The Advocate

The good life: Stamford exec trades the corporate ladder for a potter's wheel

By Beth Cooney
Staff Writer

December 9, 2001

He wore the suit, he wore the tie.

Neither ever really fit artist Morty Bachar.

Until March, Bachar was a corporate executive and prototype of the American dream.

Once an officer in the Israeli Army, Bachar emigrated to the United States in 1981. He arrived penniless and barely spoke English.

Twenty years later he was an engineer who had climbed the corporate ladder, holding positions as vice president of product development in several companies.

By most contemporary measures of success Bachar had made it. He has a wife, three kids, a nice house in North Stamford, a BMW, and until recently, a hot tub. Yet he wasn't really happy.

"I thought it was what I was supposed to do," he says. "For a time, I thought it was what I wanted. The problem with material stuff is you get it and you want more of it. But I think for this kind of life, you can pay a huge price if it's not what you really want."

Today his job title is artist. His medium is clay.

Bachar has returned to the pottery he abandoned in Israel more than two decades ago, giving himself a year to carve out an alternative life.

He is on his way.
The hot tub on his sun porch has been replaced by a potter's wheel. And instead of commuting to the office, he spends his days creating objects from clay, giving private lessons and working on his goal of opening a school devoted to the ceramic arts in the Stamford area.

"Some people might say I am changing my life," he says, relaxing with a cup of herbal tea. "I am really going back to who I am. This is the person I was meant to be."

Bachar, who shows his work in galleries, uses stoneware clay as a canvas on which he draws detailed pictures using glazes and underglazes. His specialty is large pieces. "I think it's the engineer in me," he says. "But I like to do the big pieces that are the most challenging to potters. I don't struggle with them the way some potters do." He favors a dramatic look in which the glazes are mixed to create earthy tones. "I like it to look as if it was designed to be camouflaged in nature," he says.

While he is passionate about his work, he says he is equally inspired by teaching. "It has turned out to be the gift of this," he says. "I've learned that I have the ability to teach this and make it very accessible."

His students include adults who have always wanted to try ceramics but were intimidated in more formal classes, and children, some of whom have learning disabilities, such as dyslexia. "I have a few students who haven't had a lot of success in other (academic) classes," he says. "But here they are making something, accomplishing something and it's satisfying for them. And for me."

Bachar was first introduced to ceramics as an Israeli teenager. His mentors were Arab artisans who kept waterfront studios near his home in the village of Acre. "I used to go and watch them, they fascinated me and one time this older Arab potter invited me to try," Bachar says. "And it was very natural for me. The teachers said it was a gift."

As much as Bachar loved rendering objects from clay, he considered it an impractical calling. "I grew up very poor in Israel," he says. "To be an artist was a luxury I couldn't afford."

And so he never really took his artistic leanings too seriously.

"In Israel you grow up surrounded by your enemies. You know your future is the military," he says of the country's compulsory military service. "I didn't have the luxury of pursuing the arts. I saw my future as serving my country."

After four years as an officer in the Israeli Army, Bachar moved to Africa with three army buddies anxious for adventure and opportunity. After about a year, "I realized I had made a mistake. There were no opportunities." So he headed for the United States, where his only contact was a cousin in San Francisco. "When I got to this country, it was pretty scary, I had no money and I came to New York," he says. "Even if I wanted to get to San Francisco, I couldn't have."

On his first day in the city he hiked from his youth hostel on the Upper West Side to see the World Trade Center. "To me it was a symbol of things I hoped to achieve," he says.

Bachar expects he would have eventually found work as a tradesman ("I was always good with my hands"), but after he broke his leg during a skiing accident, he used a combination of grants and loans to put himself through engineering school. In his first few jobs, his bosses found he had a knack for leadership. Bachar quickly became a manager. "I actually did very little engineering," he says. "My strength was people and I was often called on to lead teams. I just moved up in management. And that became what I did." There were parts of business that Bachar liked; leading people, finishing challenging projects. Yet his interest in the arts never really waned.

"In my business life, I would go to cocktail parties and the people I ended up talking to, I would ask them what they did. And they were the artists," he says. "I have always been drawn to artistic people. Now, I get to spend more time with them."

Bachar still has a bit of businessman in him. He keeps a detailed appointment calendar. "It's a habit," he says. And he has business plan. He long-term goal is to create a retreat for artisans. In the more immediate future, Bachar is looking for space to create a classroom studio.

If all else fails, he is not ruling out a return to the corporate life.

"You have a family, they have to be your priority," he says, "but I've given myself a year. The school is my dream and I would like to see it happen."

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Morty Bachar can be contacted by e-mail at mbachar@aol.com. Examples of his work can be viewed at http://www.lakesidepottery.com/ He can be reached by cell phone at 912-5054.

Copyright © 2001, Southern Connecticut Newspapers, Inc.