Mina Levin
Pick something you love, read about it, talk to people as much as you can.
– Mina Levin
One of my very favorite things to do as a child was to play in my grandmother’s jewelry box… Originally from Uruguay, Mari (as we called her) had traveled the world, picking up little treasures that caught her eye along the way. I would happily get lost in her collection for hours—there was so much to explore.
I feel quite the same way whenever I have the privilege of visiting Drs. Mina Levin and Ron Schwarz’s home and collection. There are so many treasures within their walls… blown apples, glass dresses, ceramic heads, and delicate boxes. On the walls hang beautiful photos Ron has made from their travels near and far. Each of their pieces contains its own story, which Mina always amazes me with her ability to recall. Surely, this is a talented pair.
Mina and I were first introduced through the North Carolina Museum of Art, where she serves as a docent and a wonderful Matron. It was she who first introduced me to the magical world of ceramics and glass… she with a wealth of knowledge and a love for art. Since then, Mina has been incredibly generous with her time, talents, and knowledge. She has opened her home, taken me to see other collections, and invited me to join Ron and her at the Penland Auction.
Her wonderful manner of explaining things in an interestingly straightforward and approachable way has made her become not just the person the person I call with all questions glass and ceramics but also when struggling to navigate this whole thing called “adulting.”
I adore Mina… and I know y’all will too.
Elizabeth Mathis Cheatham: It was through you that I was introduced to glass and ceramics, and it’s been so fascinating to learn about. What was it that first drew you to these media and made you fall in love with them?
Mina Levin: It’s two different stories, because glass was something that we got pulled into really by one gallery owner who spent a lot of time with us over two days and showed us the varieties of glass and traditional techniques versus modern techniques, and how beautifully things looked when they were well lit. So we came home from that trip as we were dropping our son off at college with two pieces of glass, both of which we still have. Glass is seductive because it’s so gorgeous and because the artists are so compelling when you get to know them. Glass artists rarely work as a single person. They’re dependent on a group of assistants and other glass artists. They tend to be extremely personable, into education and into giving you an idea of the breadth and depth of their work and of their process.
Ceramics have always been a love of ours because we live in North Carolina where pottery is such a tradition. As we read more about pottery-making techniques in North Carolina and modern potters, we got to know how many of them had a Japanese influence and had gone to Japan to study. Of course, our love of glass and ceramics got fostered tremendously by going to Penland pretty often. Once we were in Biot, France one year and there was an exhibition of glass and a large number of pieces were from Penland.
EMC: That’s incredible.
ML: We were like, what? Penland?
EMC: We know that place!
“It's the workmanship, it’s the glaze, it’s that every time you put it in a different location in the house it speaks to you differently.”
Mina Levin
ML: I—some of this is just traveling and going to the art shows so that the first major piece of Japanese pottery we bought at SOFA (Sculpture, Objects, Functional Art, and Design), when it was in New York, which it no longer is. It’s that pot over there, the round brown pot with the irregular top and the very deep glaze. We bought that a number of years ago, and it's the workmanship, it’s the glaze, it’s that every time you put it in a different location in the house it speaks to you differently.
EMC: You mentioned Japan. I just got to spend the last thirty minutes going through your incredible pictures. Can you tell us a little bit about the trip—what took you there and some of the things that really impressed you?
ML: This is our third trip to Japan. The first time we went was about nine or ten years ago and we saw mostly gardens, but by that time we already had an interest in ceramics and whenever we could, we would go to ceramic galleries. So we visited some in Kyoto and some in Kanazawa and saw older styles of pottery and newer styles and were starting to learn some about it. Then five years ago, we went with a Penland group, and we saw craftsmen working in, I don’t know, eight or ten different media. Since that trip, we’ve gotten increasingly interested in Japanese pottery and it gets to be—I don't know how to explain this, Eli. When you fall in love with something so much that every time we travel around the United States and Europe, if there’s a Japanese pottery exhibition, we make sure to go and find it. So we’ve seen exhibitions and private collections on display in Indianapolis, Houston, San Francisco, Minnesota and at the Los Angeles Museum of Art, where we go often. We noticed over and over again that a lot of pieces have been donated by the Joan Mirviss Gallery and her patrons and we started going to her gallery and collecting things from her. Joan takes a small group of collectors to Japan every other year to support the artists, largely. And supporting the artists and their galleries has always been of great importance to us.
