Art Park on Hondori Street

 I was asked to make an English poster

  for an art event

since there are so many tourists around in August

Here t'is! The finished poster.

i'm also opening a booth at the art fair

yikes

gotta get my stuff in order

here's a mug

from the series i'm working on now

a series of white mugs

with coloured stripes

inspired by the double rainbow

ha so intense

August 6th Ceremony in Hiroshima

August 6th is Memorial Day in Hiroshima, to mourn and comfort the souls of victims of the Atomic Bomb. Every year, there is a memorial ceremony at Peace Park. This year, it will be attended by Ban Ki Moon, U.N. Secretary General, and for the first time, according to the Mainichi Daily News, representatives from the U.S., France, and Britain.

Hopefully this indicates a positive step towards the abolition of nuclear weapons. It definitely marks a win for the hibakusha, who have been fighting so hard for this the last half-century. 

New Stuff

this was made with an inlay technique

called zogan

this is my first try and it took a few hours

to carve and inlay the white clay

after a while, i had to rest

because my hands were shaky

and my eyes were dry

it's a technique that requires a lot of patience,

control, and maybe even a touch of madness

the pattern is carved into the leather-hard clay

using a bamboo or metal tool, 

and then the carved areas

are filled with soft clay of a contrasting colour

after the soft clay hardens, it is scraped

until it is flush with the surface

the technique was created by Tatsuzo Shimaoka

who studied under the master Shoji Hamada in Mashiko

Rainy Monday

A whirlwind:

People in the paper shop

Go mad

                                                                             

つむじ風紙屋の人の気が違い

Tsumujikaze kami-ya no hito no ki ga chigai

Ayumi Horie

I loved her work from the moment I saw it. There is something really special about Ayumi Horie's designs - they are so fresh, and playful, and the animals she uses on her pots seem to have their own tales to tell.

Her work has a poetry about it, that's honest, and unpretentious. Ayumi's mugs are the kind of mugs you look forward to using. You can see on her website how her work is not only functional, but becomes a real part of people's lives, they bring joy, they bring comfort. She says that her work revolves around this idea of comfort, both physical and psychological, and her celebration of the handmade has helped me to strengthen my own convictions about why I should make things. I hope to own my own Ayumi Horie mug someday, and I'm already thinking up the perfect Sunday morning.

So fittingly featuring the Nagoya-based, lo-fi pop band Lullatone, is Ayumi at work.

First Attempts

Now that all the weekend business is over, I can finally get to more posting. These are some photos of mine from a when I first started making pottery, as well as some other people's first attempts.

           

            Nate working on a mug

   

              Self-Portrait?

        

          my first bowls before firing, the owl is painted with enogu,

       the deer is carved into underglaze

        

       Yasue's art therapy class

      

Thought this was clever when I made it...

it's kind of hard to use and really heavy. 

Sometimes it's a peanut bowl.

      

Another face from Yasue's art therapy class

      

Jen's first mug pair, using coloured clay.
She calls them her "mosquito bite" series.

The Soba Fields