Boundless with Wayne Chapman

This podcast interview is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Listen to the conversation between Wayne Chapman and Curator Guusje Sanders, and follow along with this transcript. Run time is approximately 30 minutes

Guusje Sanders: Welcome to Art of the People, a podcast from Mingei International Museum offering a glimpse behind the scenes of the museum world with the artists and staff who make the magic happen. I’m Guusje Sanders, one of the curators here at Mingei. In the summer of 2025, while developing the exhibition Boundless: Reflections of Southern California Landscapes in Midcentury Studio Ceramics, I had the honor and privilege of speaking with one of the artists featured in the show, the late ceramicist Wayne Chapman.

Wayne, then 96 years old, lived in Solana Beach—just 25 miles up the coast from Mingei, with his wife and fellow artist, Barbara Chapman, who passed away in 2022. Wayne passed in September 2025. Together, they built a shared creative life rooted in art, community, and curiosity. For this interview, Wayne welcomed us warmly into the mid-century modern home, which was designed by local San Diego architect Kendrick Bangs Kellogg, and built by Wayne himself. Inside the living spaces are filled with ceramics, textiles, and woodworking from around the world, all the textures of a life shaped by art.

During our conversation, Wayne shared about his journey, his partnership with Barbara, his passion for working with clay, and how this shaped his long career in ceramics. It is an honor to share this conversation with you. Thank you for listening.

The following is a transcript of Mingei's conversation with Wayne Chapman.

GS: Can you tell us how you started in ceramics and what drew you to the process?

WC: Okay, well, ceramics—Now, I'd always been interested in little art things, and when I was a kid, you might not call it art, but I made a lot of boats, small sailing vessels.

WC: 
At the end of my Marine Corps career, I was in the Marine Corps about 10 years, and that includes World War II, I was 15 years old. That's a whole nother story when I went in the Marine Corps during the war. I was taking classes at City College, and I took a class in art. It was just, I forget what they called it, but it was more than one subject, and one of them was pots. Well, as soon as I got my hands in the clay, I just knew this is what I wanted to do. I had a terrific instructor whose name was Walter Chapman, he's a well known potter. You may have heard of him.

GS: He's in the show with you!

WC: And his wife was Jane Chapman. She was Barbara's best teacher and brought her a long way.
 So we had them, not only as teachers, but as friends. We weren't real close, but we had dinner together once in a while and so forth. Anyway, he really helped me a lot, and I'll be forever grateful.

I mean, to take this piece of earth and form it into something that is going to last really forever—a piece of high fired ceramics. You can put it in the Mohave Desert or any other desert, you come back a thousand years later—well, I don't think they've ever tried it, maybe—but come back a thousand years later, it's going to be exactly the way it was when it went out there. It doesn't fade and so forth.

WC: At one time they tried to force her out at State, and I was called upon to go to the dean (I forget his name at this time) and talked to him about Martha, and I went and gave him a good report as far as I'm concerned. I don't know about these other guys that are trying to gang up and force her out. But anyway, she was able to keep it, so I felt good that I helped her keep it.

But I was no one, except that I had very good luck in selling my pots in the pottery sale at State.
 For instance, a pottery sale would normally bring, if someone made 100 bucks, they’d be, “Wow! This is great. Give me more of this!”

GS: Tickled to pieces.

WC: Well, one of the sales, I really made a lot of things for it, and I was making things in my garage at home, too, in my little studio I built. I made over $1,000 in one day. That took notice of some people, and anyway, some of them were too happy because I made so many, but I didn't charge big prices either. They were in line with the other students, you know. They just went.

GS: Last time we chatted, you mentioned that Martha kind of influenced you to be inspired by mingei as well.

WC: She was very taken with Japanese art and mainly Japanese pottery. So that bled off on me. I still am influenced by it. 
I love Japanese pottery, and I don't have too much of it. The really good stuff is too expensive. I can't afford it. But she was an inspiration for me.

I had pots, not a lot, over the state, but I had one little shop up in San Francisco handle a couple of my pots, so I could say that. But I'll have to say it's sort of pushing a little bit, because they only had a couple—In fact, it's funny, the way I got that, my supervisor, while I was going, taking these courses and ceramics and so forth, I was on the probation department then. I switched over from the police department to the juvenile probation department, and so I had a caseload of juveniles that I supervised. And [my supervisor]
 he said, "Hey, Wayne, I saw I was up in San Francisco and visiting some friends, and I saw a pot up on the shelf, and I picked it up and it was yours.”

