australia!

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this semester i’ll be spending 2 months in australia.  for the most part I’ll be staying in canberra, the capital territory of australia and working in the studio at the australian national university.  while here, i’ll be on my own a lot of the time as this is actually summer in australia and school’s out for a little while longer.

i’m still in school in florida, taking three classes; ceramics seminar, professional practices and an independent study based around the sketchbook.  i’ll be posting my usual travel posts, picture, profiles of local artists, etc, but i’ll also be posting a series from my sketchbook (under the catagory: sketchbook).  daily drawings and responses to the things that i’m reading and seeing.

i collected some paper ephemera from my life in florida, went a little bonkers at cfop collecting pretty paper in the white/translucent/silver vein and made a cover from my favorite skirt that was getting too old to wear anymore.

from here on out i’ll be posting approximately 2 pages a day recording some aspect or another of what i see around me in the land down under.

christmas?

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some of the work i was pleased with from the last firing.  this work was heavily influenced by my summer in japan and further informed by the amazing workshop by bryan hopkins that i was lucky enough to assist with this summer at arrowmont.

bumping up against rainbows: my solo exhibition in shigaraki:)

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ceramic research institute

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so many posts to catch up on.  this is my first short term residency and while i’m thrilled about how much i was able to get done, i especially cannot wait to share all the little details with everyone.

today, finally, i was able to visit the shiga prefectural shigaraki ceramic research institute, a separate entity from the ceramic cultural park where i am doing my residency.  there are students studying ceramics full time there but it is also open to the public.  meaghan brought up wanting to look for glaze recipes on one of the first days i was here and today we finally made it there.

i’m not a huge glaze person but o.m.g.  once we had signed in we went upstairs to a relatively small room filled with shelves.  which were filled with file boxes filled with cardboard sheets filled with test tiles.  triaxle blends, line blends, some with recipes, others with kiln schedules attached.  it was out of control.

as you flip through you might notice that some images are upside down.  i was just going crazy with my phone trying to get as much data as possible in each frame in hopes of translating some of the recipes.

shigaraki peops: meaghan gates and yumie shukuya

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2 three month residents are finishing up.  they both mounted amazing exhibitions last week.  meaghan gates, an artist from california just finished her undergrad at chico state and came to shigaraki as part of a trip funded by the presigious windgate grant she received last year.  before coming to shigaraki she spent a month at a pottery in seto, japan and after she leaves next week she will go to san bao, china for a month.

yumie shukuya is from the gumna prefecture but lives in tokyo.  she recently graduated from tama university, one of the top tier programs for art in japan, where she studied sculpture.

both artists went to undergrads that nurtured conceptual sculpture  thought they both use the wheel in some areas of their work.  the also both make work that falls beneath the umbrella of biomorphic abstraction.  meaghan uses the wheel, almost exclusively, to creae repeated  shapes that she brings together into complex organic compositions.  Some are particular abstract, others evoke more recognizable animal forms such as fowl or mammals which the artist calls comforting.

yumie’s sculptures begin from the idea of a flower, which she sees as a stand in for the human body.  she uses molds to create base forms which she alters and adds onto.  her glazes push the flower-like qualities forward, with thick feldspathic nodules that sit on top of the form like button mushrooms or crawl off the clay body leaving what looks like a naturally occurring pattern.  she also employs variegated glaze colors that bring to mind orchid or hellebore petals.  these colors are echoed in the ink washes she applies canvases which are set behind the installed work.


i’m really thrilled i got to work with these artists this month and see their shows go up.

shigaraki peops: makiko suzuki

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makiko’s station is right next to mine and while i sit working i also watch her throw.  she would affix a huge pugged cylinder of clay to the wheel head, center it and throw off the hump.  taped to the wall in front of her are pages of orders from galleries.  the entire time i’ve been here she has been working tirelessly to fill them.

originally from saitama (near tokyo) she  moved here about a year ao when she married a shigaraki local.  she’s in the process of building a new studio at home and in the mean time is a resident here.  though she heads home most nights she (like the rest of us) has a room here.  when she’s pulling all nighters to finish work or firing kilns she stays in her room.

makiko loves trimming, or maybe i just love watching her trim?  one of her forms is a wine goblet, the stem of which she throws solid and then trims out everything but the stem.  above her wheel, on the window sill above her orders sit several pots of trimming tools.

though her tight schedule has meant she socializes the least, sitting next to her has lead to several nice conversations.  despite the language barrier we have talked about inspiration, the virtues of shared studio space, what it will be like when her studio is done…when i had some work crack in the drying room, she gave me cookies and consoled me with her own stories of ceramic woe.  i couldn’t always understand every word of what she said (and certainly she couldn’t understand my terrible japanese) her quiet, sparkling voice was a comfort.

makiko’s pots are super popular in galleries and shops in osaka, tokyo and abroad, hence the busy schedule.  as i write this she and her husband are sanding the bottoms of hundres of perfect, cleverly designed and glazed forms.

i can’t wait to come back to shigaraki and to visit her home studio or, better yet, for her to come show in the u.s..