So we were invited by Joan to join this trip two years ago, but it was very last minute, and we couldn’t go. We got invited to go this last fall, and it turned into probably one of the best trips we’ve ever done. We met 21 artists in 9 1/2 days. The group is invited each time into their home and/ or their studio, where we were served tea in handmade bowls and Japanese sweets on handmade plates. The artists would have a relative or an assistant or both there. The works had often been made specifically for this group of collectors and the great majority of them were sold every visit.
We also had a chance to talk to other collectors about what they’re doing with their collections and how they see them and discuss some I think very interesting topics—I don’t want to call them moral/ethical but cultural decisions—do you keep the collection for yourself? When people walk in this house they go, ‘What are you going to do with all this stuff when you leave the earth?’ I’m just not interested in that as a question. To me, we live with our collection and our collection is important to us. We’re glad to have people come in. I’m thrilled to have people come visit; I’m thrilled to loan, and we’re going to be doing that shortly for the first time for an exhibition, which is just so exciting. But the idea of the collection is not to make anybody else happy except ourselves. We’ve tried in both glass and ceramics to collect younger rising artists and to collect different styles, although mostly not highly decorative, with the idea that I can almost use it as a teaching collection. That’s been exciting because people interested in art at various times have come in, and I’ve been able to show them the different varieties of glass or the different types of ceramics.
EMC: Absolutely. You have a couple times in your wording used “pottery” instead of “ceramics,” and this will show that I still have so much to learn… How do you separate—are they two different things or is pottery part of ceramics, or how do you classify those?
ML: I think the galleries and the museums are going to call them “ceramics.” “Pottery” would also include—I think it’s just individual choice how you use it. “Pottery” is just going to include all your functional everyday ware, like your tableware and your tea cups, things like that.
EMC: Interesting.
ML: But you don’t usually—you go into a pottery store but you go into a ceramics gallery, in general… I think. That’s just my opinion.
EMC: I was wondering if you had any advice for people who are just “kind of starting to collect.” Any things you wish you had known when y’all were first beginning.
ML: That’s an excellent question. I think the most important thing is to pick something you love, read about it, talk to people as much as you can, go to visit artists and makers whenever you can. Then if you’re serious about having a quote/unquote “collection,” it might be a good idea to have a focus which would make it interesting to you, or perhaps more valuable in the long run. “Valuable” in the sense of a museum or somewhere wanting to eventually own it. But I think it’s a huge mistake to collect with the idea that you’re collecting this just for posterity or for eventually gifting. The major collectors can do that; they have the money and the resources and they can assemble hundreds of pieces of whatever. But gifting these days is a lot more complicated than it used to be. If I were starting over, I would still try to collect younger artists, although, we still have a number of pieces of glass and ceramics that are by well-known, established artists that were just so beautiful and so important and so different from other things that we just couldn’t pass them by. But if I were starting over, I would focus on boxes.
EMC: You’ve said that. I remember that. They are exquisite.
ML: There’s something about being able to open a box and see the inside—as a matter of fact, one of our most loved pieces of glass is by a Venetian glass artist who practiced—She’s Italian, was Italian, and she practiced Buddhism, and her glass was like boxes for her. We were very, very lucky enough to meet her in Venice five years ago or so on a private tour. She talked about the soul and one’s being and the box, and there’s something special about boxes to me. I don’t know that my husband would agree with that, but it’s really hard for me to pass up a good box.
EMC: That is a perfect segue way to another question that I was going to ask. You and Ron have both been so involved in your collection. How do y’all navigate different tastes? Do you both have to love something? Do you have veto power? How does it work?
ML: Now that we have more stuff than we should, we both have to love something. That’s the family rule. Each of us has veto power, but in general, although our taste in books and movies and other things diverge, we’ve spent so much time traveling together and being educated together that our tastes are very harmonious. One of our favorite pieces of glass, for example, that blue vase right there—we were lucky enough to be in New York in a gallery as this artist’s show was about to open in a few days. He’s wandering one way, I’m wandering another way, and we both end up with this piece and go, “Aha!”
EMC: This is it!
ML: This is it! There was no discussion. Now, we’re not as knowledgable about Japanese ceramics as a lot of the other collectors we traveled with, but we know a fair amount. So it’s pretty easy for us to agree. On the trip, recently, there was one time with a husband-and-wife artist couple where Ron really wanted a piece by the wife, and I wanted a second piece by the husband. So we just went ahead and bought both, but most of the time it has to be “Yes, yes!” It’s gotta be an enthusiastic yes. We also have a small “want” list, “desired” list. We don’t have that in glass anymore, but we do in ceramics, although it’s very short. We keep our eyes open for those.
EMC: Do you follow auction houses as well…?
ML: Yes.