GS: That's amazing!

WC: And that's what got me. I thought, well, I'll fly. 
I said, “Well, where did you get it? You know, I suppose.” And he told me, and I took some. They didn't want many, but I put something there, and I did consign that, but they sold them, so I can't complain.

Guusje: Since 1957, Wayne Chapman has lived in Solana Beach, California. He commissioned renowned architect Ken Kellogg to design his home. With blueprints in hand, Chapman managed the project himself.

The result: a vibrant space divided by short stairs that lead to the many layers and levels of an open floor plan. Wayne’s home is full of warm-toned woods, high ceilings, and folk art from around the world.

WC: This is part of the old original house I bought here in 1957. I was in the Marine Corps then, and I often was stationed at Pendleton or down at Recruit Depot in San Diego, and this was the middle. So we really scoured Solana Beach, we bought the cheapest house we could possibly find, and we got this for $10,900.

GS: Oh, wow, what a different time.

WC: Yeah, it was a little different then. I mean, I am the first one to acknowledge I'm just extremely lucky to have bought this place, because I also was able to run my kiln for all those years and never have anyone complain or anything. Fired it quite a bit, and it's not dangerous or anything, but it does make a little noise for a couple of hours. I've never had any complaints. They probably complain to themselves.

So I was very adept at using my hands, and that's what made Ken Kellogg recommend that I go ahead with this, because, believe me, I've loved every minute of it, but it had been challenging, because I'd never read plans before, and he became so helpful.

Barbara and I were married in '69, and we knew already what we wanted—sort of what we wanted—and then we got him to do the drawing and move off, and by around November or something, we started building.

He had an office down in Mission Beach. And, in fact, seeing that office made us decide that we wanted him for our architect. I would look at a set of plans at first before I could read them, and I'd say, you know, “Page 16, detail D4—what do you mean? We can't, we're trying to put those pieces together.
 They don't want to go,” you know, or whatever. He would explain on the phone, and he wouldn't have to come up then. And we were able to understand what he was talking about, fortunately. I soon learned to read plans, by the way. And so anyway, that's the way we got that going.

WC: But this is one of his lesser houses, I'll admit it, but it's everything to me, though.

GS: 
I was gonna say, all the more special because you built it.

GS: Well, I think the layout of the house is so interesting, where there's still rooms, but instead of them being divided by walls, they're divided by stairs.

WC: My wife, Barbara, takes more credit than I do, even though I and my friend built the house. She was wonderful.
 In fact, she was an honorary member of the Teamsters, ‘cause she had a little—it wasn't little—it was a Chevrolet, full-size Chevrolet. At that time, there was a lumber yard at the bottom of the hill here, Solana Lumber. This house is all redwood, except for the beams. You cannot use—these beams cannot be redwood. A lot of people don't know that.

GS: For support reasons?

WC: They don't have the tensile strength to act as a beam. You can put it up for other purposes and cover things with it and so forth. You used to be able to buy benderboard.
It was about that wide and about that thick, and it was redwood. It was all red, but maybe a little strip of white in it once in a while. You know how it looks. And so she would go down there and pick that out and kick out the white ones. And I'll show you a picture of the house when it was changed and when we had to paint it after a fire we had.


So anyway, we used regular good plywood over the studs everywhere, and then we had to put something on that. We didn't want that showing. So we took the bender board and put it up and just used it natural originally. And then after the fire, we had to change, because quite a few years had passed, and you couldn't buy benderboard anymore. It was red. It was all a little bit of red and all white. So we didn't want that. So that's why we had to settle on something so we used red.

Oh, let's see, I don't know. I can go on forever.

WC: When we built the house, we wanted a place where we could live and work and have a wonderful marriage and not even leave—hardly leave the property—and have our sales, most of them, here.

We had two pot sales a year for 40-some years, and the first one we had was in June of '64. We had it right out here on the lawn.

My studio is somewhat of a mess now, but if you've had your shots and everything, we can go down there. I would go and show you what that I've got.