 

***edit as of 3/28/17
This blog post contains some links to Makiko’s work.

shigaraki peops: naoki koide

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i have been having a great time at shigaraki and one reason for that is all the awesome artists i am getting to know and work next to.  in this little series of blog posts i hope to briefly introduce these awesome people.

koide-san with figure.

naoki koide has appeared in this blog before, in this post about the paul clay show at salon 94.  his work is in the second picture, the pink cloud-like figure in the foreground.  that was my first time to see his work in person.  all i really knew about him was that he was represented by tomio koyama gallery, where agatha and i curated think warm: miami draws for you back in 2006.  turns out he saw the show too!  i’m a big fan of his work and am now a fan of the person as well.

koide-san spends about a week of each month at togei no mori (shigaraki ceramic cultural park) and does his clay work exclusively here. he studied at tokyo zokei university and was at one time a student/assistant of yoshitomo nara.  like nara, he used to work in plastics.  they are both featured in a show at the Museum of Contemporary Ceramic Arts right now (titled doki doki) which features artists working in other media who have created works in ceramic and variety of ceramic artists.

though he is kicking some serious butt with clay he is also beginning to explore sculpting wood, which he can do at his studio at home.  he mentioned that he gets huge chunks of wood from generous wood firing friends around shigaraki.

maquettes and small figures for mini trade

koide-san said his work is always about his family.  earlier works talked about his parents and brother and in his current work he explores his small family of three.  in sculptures of heads, which in scale are much larger than life, he portrays his wife and himself.  he often portrays his wife as larger than himself.  when i asked why that was he said that it is because she possesses more power than he.

maquette of current work.

on one side of these large sculpture an active interior is visible, full of tiny sculptures, paths and, in this series, a large figure symbolizing his young daughter.

back of maquette with inner world.

the seemingly unrelated milieu of items inside the sculpture correlate to the mess of things constantly dancing around in our heads and the placement of the daughter figure explores the different relationships the mother and father have with the daughter.

koide-san with his in progress sculptures. they are only about halfway done!

for the one short week he was in residence koide-san was a great contributor to the fun and comradeship at togei no mori.

his work is up at the new hikarie building in shibuya now.  click the link for images and an interview (with is in japanese but features some great shots of the insides of koide-san’s sculpture).

coffee break.

check back for more run downs on the awesome artists working at togei no mori this month:)

progress

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the last week has been kind of bananas.  last friday i had pretty much run out of clay and took the opportunity to go to the clay store and get more, thinking i had another week of building ahead.  that afternoon we had the monthly kiln meeting and i realized i had more like 3 days left.  yikes!

wall collection.

i have amassed a pretty good collection of wall pieces for the installation i will mount before the end of my stay.  i am using a mixture of local clays, both a smooth white and black shigaraki clay and a black clay with the ubiquitous feldspar inclusions.  i am also using (sparingly) arita porcelain from kyushu.

tiny black and white trade pieces.

i have organized a mini- trade with the other residents.  these are my little guys.  see that fake grass under them?  i found a whole case of 12″ x 12″ squares of it in the dumpster and might try to use it for something….

soon to be floor pieces.

floor pieces drying.

lightweight templates.

middle floor piece.

working here the last couple of weeks has been awesome!  i love that all i have to do everyday is just eat, sleep and work.  and being able to wake up and walk right to my studio pretty much rules.

i have been able to put everything else out of my mind and i’ve even had time to do some cooking.  sometimes the residents get together to cook and eat.  i invited everyone to share some nabe one evening and the other night everyone cooked something and shared, kind of like a potlock.

yumie working on her dish.

nabe night.

kimchi nabe.

potluck!

ok, maybe not everything else.  i keep having dreams in which my kitties wonder off.  it’s so weird.  during the day i think “this is so wonderful i hope i can come back and stay longer some day” and at night my brain feels guilty or something.  miss those little nerds:(

violet and junior.

busy day.

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