EMC: And galleries?
ML: Yes. It’s a lot of time if I do it properly!
EMC: I know. It’s amazing. Mina, you are so incredibly organized too. You really have been able to keep track of it all so well, and to manage all the moving parts!
ML: I’ve really tried. I had all these pieces of paper stuck in files, and now it’s all digitized but I’m planning to adopt a whole new platform—now that I’ve seen some other systems.
EMC: When I was just in the Abu Dhabi, the Louvre Abu Dhabi had a really interesting exhibit which included some ceramics from Japan. One thing that they shared about was this idea of when a piece was broken. I’m hoping that you’ll know the term because I couldn’t remember it.
ML: I knew you were going to ask me that.
EMC: Have I asked you this before?
ML: No, no, no but that is the word that I have tried to memorize like half a dozen times, and I can’t remember it. Then they repair it with gold. And it is considered to be even more precious than the original, because it was precious enough to save and repair. I will find you that Japanese term.
“You have to have a tolerance for loss because stuff happens.”
– Mina Levin
EMC: I just love that, just for life— “precious enough to save and repair”
ML: Yes. And there was a whole exhibition that we just saw at the Walters, in the room near that ceramic by Fujikasa we were talking about, where they were talking about doing repairs. I just can’t pull that phrase out. [We later looked up the term and it is Kintsugi or Kintsukuroi.]
EMC: Is it a technique that they still do, or was that a technique…?
ML: Absolutely. Absolutely. I think some of the contemporary artists are doing it almost as a newer technique, purposefully breaking and restoring with the gold fill.
EMC: That is something about glass and ceramics, I mean, they are just so breakable. And you ship them from all over—I would think that that is a little nerve-wracking at times.
ML: It is. You have to have a tolerance for loss because stuff happens. One piece we had shipped from overseas—it was supposed to be in one piece; it came in two pieces. But there’s someone good locally who repaired it. I’m the only one who knows it’s been repaired. That’s hard, and glass in particular is hard.
EMC: We were just looking at pictures and you were showing me some beautiful ceramics and you said that the artist has a fifty percent…
ML: Coming out of the kiln loss rate. Some artists, like one who makes tea bowls with this very special glaze that has lots of colors—his loss rate is actually eighty percent. So twenty percent of his product comes out.
EMC: Can you imagine?
ML: No. I think the Japanese culture—you know, we as Americans are very impatient.
EMC: Yes, we are.
ML: I think that the Japanese who live in much smaller spaces view life very differently. All their objects are precious to them, but they also understand that being a high-level artist involves years and years of apprenticeship, years of experimentation, and may involve a high loss rate. But the final product is so spectacular that they can keep their goals in sight and not be frustrated. The respect for each other and respect for their art—it was very nurturing. It really was.
EMC: I love that.
Can you see definite ways when you look at your pieces in which your taste has evolved over the years?
ML: We started out glass collecting and some good friends who are very experienced glass collectors walked in one day and said, “Oh, you have a minimalist collection” and my husband and I went, “Oh, I guess we do! Thank you for identifying that for us,” because a lot of our earlier pieces were very neutral in color and the design was very important, but they’re very quiet pieces. We’ve moved a bit more into figurative pieces and brighter colors. Each piece, I think—we have certain styles and colors that we’re much more attracted to, but we don’t—we buy something because it’s the intrinsic beauty and the craft that’s the most important to us. How it reflects the light, how it was made, the process, the degree of work that went into it. Most of our things are sculptural, but we do have some with more of a figurative component now than we used to, and some pieces that are quite decorative. I was thinking about this on the way back from Japan; our Japanese pieces are almost—I don’t know that I’ve convinced my husband of this yet—but you could put them into two groups. One is all about the clay and handling the clay and the firing, whether that be in a gas kiln or a wood-fired oven. The other ones are more decorative; they’re incised, they’re glazed, they’re reworked, they’re re-fired, they’re hand painted, they’re re-fired again. We almost have an upstairs collection and a downstairs collection, because a lot of our more clay-intrinsic pieces are actually downstairs now, and the more decorative stuff is up here. That’s the two different sides. I think it’d be much more boring if we only had one or the other.
EMC: Absolutely. We have in the past talked about the fact that—I can’t remember if it’s with ceramics as well as glass—but that a lot of the technique is passed down generationally.
