ceramics ALEX REED harnassing fire and earth, the la-based artist moves away from the naturalist world of ceramics into elementary geometric systems interview and photography by OLIVIER ZAHM OLIVIER ZAHM — So, your first job in ceramics when you arrived in LA was with Heath Ceramics? ALEX REED — Yeah. I’d admired Heath since I was 18, and I loved working at the company. OLIVIER ZAHM — Is it a typical California story? ALEX REED — Yeah, it was started in the ’40s by Edith Heath, in Sausali- to, across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. The demand became too much for her to meet by herself, so she slowly started this company, and it came to be the prototypical modern aesthetic for ceramics in California. OLIVIER ZAHM — In the ’60s? ALEX REED — It started in the late ’40s, but became a real business in the ’50s…