A former automotive engineer throws pots and pans in Los Angeles

Throwing pottery on the wheel can be a love-hate relationship. Becki Chernoff knows it all.

“Many people fall in love with clay when they take their first class,” Chernoff says while sitting at the potter's wheel in her Pasadena studio. “But others get frustrated because it's too difficult and decide it's not for them. “It’s usually one or the other.”

For the 46-year-old Los Angeles ceramist, ceramics has been a lasting love affair since her first potter's wheel lesson with teacher John Smolenski at New York's Skaneateles High School.

“I'm very lucky that my art teacher taught me how to throw because, in all the years since then, I never wanted to stop,” she says.

In what seems like a surprising choice for an artist, Chernoff attended the Rochester Institute of Technology, where he received a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering. He jokes that his left-brain-right-brain agility comes courtesy of his father, Chuck, an environmental engineer who now paints pet portraits in retirement.

While at RIT, he took an elective in automotive engineering (a class Chernoff describes as “a physics lesson in how rubber meets the road”) and realized he loved cars and wanted to work in the industry. automotive. “After four years of mechanical engineering, I finally found something I was interested in,” he says.

After college, Chernoff moved to Detroit, where he worked on the software help desk at Ford during the day and took ceramics classes at night at community colleges. She also began selling her work in local stores and worked as a car hunter for a Mercedes-Benz dealer in Los Angeles who had a restoration shop.

Chernoff with his stoneware pasta bowls. He has amassed a collection of over 100 mugs from different potters. “I like having everyone's mugs because you can learn a lot about their craftsmanship. That's the engineer in me. I like to turn it around and see how they did it,” he says.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

When she was laid off in 2012, Chernoff moved to Los Angeles and worked as a car chaser, but despite everything, she continued making ceramics on the side.

A membership at Xiem Clay Center (now Green & Bisque Clayhouse) in Pasadena made him realize he could work long hours in the studio and produce a lot of work to sell. As a testament to his enthusiasm for the launch, she was asked if she would like to teach as soon as he became a member. “I taught wheel throwing to advanced beginners,” she says. “That was fun.”

So when her work as a car hunter began to slow down, Chernoff decided to pursue ceramics full time and launch bX Ceramics (pronounced bex ceramics). “It just happened,” she says. “I started being a full-time potter without it being even a big decision or leap.”

Chernoff tosses a plate of pasta in his Pasadena studio.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Automotive engineering continued to play a role in the aesthetic of his work, however, as he produced clean-lined plates, bowls and containers in the spirit of his favorite car, the 1965 Plymouth Barracuda Fastback. “It's like a spaceship.” , says.

Chernoff expanded into tableware when her friend, Elf Cafe co-owner Astara Calas, asked her to prepare dishes for the vegan restaurant in Echo Park. Chernoff now admits that she didn't want to do it. “She didn't have a good method at the time,” she says. Still, she made the dishes, which led to bowls of pasta. “That led me to doing repetitive sets of things,” she says. “That's when everything changed and I started making sets, which I'm very grateful for now.”

“No matter how many years you put in, there's always something to learn,” Chernoff says. “I always take classes and will continue to take classes. “I will never finish.”

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit and Chernoff couldn't go to the studio, a friend offered to lend him his pottery wheel so he could continue working at home. Despite her generous offer, Chernoff had reservations because she didn't have room for the wheel in her apartment and she was concerned about toxic clay dust.

Two weeks after the study closed, he changed his mind. “I can't not work,” she says. She borrowed her friend's wheel, threw clay from her living room for 10 months, and met customers on the sidewalk to take orders.

Despite the economic fallout that prevailed during the pandemic, the quarantine was a blessing for bX Ceramics.

“My clientele was not out of work but working from home,” Chernoff says. “People were focused on their homes because they were home all the time and apparently everyone hated their dishes.”

Chernoff makes between eight and 45 pieces a day, depending on size and level of difficulty. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

People loved Chernoff's minimalist stoneware dinner plates, salad plates, cups and bowls and bought large orders without knowing he was working in their living room.

“I can't believe the amount of work I did on my house,” he says. “I had a tarp, cleaned everything up and was as careful as possible. I did it so I could continue working.”

While many potters generally dislike repetitive work, Chernoff believes her work as an engineer gave her the aptitude to perform repetitive tasks without “going crazy.”

“It took years to get to a place where everything looked similar,” he says. “It doesn't look machine-made. Many people have told me they looked at Heath and East Fork but wanted to go with someone local. It's a great compliment. Their things look perfect, but people prefer to have handmade tableware. Making matching pieces has become what I like to do. I love seeing the cohesion of a perfectly stacked finished set.”

Chernoff throws clay onto his potter's wheel, forming what would become a pasta bowl.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Chernoff's friend, designer Adi Goodrich, admires the ceramist's drive. “Becki rededicated her life completely to ceramics in recent years; He had never seen someone so determined to make it work. Becki is an incredible creator who works tirelessly to create the most beautiful, simple and elegant tableware and glassware. Every day I drink from Becki's cups, put flowers in Becki's vase, and eat all my meals in her shallow bowls.”

In 2021, Chernoff's career took another positive turn when one of his students told him about a small studio available for rent in Pasadena.

“I could walk out of my living room,” he says. “It was my first wheel, my first everything. But he had been doing it for so long that turning it into a studio was easy. I just needed a source of water and a place to dry and display my work. The studio changed everything because I could have studio sales and meet clients.”

Buoyed by her mechanical skills and hard work ethic (“I’m a Leo,” she says with a shrug), Chernoff likes to have her income under her control. “Everything I make, I sell,” she says. “My motivation is that I'm a hustler and a hard worker.”

Chernoff intensively crafts a plate on the wheel in his Pasadena studio.

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

In love with the process, Chernoff works almost every day, making between eight and 45 pieces, depending on size and level of difficulty, ranging in price from $10 to $250. She does everything herself, including shipping and mailing, but she doesn't make her own glazes, and her work is fired at Green & Bisque Clayhouse and Junzo Mori Pottery in Monrovia.

Repetitive throwing has also taught him to take care of his body. After a debilitating year due to sciatica, she now walks through Griffith Park four or five times a week and is pain-free.

“As long as my body can do this, I want what you have in your hand to be done entirely by me,” he says. “It's my name: bX Ceramics. I did it. It is not a company of people. I love shooting. That's why I do it.”

“Every surface you see needs to be wet sanded,” says Chernoff.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Looking back, Chernoff becomes emotional when talking about Smolenski's influence on his career. “It's crazy that I'm doing this because he was willing to teach me how to pitch,” he says. “He changed my life. I started full time about six years ago and never looked back; I never questioned it. I feel like this is what I'm supposed to do.”

Smolenski, now 80 and teaching at the Schweinfurth Art Center in Auburn, New York, says, “She is one of the first students I had here at Skaneateles. She is determined and stood her ground. And she deserves success because she has worked for it. And to get anywhere in the world of ceramics, you really have to have that drive, and I know she feels it.”

Like the efforts of many teachers, Smolenski's lessons have resonated throughout a lifetime.