WC: Barbara and ceramics became my main interest. I just worked all the spare time. I cut down all the work I was doing on weapons, ‘cause I had a little business going as a gunsmith, but I cut that all out, closed that down, and sold all of my equipment and went over to potting.

Because Barbara was already into art a little bit. She was a single lady. She had been divorced, had two young boys, four and six, and she needed to make a little money. So she came upon the idea of making nice pillows.

Someone had took it up to Hollywood, and he saw it, and he came down and told her, "I'll buy all you can make." That's the way she really got making stuff. However, she had the artistic ability. Her house inside was unbelievable. It was so beautiful.

Anyway, I was married at that time, and we did not have anything going, you might say. The only thing is, once a month, I'd have to call her and the rest of the people at different times, and tell them when the next meeting of the Allied Craftsman would be. That was the premier—and still is, I believe—still the premier art organization that displays in San Diego. I was recommended for it. I got in unanimously, and about, oh, three weeks later, it just happened that someone had recommended her and she got in.

So we had that little connection, but that was the only thing, except that when I went to her house, I know this house was something special, really special. And it was outside, it was just ordinary. Inside, she had an eye for color, unbelievable. She could look at that painting or anything else and almost go away and come back and tell you what every color was in it. She just had this sense.

GS: She inspired you.

WC: Well, she really did.

WC: Well, I'll give you an example. One time I made a series of bowls, little Japanese tea bowls, six of them. The glaze, to me, for some reason, just didn't make it. I very seldom do this, but I just threw them out. They were in a box, and I threw them in the trash, and fortunately, they didn't break. Barbara came along and found them, and she screamed, I think. “Wayne, what are you doing with these?!
 We should have these out. I want these things.” And she kept them, and they were a treasure for years. I forget, she finally gave them to someone, but we never did try to sell them or anything. And then, she instructed me a little bit on her concept of beauty, I could see it myself, and I thought, "Yeah, well, maybe these did have some promise."

GS: You have a gas kiln?

WC: It's a gas kiln. 
I have two, but I use the bigger one, mainly. I'm thinking about putting the other one back into action, because gas is, at that time, gas, you didn't even consider the cost of gas when you fired a kiln. But today, it's over the hill. So I'm thinking about using that little one a little more, because it can fire short loads in it.

GS: So what kind of materials did you mostly use, like the clay and the glazes? Did you make your own glaze formula? 


WC: The first several years, my standard, high-fire clay was—if I can just think of the name of it right now.
Just stoneware.
 And this stoneware that I used, I got it from a place up in San Clemente, and I buy it by the ton from them. I still have a little bit of it, and I just save it for sentimental reasons, make a pot out of it once in a while. It was really good.

I did finally find out how to make it, and I made some, but it was a lot of work, and I thought, you know, all this time I'm spending making this, I can buy the same thing from them and let them make it.
And so that's what I did from there on.

GS: So is that the clay with the high iron content? Because we have a couple of your pots that have the iron speckling in it.

WC: Most stoneware used to have that. That was a characteristic of stoneware. Then later, white porcelain started taking over a little bit, and then porcelain. I did get into both white stoneware, and some of it had speckles and some of it didn't. You had to know what you were buying. I do a little bit in a porcelain, and I like porcelain okay, but it's more difficult to throw, and I don't necessarily think that it has to be porcelain before it can be really valid, you know? So I usually use one from Freeform Ceramics down in Chula Vista.

GS: What about the glazes?

WC: Most of the glazes, I started out constantly looking for glazes, and one of my main sources was Ceramics Monthly magazine. They'd always have some in there, and the ones that looked promising, I would try out. Some of them turned out—they were keepers, and most of them, they weren't right for me.

GS: Did you end up mixing your own glazes?

WC: Oh, I always did that. But even the ones that were premixed from this company up there, they were premixed, and so all I had to do, really, is to mix it and sieve it in a 100 mesh sieve, and you were done. So that was a lot quicker.

GS: Yeah, did you later try and do things with soda?

