Maybe it's that all good comedy comes from the same kind of place: a willingness to be honest but cloaking it in a jest. Realness and comedy, or knowing which side of the joke is up or if the thing that you're seeing is a joke at all (Andy Kaufman). That's where Clayton Bailey comes in. Clayton was this year's NCECA fellow and gave the closing lecture. A California artist, Clayton's worked in a way that both confirms his greatness as an artist and also pokes fun that the field he's been involved in for 50 years. His humor is more tounge in cheek than ironic, dryer than silly. He operated as a teacher at the univeristy level for years and his work was based on pulling academia's seriousness apart...or at least jabbing it for some life. Subversion can be taken any number of ways and Clayton's version of it includes alter-egos, fake science, and asking his audience to join in on the bit (seriously, it's just clay. It's okay to make fun of how uptight we sometimes/always are about it. again, liberals usually don't have a great sense of humor). His body of work is expansive and he's always pushed himself to the next level of what the work should be or where the joke should go. When California ceramics is talked or written about Funk is always included. But the Funk movement operated in that kind of overly academic world that wasn't taken far enough for Clayton. He has worked outside of the common eyesight of ceramics. He has worked backwards, in a way, creating his own world and inviting others to take a peek inside. Enjoy the conversation! I know I did.