ceramics Archives - SAM Stories

An Interview with “Meot” Guest Curator HJ Han

Rachel Eggers on Oct 23 2024

Frank Bayley (1939–2022) was a generous art patron who dedicated himself to uplifting the innovative practices of seven internationally-renowned contemporary Korean artists. With Meot: Korean Art from the Frank Bayley Collection now on view at the Seattle Asian Art Museum, we spoke with Hyongjeong “HJ” Kim Han, Joseph de Heer Curator of Arts of Asia at the Denver Art Museum and the exhibition’s curator, about her own relationship to Bayley and his appreciation for the past, present, and future of Korean art.

What was your relationship with Frank Bayley like? What can you tell us about him as a collector?

I used to call him Frank a-jeo-ssi, which translates to “Uncle Frank” in Korean. His inquisitiveness about Korean culture made him a generous and patient supporter of Korean artists and curators, including myself. Frank made his first trip to Korea about half a century ago; it was then that he began collecting Korean art, primarily Korean ceramics.

How does Frank Bayley exemplify the term meot?

Meot (pronunciation: mʌ̹t or mŏt) is a Korean word in Hangul (the Korean alphabet) that originated from the word ‘mat,’ meaning taste. The word encompasses multiple meanings, including charming, stylish, elegant, creative, and intellectual. Frank certainly possessed these characteristics, and I would add one more: humor. Frank loved to laugh and he truly loved art. In his own, personal way, he embodied meot.

A woman stands in front of a wall with text

What are you excited for Seattle audiences to encounter in the exhibition?

I’m looking forward to exhibiting some of the artworks that were in Frank’s living room, including Bohnchang KOO’s FM 01 BW, a photograph of a long-necked white bottle that was gifted to Frank by the artist, as well as a series of ceramics by YOON Kwang-cho that originally sat atop Frank’s wooden cabinets. I’m confident Seattle audiences will appreciate the powerful white slip surface decorations of these works. As a curator, it’s always interesting to see artworks go from the intimacy of a domestic space to the galleries of a public institution; it’s exactly what Frank wanted with this gift to SAM.

Meot features both contemporary and historical artworks. What is the benefit of setting these works in dialogue?

A key component of Frank’s interest in collecting Korean art was the continuity of its artistic traditions and how contemporary artists innovate within these histories. Artworks from the past provide enormous inspiration for today’s artists, and the contemporary works featured in Meot are excellent models for this phenomena. I believe art museums are the perfect platform to demonstrate the continuous dialogue between the past and present, while simultaneously providing direction for the future of art.

– Rachel Eggers, SAM’s Associate Director of Public Relations

Photos: Installation view of Meot: Korean Art from the Frank Bayley Collection, 2024, photo: Chloe Collyer

Poke in the Eye Object Spotlight: Red Hot Pot

Nicole Block on Jul 23 2024

Poke in the Eye: Art of the West Coast Counterculture is now on view at SAM! This homegrown exhibition features 87 ceramics, sculptures, paintings, and drawings from SAM’s collection—some of which are being shown for the first time. Throughout the run of the exhibition, we’ll be periodically sharing insight on a few of the eclectic artworks on view. Stay tuned for more object spotlights to come.

Poke in the Eye is all about encounters with the odd and unusual as well as challenging expectations of what you’ll find in a museum. Patti Warashina’s Red Hot Pot (1969) embodies this spirit with more than just tongue-in-cheek humor.

The shape of Red Hot Pot is not a standard form like the ceramic vessels that we use everyday. The large, curved rectangular white base with a black bottom edge resembles a toaster. But instead of toast emerging from this form, a bright pink tongue pops out from a pair of large red-orange lips and teeth. The shiny finish on the surface makes the lips look picture-perfect, glossy, and red hot, as the title says.

Red Hot Pot is part of Warashina’s Basket and Loaf series where the forms (in this case a loaf) allude to themes of food and the kitchen, traditionally associated with women. Starting her career in the 1960s in a male-dominated art world and the rise of second wave feminism, Warashina often critiqued gender stereotypes and the sexualization of women’s bodies. Curvy vases have long been associated with women’s bodies and their reproductive capabilities, as vessels that can be filled. Warashina’s Faucet Pot (ca. 1966), also on view in Poke in the Eye, critiques this symbolism explicitly.

Likewise, the plump lips of Red Hot Pot mimic a seductively red mouth, but the tongue sticking out seems like an act of defiance. The lips aren’t blowing a kiss, but are drawn into a smile, poking fun at us for looking.

In isolating the lips and removing the rest of the face, Warashina draws attention to how sexualized a woman’s mouth can be, but also makes it more peculiar in this context. Warashina was inspired by Surrealist artists like Rene Magritte and Marcel Duchamp who are known for their strange, dreamlike scenarios that demand we inspect the mundane more closely.¹ Red Hot Pot is definitely dreamlike, or maybe nightmare-ish, adding a mouth to this inanimate object.