WC: Well, we had one guy down by the old aircraft company in San Diego that was in World War II, right across there, right in that area, they had an industrial area, and this fellow had a salt kiln—a couple of them. He could legally fire them down there, because it was in the type of place, you know. We'd go down there once in a while, and I'd get a pot ready and take it down there and fire it, but it was expensive to do it that way, and so I didn't do it too much. 
But I love salt firing, and I also love soda firing, which is a little different, and it puts out a stuff that looks deadly, but it's not, but it's still white smoke. So you couldn't do it in a settled area, even though it's harmless, or at least nearly harmless. You probably wouldn't want to live with it in a room, but out in the open, it's totally harmless.

GS: So did you experiment with crackling glazes or lava or crystal glazes?

WC: A little bit. I found a couple crackling glazes I liked, but I didn't take it too far because everyone was doing that at that time. So I just stayed with some of the other things that I was happy with.
 But I have experimented with a lot of things like that. Some I kept and still do today and others I didn't pursue.

GS: So did you become a little bit of a scientist?

WC: A little bit, but I didn't spend as much time as I probably should have. I'll admit that most of my glazes and the formulas I had, I got out of the magazine or from a fellow potter. We exchanged recipes a lot, you know, formulas for glazes.

GS: I always liked that when there's that collaboration between glazes, like Deese and McIntosh shared a studio together for 40 years, and they often used the same glazes too.

GS: So we have quite a few of your pots that are the weed pots. Is it just because that's what we ended up with in our collection? Or were you really drawn to that?

WC: Well, I really liked to make those, and I was intrigued with them—to get that hole as small as I could and still have enough room to put a single flower in or something. I don't know how many hundreds of those things. I made various sizes.

And they sold very well, and I was happy with that, of course.

But I like to make just about everything.
 Some things are a little more of a drag to make like plates, but I make them and I enjoy it, but I probably like some of the things to make better.

GS:
 So the idea for the exhibition is really looking at how the landscape is kind of visible in some different textured ways in the pots. Were you inspired by the Southern California landscape? Is that something you drew on?

WC: Well, being truthful, I really can't say I was. However, I like to see some of my pots hanging in that landscape. I love landscapes. I love gardening. In fact, right now my garden is way down, but I have always spent an inordinate amount of time out in my garden, and I also use it as a break from making pots when I would be potting maybe all day long, you know. I'd usually listen to music and pot, and just be a happy, happy camper.

GS: So maybe subconsciously it still found its way in? There is this one vessel that we have from you, a little weed pot. It's brown, and it has this blue glaze that is dripping like water over a rock.

WC: Well, some of those things, see, you don't control. You have, what do they call it, an instinct about it from experience, and you're hoping for something, but you often don't get it. You open up the kiln, it's always going to be some surprises in there—positive and negative. And I've found, some of my best pots, were ones that didn't show much promise and I fired again. I didn't add any glaze at all, just fired it again. In that second firing, when it gets the glaze up to the temperature—2,350 degrees Fahrenheit—when it gets up there, it does funny things sometimes. And it's probably going to drop down a little bit, to melt a little bit more and slide down the pot, and that's often is very handsome.

Oh, let’s see. Oh, a couple little things that happened a time or two. One time I made some cylinders
I made a lot of those. People really liked them, but they weren't just a plain cylinder. They were something about them, you know, I either pushed them around or something like the Japanese would. And so I made this pot, went out there the next morning, a bug had got down in my pot and dug a hole to get out through the side. And so it was just a big laugh. Of course, I was able to repair it and fire it, and no one knew the difference.

GS: Oh, you didn't fire with the hole in it? A bug's life!

WC: Well, I packed it in good. And in fact, now, I wish I would have left a little bit of it, and I would have today

WC: But I've always worked to be looser with my pots, because I didn't want to get into things that looked like they came from the factory. I'm sure some people have probably seen elements of that in my pottery, but I try to avoid it. The more I pot, the more I do it. I always try to make a few dings here and there, hopefully make it more interesting. It also gives a place for the glaze to gather and then be a different color right underneath it, maybe.

GS: It's so fascinating. 


WC: Yeah, it really is.

GS: Well, thank you so much, Wayne. It was really lovely to hear your journey, your approach, and I'm so grateful that I've had the opportunity to talk to you.

WC: Well, thank you for the interest. I mean, I've never had interests like this before. I don't know exactly what to say.

GS: You did amazing.

WC: So I really appreciate it, and I hope I haven't bored you too much.