About
About.
Jerry Lockey makes ceramic art in San Antonio, Texas, under the studio name Locosan. The pieces are hand-built, usually in stoneware and porcelain, and finished with vintage glazes. The studio works under a principle borrowed from a Japanese word, Shouganai, which means “it cannot be helped.” In the studio, the phrase is a practice: go with what the material and the fire decide, and move forward.
Jerry Lockey, Locosan.
Jerry Lockey makes hand-built ceramic art in San Antonio, Texas, under the studio name Locosan. The pieces are stoneware and porcelain, built by hand rather than thrown, and finished with glazes pulled from a long-standing interest in vintage formulations. The studio’s working principle is borrowed from a Japanese word, Shouganai, which means “it cannot be helped.” In the studio, the phrase is not philosophy. It is a practice. Go with what the material and the fire decide, and move forward.
The work is shaped by a few decisions held over many firings. The first is to build by hand. A coil or a slab is slower than a wheel, and the slowness shows up in the surface; a thrown piece can mimic the look of a hand-built one, but the body of the work knows the difference. The second decision is the choice of vintage glazes. A vintage glaze is a glaze older than the studio. Some recipes Locosan works from are mid-twentieth century. A few are older. They are slower, less predictable, and more particular than commercial glazes, which is why they are used. The glaze brings its own history and its own behavior to the firing. The artist brings preparation. The kiln returns the rest.
The work is made in a small studio in the Monticello neighborhood of San Antonio, in a hundred-year-old house with a garden patio, two water fountains, and a lily pond. Some of the pieces are made for that garden first, and migrate out from there. Others go directly to Mockingbird Handprints in Olmos Park, where they meet a regional collector audience the city has been quietly building for a long time. Public listings connect the studio to the San Antonio Art League and Museum, Bihl Haus Arts, and the city’s studio-tour culture.
The studio is interested in what a piece looks like in a real room at six in the morning, not in what it photographs like under a softbox. The work is for use. Shouganai.
What gets made, and how.
Hand-built first. The work moves slowly enough for the maker’s hand to remain visible, from the first joined wall to the final glaze surface.
The work moves through molding, shaping, hand-building, and glazing, with a particular interest in vintage glazes. The vintage glaze choice matters because it commits the artist to materials with their own histories and their own behaviors in the kiln, which fits the working principle named in the studio’s motto.
Where the work comes from.
The lineage of a hand-built ceramic studio is rarely a single tradition. Folk pottery, mid-twentieth-century studio ceramics, the Japanese vessel tradition, the Texas studio scene, and a working artist’s own reading and travel all show up in the same firing schedule. Jerry’s particular lineage, in his own words, sits below.
A generous lineage. Locosan sits comfortably among folk objects, mid-century studio pottery, Texas rooms, and Japanese ideas about acceptance and repair.
San Antonio.
The studio sits in the Monticello neighborhood. Pieces are available locally through Mockingbird Handprints, an art and home-accents gallery in Olmos Park curated by Jane, which has long made room for local and regional artists. Locosan appears in public studio-tour materials from Bihl Haus Arts and in San Antonio artist listings. The city is a working part of the practice, not a backdrop.
A note on Shouganai.
The studio motto, Shouganai, is a Japanese word that means “it cannot be helped.” We use it the way we mean it: as a discipline. The kiln decides what it decides. The glaze does what it does. The artist’s role is to bring the best preparation and then to move forward through what the firing returns. The word is on the wall and not on the work.
“Shouganai. Go with what the material and the fire decide. Move forward.”