Talking about her work recently, Warshina said, “I like things that are not quite right, they’re kind of loony… The parts and pieces fit together and if they kind of go against each other that’s even better. You know, I don’t like things to be too logical. I like things that are kind of disturbed.”²

Warashina grew up in Spokane, Washington where her father, a Japanese immigrant, and her mother, a second-generation Japanese American, encouraged her education. However, they didn’t envision Warashina becoming an artist, and neither did she. Warahina attended the University of Washington intending to get a practical degree to work as a dental hygienist. When she took her first elective art classes, however, she fell in love with clay and experimenting with its techniques. Warashina returned to teach at the University of Washington from 1970 to 1995. In 2024, she received the UW Alumni Association’s Golden Graduate Distinguished Alumnus Award.³

Throughout her career, Warashina was inspired by her fellow artists, especially those on the West Coast like Peter Voulkos, Viola Frey, David Gilhooly, and Howard Kottler, who were exploring different ceramic techniques, modes of humor, and figurative forms. Abstract art had become a dominant force in the art world, especially on the East Coast, with Abstract Expressionism from artists like Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko and Minimalism from the likes of Donald Judd and Frank Stella. However, art departments at universities like the University of California, Davis, UC Berkeley, and the University of Washington became hubs for alternative approaches, rejecting abstraction, and typical materials like paint and canvas.

Art history in Europe and the US has tended to focus on paintings and sculpture (usually carving from marble or stone), Meanwhile, more everyday and functional materials like textiles and ceramics have been relegated to the category of “craft.” But many of the artists in Poke in the Eye like Patti Warashina pushed ceramics, and other materials like fiber and neon, to new possibilities and built the art world of today that recognizes extraordinary artists in any medium.

When talking about the divide between what is art and what is not, Warashina defined it for herself: “When I come in and I see something that raises my blood pressure, then I know that there is something more than just a bowl or a sculpture or a painting. It makes me react to the painting chemically in my body. And that’s when I know—or music, you know. It makes my body react. And that is my way of judging whether, I guess, quote, whether it’s art or not… It alters your being.”⁴

Red Hot Pot, though it might cause confusion, discomfort, or even a laugh, provokes a reaction and that is what Warashina is looking for. To hear more from Patti Warashina herself, watch her recent SAM Talks conversation with Carrie Dedon, SAM Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art.

– Nicole Block, SAM Collections Associate

1 “UW ceramic arts program is in good hands with Patti Warashina,” UW Magazine, December 1, 2007, https://magazine.washington.edu/feature/the-wonder-of-patti-warashina/.

2 Airstream Turkey by Patti Wararshina, audio tour, Seattle Art Museum, 2024, https://www1.seattleartmuseum.org/tours/media/1544.

3 “Ceramic artist Patti Warashina Receives UW Alumni Association Golden Graduate Award.” UW Magazine, 2024, https://magazine.washington.edu/feature/ceramic-artist-patti-warashina-receives-uw-alumni-association-golden-graduate-award/.

4 Doug Jeck oral history interview with Patti Warashina, September 8, 2005, accessed September 13, 2017, https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-patti-warashina-12864.

Images: Red Hot Pot, 1969, Patti Warashina, American, born 1940, ceramic with glaze, 11 x 19 1/4 x 19 in. (27.9 x 48.9 x 48.3 cm), Gift of Lucy and Herb Pruzan, 2023.23.3 © Patti Warashina, photo: Scott Leen. Photo: Chloe Collyer.

Poke in the Eye Object Spotlight: American Gothicware

Nicole Block on Jul 2 2024

Howard Kottler’s American Gothicware from 1972 spoofs the well-known painting by Grant Wood, American Gothic, made in 1930. By placing a decal of the image on four plates and adding his own twist to each one, dinnerware becomes Gothicware à la Kottler!

During the start of the Great Depression (1929–1939), Grant Wood painted this now-iconic couple (the models were actually Wood’s dentist and sister) looking somber and proper in front of their farmhouse. Many viewers interpreted Wood’s painting as satire of older generations and outdated traditional values, while others saw it as a reflection of the resilience of farmers like these in the face of tough times. Since then, this painting has been parodied and reproduced in many forms, symbolic of one particular view of what it means to be an American.

Howard Kottler, working 40 years later, was a ceramicist in Seattle who taught at the University of Washington. Kottler was inspired by Pop Artists like Andy Warhol who experimented with reproducing famous images from pop culture and the art world. After World War II when the American economy was booming, artists were fascinated with the way that consumer goods and images could be mass-produced and identically replicated. Along with that, artists were also drawing from earlier movements like Dadaism and the idea of the readymade to challenge hierarchical definitions of art.

