BESTSELLING MUGS

By Ozzie Tollefson, Daily Journal

A few weeks ago, I had this discussion with a close friend about the meaning of ‘serendipity’. The dictionary calls it an aptitude or a skill. That puzzled me. I had always thought of that noun to mean the discovery of something by an indirect means. You might call it a ‘happy accident.’ But my friend explained that calling ‘serendipity’ an aptitude is correct, because there is a certain skill involved in discovering something by accident. People who have that skill are open to a broad horizon of possibilities. They are eager to try something, just to see how it works out. They often start a question with, “What if…?”

Jim Bjork is such a person, a man of many discovered talents. A graduate of Bethel University and Bethel Seminary, Bjork is a 65-year-old ordained minister who spent 38 years bringing the teachings of Jesus to junior and senior high school students through the mission of Young Life. Throughout those years, going back to 1972, he has pursued the art of pottery, crafting beautiful ceramic mugs and custom pottery that reflect his passion.

I went to visit Bjork at his home, set back in the woods north of Underwood. As I came down his driveway, I was puzzled. Before me stood a huge red barn, but where was the house? Bjork later told me he always wanted to live in a barn, but he could not find one near where he wanted to settle his family. So he found a piece of wooded land and built a barn that would serve as both a pottery studio and a home for him, his wife, Linda, and their eight children. There is a noticeable serenity about Bjork that I found engaging. Born in Tokyo, Japan, to his missionary parents, the third of five children, he told me he was always interested in working with his hands. As he calmly talked about the nine years he spent in Japan, he was working with his hands, carefully attaching clay handles to dried clay coffee cups he had turned on the wheel. And he works fast. He can shape a coffee cup on the wheel in 90 seconds.

Bjork showed me pottery machines he has built over the years. He built a large clay mixer out of a section of concrete culvert he found in a dump. The motor used to power the mixer was also found in the dump. He built an extrusion machine, a device which pushes clay through a shaped die to form a continuous length of the material, which can be used for handles on coffee cups. He showed me a pneumatic die press he built for pressing out logos to go on cups or pitchers. He built a larger press for shaping a ball of clay. The consistency in the shape of the ball makes it much easier to center the clay on the wheel.

I asked Bjork how he first became interested in pottery. He went to a shelf and handed me the first piece of pottery he created, a bowl he made in 1972. That was 46 years ago, and it brings me back to that word again, ‘serendipity’.

When he was a freshman at Bethel University in St. Paul, he wandered into a pottery class just to see what was going on. He was immediately struck by the process, creating beautiful works of art from the clay of the earth. He said, “This is it!” But there was one hurdle to cross. The class was only open to juniors and seniors. They would not accept a lowly freshman. But here comes that happy accident. He spotted on a shelf a stack of punch cards, a predigital system for sorting and storing data. There was a label on the edge of the shelf, “I.D. for Juniors.” So Bjork did a “See that chicken over there,” and lifted one. Bingo! He presented the card at the enrollment desk, and the rest is history.

Had that punch card not been sitting on that shelf, and had not Bjork been admitted to that pottery class, he might have missed the rewards of becoming a professional potter and starting his own business, Northern Exposure Pottery, where he now creates unique handmade serveware. I asked him what all this has meant to him. He summed it up, “I love being able to create an object of beauty and utility out of the very basic elements of the earth. Creation, out of nothing, something beautiful. Like God…”