze recipes and whose caustic consistency bites into the skin of his thumbs some six decades later. Or the graphic patterns made by his father’s tractors criss-crossing the fields, now unconsciously replicated in his own brushwork and sgraffito motifs as shallow scores on the surface of the clay. And he talks about the patchwork sheets of newspaper that were used to line the interior walls in his childhood farmhouse and which formed a running commentary of bygone days, caught in time, serving both as a graphical canvas and a resource for reminiscences that he draws on today and incorporates in his work. These are the rhythms of life that he absorbed as a child: sensory memories forming a foundation, transposed from the past into the present and given contemporary meaning.
After leaving school, he originally trained as a social worker and worked as a psychiatric coach for 12 years. It was an extremely demanding environment with little respite from the incessant stresses and strains inherent to this type of work. So it was understandable that he would seek practical hands-on remedies for himself, firstly by taking a course in organic agriculture, before ultimately turning to pottery. He had already taught himself to throw pots during his time at the social science academy as a form of diversion and to give him some peace of mind. And he had even toyed with the idea of becoming a potter much earlier during his teens. He was immediately attracted to the tactility and smell of clay and its intrinsic ability to serve as a palliative. After leaving the academy, he bought himself a kiln and a potter’s wheel, more unpremeditated than with any serious intention of making a living. However, although he had always felt most at home working by himself, it took until his mid thirties for him, with a young family and against the advice of going it alone, to make the difficult decision to break away from the securities and stabilities of employment and follow his own path. Despite being accepted into art school, he decided instead to enter the newly formed ceramics college in Gouda. And with his knowledge and experience, and some timely encouragement, he was able to complete the course in two years instead of the prescribed three, continuing to work for himself in his free time. Since then he has worked as an independent ceramicist, developing his own distinctive style.
Job Heykamp readily acknowledges having his own way of looking at things. Rather than assimilating his environment in a broad panoramic sweep, he sees things more fragmentarily, drawn to specific details, as if framed in a cinematic narrative. And this is also key to the way in which he works, where memories, impressions and reflective thoughts are transformed from the illusive and intangible into texture, form, colour and line and given meaning and substance, clarity and surety. Consciously or unconsciously, each piece of work tells a story.
It is also why he vehemently avoids the word “decoration”. Not in a technical sense, but rather as a characterisation of artistic intent. He feels that it is a misrepresentation of what he is doing or wants to be doing, trivialising the creative process. To produce the specific effects he is looking for, he can apply as many as seven or eight layers of glaze, adding depth and complexity. And while glazing, he might discover a novel approach that he decides to experiment with over time. However, once he feels there is a danger of it becoming repetitive and restrictive, he will discontinue applying it and move on to pursue alternative avenues. He prefers to remain “an archaeologist of his own work”, developing new ideas and approaches, rather than relying sedately on a process of chance. Above all he rejoices in the freedom of discovery and autonomy and has a natural aversion to being tied down. This freedom of discovery is also what he offers to his public. He accepts unreservedly that we all have our own fascinating ways of viewing and interpreting things, especially in the case of the younger generations. So rather than taking people by the hand and preaching about techniques and veiled cryptic messages, he offers his audience a path to find their own way in his work and to extract their own meanings and significance.
It goes without saying that Job Heykamp also has a close affinity with the natural environment around him, right down to the wood-ash glazes that he prepares for himself: the rich palette of colour combinations, pastel pools of blue and swathes of verdant green, the warm afterglow of a setting sun and highlighted flecks of light and new growth, the dark depths of shadows, footprints in the snow and the silhouettes of birds, hazy reflections in water and the soft tonal gradations of a low Dutch sky, more sensuous and whimsical, but also temperamental. It is an ever-changing topography knitted together by the graphic delineation of lines etched into the surface. It is easy to understand why he says “My brushes grow along the roadside”. Such influences provide structure and substance, a frame of reference to the often transitory nature of how we experience our world.
All his work possesses a lyrical expressiveness, with a focus on the primacy of contours and colour as formal elements and written in a fluid gestural style. Bold textures, sometimes understated and impressionistic, sometimes weathered and nebulous, but more often energetic and assertive: a terrain full of life and intricate detail, yet always coherent and legible, providing orientation and inviting exploration. Surfaces created consciously from the evocative strokes of interconnected syntax and subtle personal symbolism, revealing a rich contextual abstraction with deeper semantic undertones. There is always an enticing sense of ambiguity that lures you in and invites self-reflection. And yet it is a landscape in which you feel instinctively at home. It calls on our natural preference for an element of mystery, a feeling that stirs the human imagination, intrigues you as you travel deeper into a scene of contemplation.
Listening to Job Heykamp and getting a better understanding of what inspires him, it is clear that he is a person who is strongly independent and would rather be content with his own limitations than have his creative course decided for him. As such, it is difficult not to recall Robert Frost’s enigmatic poem, The Road Not Taken, in which the poet confirms that by “taking the road less travelled by, it has made all the difference”. The road that Job Heykamp decided to take is the road of discovery.
Neale Williams
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Job Heykamp was born in Jutphaas, the Netherlands, in 1954 and grew up there on the family farm. He completed his formal training in Gouda in the late ’80s and has worked ever since as an independent ceramicist. He applies multiple layers of self-prepared wood-ash glaze and employs various techniques such as sgraffito. His work has been exhibited internationally, especially throughout the Netherlands, in Germany and France. He lives and works in the village of Geesteren in the heart of the “Achterhoek”.