Kottler decided to use an everyday material that one could easily overlook, ceramic dishware, to bring politics to the table. American Gothicware conveys Kottler’s subversive attitude toward American life by altering Grant Wood’s painting across four plates: Look Alikes, Personal Possession, American Minstrels, and The Silent White Majority. Each plate offers a visual confrontation of the original painting by Wood and with it mainstream American values.

Look Alikes duplicates the man’s face and places it on the woman’s body, transforming them into a gay couple of sorts, or identical twins. In Grant’s painting, each character is strongly associated with their gender roles—the woman in her apron with houseplants on the porch behind her indicating her role as caretaker of the home, while the man is in overalls and a coat, holding a pitchfork and aligned with the red barn over his shoulder. While their stern expressions already made these two look alike, Kottler adds ambiguity about gender and the relationship between the characters. Kottler himself was a gay man and often included these questions and hidden meanings in his artworks.

In Personal Possession, a painted landscape seeps into the bodies and faces of the two characters, covering everything except their facial features and hair. Their skin is the color of the sky and their clothes have been replaced by a forest scene with some signs of human development: a bridge in the background and a tunnel to the right. The pioneer settlers who took the land as their own personal possession now wear the land as part of their clothes. It has become part of their identity as farmers who tend the land, but Kottler seems to ask if it was ever theirs to claim, critiquing the history of Manifest Destiny that is often taught in US history.

American Minstrels also delves into more unpleasant parts of American history. This image subtracts color from the skin of the two farmers to make them appear as white as the plate itself, making their whiteness literal. The title implies this could be seen as whiteface, an inverse of blackface minstrel shows wherein white performers would dress up as Black characters and parody their speech and behavior. Black performers would also participate in these minstrel performances, exaggerating their differences from white society. Minstrel shows were popular entertainment throughout the 1800s and perpetuated stereotypes that still linger today. Kottler’s reference to minstrels leaves the work open to more questions—what is being performed here and in the original American Gothic?

The Silent White Majority also critiques whiteness in America, co-opting a phrase that President Richard Nixon coined in 1969 for the American voters who did not vocally join in the counterculture and political discourses surrounding the Vietnam War. Here, the pair’s faces are mask-like with white covering the mouths but leaving their eyes and noses exposed. Their literal whiteness again calls attention to race, but even in their silence, they have power as a majority to influence politics in their favor, maintaining the status quo.

By modifying the recognizable symbol of Grant Wood’s American Gothic, Kottler subverted and questioned prevailing ideas about American identity in terms of gender, sexuality, race, and national history. Alongside these political messages, American Gothicware challenges the medium of art too, transforming the humble ceramic plate into an artwork that offers a visual and conceptual feast

– Nicole Block, SAM Collections Associate

Photos: Alborz Kamalizad.

Curator Yayoi Shinoda on the Traditional Japanese Art of Mended Ceramics

Seattle Art Museum on Jan 9 2024

SAM’s Gardner Center for Asian Art and Ideas presents the 2023–24 season of the Saturday University Lecture Series, exploring various topics loosely inspired by the exhibition Hokusai: Inspiration and Influence from the Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston at the Seattle Art Museum. On Saturday, January 13, Yayoi Shinoda, Assistant Curator of Japanese Art at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art will offer a discussion on the Japanese tradition of mending damaged ceramics to bring them renewed life. In advance of her talk, SAM spoke with Shinoda about what visitors can expect to learn about in her upcoming talk, how her research on mended ceramics began, and the intimacy of this time-honored practice.

SAM: What can the public expect to learn about in your upcoming Saturday University lecture? What initially drew you to this topic?

YAYOI SHINODA: My presentation will focus on the practice of mending ceramics in Japan’s Edo period (1615–1868). The ceramics I highlight were used in tea practice and cherished by their owners, and their restored bodies embody the care they received. Some repairs were made visible intentionally—with some including gold embellishments—that bestowed a new a significance to the original ceramic work. Today, this practice of visible mending is fondly called kintsugi, and has garnered the attention of scholars from a variety of specialties, including psychologists.

My research on this topic began several years ago when I wrote a term paper for a seminar I took at the University of Kansas. The course focused on the transcultural exchanges between Korea and Japan from ancient times to today. One of the areas I love to research is ceramics, so I decided to study a 16th-century Korean bowl that became a tea bowl in Japan. The large bowl is made of a porous, soft porcelain and features a dramatic repair of golden filling along its body. It is such a fascinating work and I knew I had to learn more about it. I had many questions: What is up with this dramatic change? Why and how did that happen? Are there more examples like this? When did this kind of mending begin? After that semester, I continued to study that bowl and others like it. Eventually, Dr. Halle O’Neal invited me to dive into the topic further. My presentation at this January’s Saturday University will be based on my scholarly article on mended ceramics that was published last year.

