You can grasp Carol Sauvion's story in a piece of clay.
Make it mountains of clay, and add acres of weavings and galaxies of jewelry and bins of walking sticks and shelves of wooden spoons and platters of glass and armloads of silken scarves, and that's Sauvion's too, the story of things made by hand to please the eye.
It's a story that began to take rough shape in the 1960s, when Sauvion lived in New York in the vortex of the country's folk and pop music scene. She was a potter.
For the last quarter century, at her Freehand Gallery on 3rd Street near the Beverly Center, she has been one of Southern California's most exuberant purveyors of crafts -- pottery made by other artisans along with a broad variety of other American handwork.
Next, with a little luck, Sauvion may see her name roll atop the credits as creator and co-producer of a three-part public broadcasting television series that champions the larger story: the "roots" story of "Craft in America."
That's what passion will get you.
Or, as Sauvion puts it, that's what happens along the "flow" of life when your work is at a human scale.
She is in middle age now, with a lion's mane of swept-back hair the color of gunmetal. If you look, you will notice that her face is squarish, her expression naturally curious and her clothing loosely draped. But even if you see her often, you don't usually inventory those things because your eye is led to follow the graceful arc of her hands.
That's what you remember, her reaching for a glazed bowl or a candlestick holder or a bracelet or a carved jade fishhook on a slender necklace cord. You listen as she holds a painted teacup in her hands, and remember your own slightly startling realization of the obvious: that the craftsman who made the cup has a face, a name, a home, a workshop and maybe two kids in college, and, of course, the burning idea that life is aesthetic.
You can quench your thirst from a paper cup or from clearance-sale china. Or you can sip from this clay molded by that hand. Carol Sauvion believes there is no small difference.
"What is craft? I've been trying to figure that out for 25 years," she says. "Craft is when someone combines skill, creativity and intellect and has made something unique."
She pauses. She quotes others: Craft is part of America's material culture. It's where utility meets art. It's history. It's technology -- the first technology.
She is not, as she will tell you, a poet. But she knows a few. She also knows writers and cinematographers and fundraisers and show business executives and legions of weavers and ceramists and carvers and basket makers, and their heritage. She knows their children, their parents and their techniques. She knows publishers and curators and plenty of people around town, people with a sensibility for things that are one of a kind, made one at a time and made more beautiful than they have to be.
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Craft vs. corporation
Craft seems to be on the upswing again in the United States. One unmistakable sign of vitality is the enlarging vocabulary used to describe crafts, with "decorative arts," "design arts," "functional arts," "folk arts" among the terms increasingly used by those who want to distinguish the lofty from the lesser.
But the crafts "movement," if that's the proper word, still exists in the quiet shadows of a culture enthralled with logos and mighty marketing and quicksilver trends. How to argue the case? In these circles, it's a question voiced as often as "Would you pass the tea?"
Nine years ago, driving across the country, Sauvion began to personalize the matter. She imagined a potter who was nagged by doubts about meeting a child's tuition.
"I know how hard this work is. If more people knew about crafts, it would be so much easier on this person," Sauvion recalls. "I live in a city of millions of people, and I have a mailing list of 8,000. How do we reach more? Simple. Put it on TV."
All she had to do, she told herself, was rally her extended "family" of artisans, customers and friends. If she could harness that "flow," surely there would be enough talent and energy to squeeze a few hours of introductory Crafts 101 onto television.
Simple, perhaps, but not easy.
"I tell people that it's been like having children or refinishing your floors," she laughs. "If you knew how much work it was going to be, you might not start. But when you're in the middle, you can't very well stop."
This year, finally, Sauvion is tantalizingly close to realizing one of the most compelling dreams in town: making good in show business. With a substantial grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the national Public Broadcasting Service, she has built a production organization and now reports raising $1 million toward a December goal of $2.2 million to begin filming three one-hour installments exploring the history, community and contemporary landscape of American crafts.