ML: Yes. That is true somewhat in glass too, the famous glassmakers. But in Japan much more in ceramics. Much more so. Ben Owen is the grandson of a master potter and his father was a potter. In North Carolina, they’re called “potters.” In Japan, the heritage is that it’s often multi-generational families, or sometimes you apprentice for years and then you teach other people. So you can trace the lineage that way. What’s different—what we learned on this trip to Japan is what’s different now is that more and more potters—more and more ceramicists are coming out of art school and are seeing different methods and different ways of making pots and they are the first of their generation to do that work. They’re not working necessarily in the style of one of the six great ancient kilns or one of the many other kilns or in the XYZ style that belonged to a particular city. They’re inventing their own, which may be influenced by another potter, but not necessarily the same school, not necessarily someone they trained with.
EMC: Have you found that some of the families that are passing down—is it being passed down to the daughters ever?
ML: Yes, it is. We have just purchased a piece of porcelain by a Living National Treasure who is fairly recently deceased. He was a great master who learned from his father and grandfather but made new glazes in a more contemporary style. Now his daughter is carrying on the tradition. That’s true a little bit in the glass world, too.
EMC: I always love to have these interviews and ask people—just because I love learning about new artists. Can you list some of your favorite—especially your favorite women that you collect or that you’re interested in? So that I can get to know their work and maybe write about them?
ML: Right. Well the Japanese—I’d have to get my notebook to look up the Japanese names. Let me do that real quick.
So in glass, of course, there’s Karen Lamonte.
EMC: Who makes these beautiful…
ML: Dresses. And now she’s doing them in other media, including metals and ceramics. She’s also doing some 3D printing. She spent time in Japan and she did a whole kimono series, which have small versions and huge versions—stunning. She’s done some of the Japanese repair on purpose in her pieces, in the ceramics… This lady [Mina points to a gorgeous piece in her collection], very sadly, just passed away: Laura de Santillana. She’s the box lady that I was telling you about. Her grandfather was a master glassmaker for Venini, a big Italian company… Locally, of course, we’re in love with Cristina Córdova. And this ceramist, she’s not local, but her work is sold locally: Sang Roberson, who did that box.
EMC: I see this box pattern… I like it!
ML: It came from an Asheville gallery, and she uses a very light paper clay. It has paper mixed in it and when she fires it, the paper burns off, and then she has a silver foil on the outside and sgraffiti on it.
EMC: What would the paper do?
ML: It gives more bulk to the clay but then, when it burns off, there is much less weight there.
EMC: Oh interesting. So it’s on the inside, to bulk it out? No.
ML: I think it’s actually made into the clay itself. If you just hold that.
EMC: It’s much lighter.
ML: It’s much lighter than you expect, for its bulk. I don’t know if she’s the only one doing that or not. When it comes to ceramics, we fell in love with—oh wait, did I finish with glass? The other famous female glass artist is sitting right in front of you, Shelley. Shelley Muzylowski Allen. She lives about an hour north of Seattle and is an extremely skilled glass artist, married to another skilled glass artist.
In ceramics, when we went to Finland, we fell in love with the work of Kristina Riska who does a lot of biomorphic forms and is very skilled, very dedicated. That’s all coil made and all the decorative outside is hand applied slip.
EMC: In the back when we were sitting, we have a picture of a large glass piece? The heavy—
ML: Marlene Rose. The Bell on the Torii Gate. Marlene Rose.
EMC: Can you tell us the story about that piece?
ML: Oh, the story about it. So we went with friends to Park City a couple summers ago, and it turns out that the Park City Art Fair in the summer is just phenomenal. It was in August and it’s there every year. Marlene lives in Florida, and she and her husband drove with some of her pieces cross-country, going from art fair to art fair. She does cast glass. Sand cast glass.
EMC: For people who don’t know what that would be, what does that mean?
ML: She makes a mold in sand mixed with other material, and she then pours molten glass into the mold and it sets. It cools. The top surface—I don’t know if she polishes it or not, I suspect she might. The top surface is very smooth, and the bottom surface after it cools and hardens, comes out coated a little bit with sand. She does a lot of Buddha heads and Asian style bells. We fell in love with the bell, and she suggested a stand. Her husband is an architect. My husband talked about how he wanted it to be in the corner, and so together they shaped the base of the metal stand so it would fit best. It’s six-sided and it fits into the corner perfectly. My brilliant husband suggested that they take the straight across, Torii Gate top and bend it a little bit, so it would look more truly Japanese. We collaborated with them; that’s the first time we’ve ever done anything like that. Because I always think the artist knows best, and you don’t want to tell the artist what to do, but she was fabulous to work with and very enthusiastic about our ideas. So that was great.
EMC: Such a wonderful piece.
ML: Yes.
