The twelve-hour direct flight from San Francisco to Osaka had followed

Transcription

1 CH A SING THE SU N: M Y V ISIT TO JA PA N By Rich Briggs Department of Art The twelve-hour direct flight from San Francisco to Osaka had followed along the coast of North America past Canada and Alaska towards Russia and beyond. We were chasing the sun. Before going to Japan, I was asked if I liked Japanese food. How would you describe American food to someone from another culture? Well, there are Big Macs and Cajun crawfish. There are meat and potatoes and organic vegetables with tofu. Like American culture, Japanese culture is full of contrasts. For some with a passing interest and knowledge in Japanese pottery, the image might be of a beautiful porcelain vase with cobalt blue decoration of a pastoral scene with bamboo and mountains. It is true, this is part of the Japanese aesthetic. Borrowed from its close neighbors China and Korea, this work has flourished for centuries. There is a sense of perfection. The work is delicate and refined. The beauty is obvious. This classic look could be enough, but there is another end of the spectrum where beauty is found in imperfection. Where clay dug from a mountain with all its impurities is formed, often on the potter s wheel, allowed to dry, and fired for many days in a wood-burning kiln with no applied glaze. The ash from the burning wood fuses with the clay to form the surface decoration. After the kiln has cooled, the potter unbricks the kiln door and sees for the first time the result. There is a collaboration with the fire. The potter does not finish the work. That is left to the intense heat (2400 degrees Fahrenheit), the duration of the fire and the resulting buildup of ash, and the fortuitous effects of chance. There is a raw, spontaneous quality that can be planned for but not completely controlled. Many potters, in villages throughout Japan, dedicate themselves to firing wood kilns. Each village has a unique aesthetic with subtle differences based on the composition of the local clay, the type of kiln, and variations in firing methods. The traditions date back for a thousand years and continue to the present day. Shigaraki is such a place. I was invited to be a visiting artist at the Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park. Shigaraki is a pottery village (10,000 people) about fifty miles from Kyoto near Biwa lake. There are more wood-burning kilns in Shigaraki then there are Mormon bishops in Rexburg, Idaho. Everywhere one looks, there are stacks of red pine and chimneys with rolls of black smoke. The Ceramic Cultural Park is a facility dedicated to the development of the Ceramic Arts. Artists from around the world come and spend a specific amount of time, from one month This classic look could be enough, but there is another end of the spectrum where beauty is found in imperfection. E X P R E S S I O N S 85

2 My mantra for students is, Find your own path. Connect with your art and express who you are as an individual. to a year, to pursue their own creative path. There is no curriculum or instruction. Each artist is given space in a communal studio and is free to work his own schedule with minimal input from the staff. There are state-of-the-art gas kilns in addition to the wood burning kilns Shigaraki is known for. Wood kilns follow two basic designs that have been in use for centuries. An anagama is a single-chamber tube where wood is placed in the firebox at the mouth of the kiln and the flame travels like a river of fire around and through the pottery before exiting the flue and flowing up the chimney. A noborigama has a series of arched chambers that ascend up a hillside like so many humps of a camel. Each chamber has its own firebox. While superheated air, flame, and ash are moving through from the previous chamber, each chamber can be stoked to get it up to temperature. A typical firing will take from three to fourteen days, depending on the desired amount of ash. Since the kiln needs to be stoked continuously, about every fifteen minutes or so, firing is an exhausting communal process where friends or assistants take shifts throughout the days and nights until the desired effects are achieved. The kiln is then sealed tight and allowed to cool slowly, often for a week or more. What are the implications of this knowledge for the clay program at BYU-Idaho? At the dawn of this new era, we have the potential to go in a variety of directions. My mantra for students is, Find your own path. Connect with your art and express who you are as an individual. The wood-fired aesthetic is not for everyone, but there are enough of us interested that we are pursuing it. In fall 2003, students in the Advanced Ceramics class and I built a two-chambered noborigama at my studio in Burton, four miles west of campus. We are planning to build an anagama in the near future. Students are invited to transport work from the studio in the Kirkham building and help chop and prepare wood, load, fire, and unload the kiln and clean up. In the process they also learn to help educate an audience that may be unfamiliar with the subtleties of wood-fired pottery. In America we say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. We feel the same about ugliness. Do we ever concede that they can be one and the same? 86 P E R S P E C T I V E

3 Multi-chambered noborigama used for production pottery from 1832 until Shigaraki, Japan. Anagama in second day of five-day firing. Shigarakik, Japan EXPRESSIONS 87

4 Upper division ceramics students with two-chamber noborigama. Burton, Idaho Finished noborigama with sand, fire clay, and cement shell. Burton, Idaho 88 PERSPECTIVE

5 Wood fired stoneware from potter Nobuyaki Goto. Shigaraki Japan. Photo by Darren Clark Pottery by Rich Briggs made in Shigarki, Japan. On maple base. Photo by Darren Clark EXPRESSIONS 89

6 Untitled Rock Form by Rich Briggs on redwood burl base Photo by Darren Clark 90 PERSPECTIVE