FREE LANCE-STAR
BY LINDLEY ESTES
November 2nd, 2014
Judas Recendez, 35, of Stafford County will be featured in
Sunday’s episode of the PBS series ‘Craft in America.’
In 2008, not long after he learned how to walk again, Judas Recendez threw a blue and brown glazed Japanese tea bowl on a potting wheel in California.
The 35-year-old Stafford County resident and U.S. Army veteran took a traditionally symmetrical design and gave it a new shape, carving deep scars into the façade of the bowl.
“It represents who I am,” he said. “It has a purpose, it’s useful, but it’s scarred.”
Recendez learned how to create pottery and ceramics in a studio at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center while in rehabilitation for wounds sustained in Iraq.
“Learning how to walk, you take it for granted so much,” he said. “It’s like breathing. You have to push through this amount of pain. It’s just really weird.”
It was in that studio at Walter Reed that Recendez first met Carol Sauvion, creator and director of the Peabody Award-winning PBS series “Craft in America.” His story inspired her to make an episode titled “Service,” which looks at the link between craft and the military.
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I loved the work seen in the Service episode of Craft in America. As much as I enjoyed watching the various forms of craft represented, I loved seeing the individuals and hearing their stories.
ReplyDeleteJudas Recendez was wonderful in mind and spirit, as well as talent. An inspiration.