Joe Pintz: The Old Way

Although Joe Pintz’s pottery does not resemble any historical or cultural style, it draws on his experience as the child of German immigrants, particularly in regard to traditions and the centrality of food − cooking, preserving, serving, consuming. His forms are generalized and simplified, hefty in the palpability of their planes but as soft as memories in their misty colors.

Pintz was born in Chicago in 1974. His father was a union house painter and his mother a stay-at-home mom. Both came from families displaced by World War II; they came to Chicago because it had a large German population. My grandmother on my dad’s side lived here for 20 years and she got by going to the German baker, the German butcher, the German apothecary. She didn’t learn much English at all.

We moved from the city proper to a suburb just on the edge of Chicago near O’Hare [Airport] and that’s where I grew up from age five on. I went to regular public school but on Saturday went to German language school all through grade school and through high school. I have two older sisters and a younger brother. We spoke German around the house a lot, but as I grew up it became more my parents speaking German and us answering in English. So I understand German a lot better than I can speak it.

My dad and mom did a lot of traveling back and forth when I was young and then progressively less as they’ve gotten older. There’s always been talk about the old country and the way things were. There is a bit of nostalgia and romanticism in my past, hearing all those stories.

I don’t stamp or sign my work. I stopped that when I got off the wheel and I never started again. People ask well why not and I’ll say well, I try for my work to be my signature. And that usually shuts them up

but he was not so much involved with art activities. Pintz’s dad liked to paint portraits although he had little time for it, and