EMC: And when the light catches it in there, it really just pops out.
ML: There’s another British—there’s two other UK women ceramic artists. One is named Melanie Brown, who does series of teapots and other things in a blue-green celadon and a red celadon. The other, her name is Sara Flynn. She’s working in porcelain and her new stuff is just fabulous. When we first saw her at SOFA, she was still working as a waitress in order to support herself, but now she’s being shown at a top gallery in London. Her work has really evolved. It’s mostly white or black or a combination. That’s really cool. Then, as far as women Japanese ceramic artists—there’s this lady. Kishi Eiko. She’s in her early 70s, and she does an extremely complicated clay process that I’ve read about 19 times, and I’m still learning. She takes small amounts of colored clay which is called chamotte, and mixes it into her clay and she sculpts these really big pieces and cuts them down. Afterwards she adds more glaze on the outside and more bits of colored clay— so she doesn’t produce that many pieces a year.
EMC: But she’s still actively creating.
ML: She is. This is actually from 2019.
EMC: It almost looks woven from over here.
ML: It does and that’s the idea. She’s giving you all these textures. We first saw her work at the Yale Art Gallery during a weekend seminar, and the curator was able to educate a group of us. It was a show of female Japanese artists, and hers was the work we were most impressed with. It’s massive, then at the same time it’s delicate; everybody sees something different in it. It’s very 3D and the shadows are fabulous. We have other women artists, but she’s probably the most well known. Oh, we have a piece by Bodil Manz.
EMC: Is that the apple?
ML: Those are by women artists, too. I forgot…But that’s the big piece of porcelain in the other room that looks like Marimekko, because she’s Danish. Most of her work is smaller and is almost translucent porcelain. Next time you go to New York, I have to send you to the gallery run by two women that carries her work.
EMC: I would love that. That would be great.
ML: Down in the 20s. Hostler Burrows. It’s a fabulous gallery. They carry Scandinavian and other European stuff, furnishings and things. Of the women we met in Japan, I think the most impressive was the professor that we met towards the end of the trip and her name is—
EMC: [Speaking to readers] Since y’all can’t see what she’s doing right now, Mina has this incredible notebook right now that is perfectly organized and has tabs.
ML: Hayashi Kaku who draws inspiration nearby from nature around her. She not only teaches, but she actually has a degree from Tokyo University of the Arts and is a major force in Japanese ceramics. She works in different styles. The style that we particularly like has a rougher side and a more glazed side, and it’s the mixing of the two that’s just so fascinating. She’s in multiple museums here in the United States as well, of course, in Japan.
EMC: I also always like to ask, what did I not ask that I should have, or that you want to share that we didn’t cover?
ML: Okay. I was thinking about this before but I think I would like to say this again: The most important thing is that you buy what makes you happy. You shouldn’t care what other people think. If it comes to a point where you don’t like it anymore, you can always resell it or give it away. You can gift things. We’ve done that some with our godchildren and friends. I don’t want people to ever feel burdened by their things, but I think it’s important to always enjoy them. In the glass collecting world, you’re not considered a true collector unless you have pieces of important glass in your bathroom—because you run out of room everywhere else! I hope we’re not at that point.
“The most important thing is that you buy what makes you happy. You shouldn’t care what other people think.”
– Mina Levin
EMC: You’re getting close.
ML: Maybe we are.
EMC: I love that. One of the things that I think is so beautiful about your home is that you live with all of this. It’s a part of your life and you get to be around it.
ML: We do and it’s one of our most fun activities—we don’t ever think about where we’re going to put something when we buy it. We decide if we really, really like it.
EMC: And you always trust there’ll be a place for it.
ML: You always trust there’ll be a place for it. One of our favorite couple-bonding activities is to figure out where it goes and what else needs to move around. Every time you move something, you look at very different aspects of the piece. That gives you a lot of joy. The more you think about what you like about the piece, whether it’s the fact that it’s got two sides or when the light hits a piece of glass in the early morning, and you go, “Oh my goodness,” it gives you daily joy. That makes a big difference.
EMC: You buy art ‘cause you love it and you live with it, that’s what your focus is.
ML: If there’s a point where you don’t love it anymore…
EMC: You can let it go.
ML: You can let it go. It’s like cleaning your closet.
EMC: Maybe a couple more steps to getting rid of it, right?
ML: It’s a bit more intensive than that, yes. There is a large resale market now for glass. I don’t know—there is some for ceramics, particularly for North Carolina pottery, here in North Carolina. It’s deemed as precious for a lot of people.
EMC: Yes, indeed it is precious.