SAM: Academic research often involves travel. Is there a travel experience related to your lecture experience that you could share with us?

YS: My research journey took place during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, so I could not travel anywhere, not even locally. However, the Nelson-Atkins collection has some ceramics with visible mends, so I was able to study them. Also, thanks to the dedicated librarians, museum colleagues, and other professionals throughout the US and Japan, I was able to access resources remotely. I was fortunate to meet lacquer artists such as Naoko Fukumaru in Vancouver, BC and Gen Saratani in New York via Zoom. And I hope to visit them soon now that we are back to traveling more. Their insights were critical for me in thinking through the meanings of different repair methods and philosophies.

In assessing the Nelson-Atkins’s collection of mended ceramics side-by-side, I found myself considering the intimate connection shared between the tea bowls and their owners, whose names may be known or unknown to us today. The works also display the owners’ taste and sensibility, which likely guided the mending technique and material choice. Another issue that emerged during my research was how little we know about the people who mended these works or when they underwent their bodily change. Although I intend to introduce a few examples of recovery stories in my lecture, many tea ceramics’ physical transformation processes are unrecorded. This is the focus of my ongoing research and may require me to travel in the coming months. Looking to the future, I would also love to learn more about how tea practitioners in the Edo period used the ceramics they had mended.

SAM: The Seattle Art Museum is home to nearly 25,000 works of art. What’s one artwork from the museum’s collection that resonates with you? Why?

YS: There are three objects in SAM’s collection that pique my interest. One is Tea Powder Container from the Edo period. The bags made of exquisite textiles speak to the immense significance the owner placed on the container, which is important in thinking about human-object relationships. The second example I love is this beautiful Tea Bowl (“Fuji”) by Ryōnyū (Raku IX; Japanese, 1756–1834). The area in which the glazed and unglazed segments meet creates a striking landscape that resembles Mount Fuji. The lens to see this kind of “accidental” effect as a landscape also applies to appreciating mended ceramics’ transformed bodies. Lastly, I want to spotlight Tea Cup, named “Red Plum in Winter,” by Dōnyū (Raku III; Japanese, 1599–1656) because of its charming and carefully mended embellishments made with gold powder. The fine golden lines gently transform the cup’s body, while also testifying to the care it received from its owner.

SAM: What’s one book you’d recommend to those interested in learning more about your lecture topic?

YS: This is a tough question to answer because of the many informative resources that already exist. Here are a few recommendations to get you started:

Kintsugi: The Poetic Mend, Kemske, Bonnie, New York: Bloomsbury, 2021.
Reuse, Recycle, Repurpose: The Afterlives of Japanese Material Culture. O’Neal, Halle, ed, Special Issue, Ars Orientalis 52, 2022.
Flickwerk: The Aesthetic of Mended Japanese Ceramics. Museum für Lackkunst, Translated by Howard Fine. Münster: Museum für Lackkunst, 2008.

– Simon Tran, SAM Manager of Public Engagement at the Seattle Asian Art Museum

Photos: Courtesy of Yayoi Shinoda. Tea Bowl, Japan, late 16th to early 17th century. Glaze stoneware (Karatsu ware) with lacquer mending. Overall: 3 x 5 1/2 inches (7.6 x 14.0 cm). Purchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust, 32-62/6. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri. Tea Bowl, Japan, late 17th century. Stoneware with pinkish white crackle glaze (Gohonde ware) with lacquer mending. Overall: 3 1/2 x 5 5/8 inches (8.9 x 14.3 cm). Purchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust, 32-62/2. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri.

Object of the Week: Goryeo Celadon

Elisabeth Smith on Jan 21 2022

Kintsugi (golden seams or joinery) is the centuries-old Japanese art of repairing ceramics. Through mixing lacquer with powdered gold, silver or platinum, broken pottery is pieced back together—a second life made visible through glistening veins of metal. Like a palimpsest, objects bearing traces of kintsugi reveal a material history and process. Rather than devalue, kintsugi‘s mended fractures imbue a given object with new meaning. Imperfections are embraced and celebrated.

This 11–12th century celadon gourd-shaped bottle, currently on view in Boundless: Stories of Asian Art, illustrates such signs of kintsugi mending. Celadon ware of the Goryeo dynasty is considered a trademark of the period and the main type of ceramics produced. Its variably grey-green and green-blue coloring comes as a result of specific materiality and conditions: “the presence of iron in the clay and of iron oxide, manganese oxide, and quartz particles in the glaze—as well as to the firing conditions inside the kiln.”¹

With its unique green hue, delicately incised floral pattern, and pleasantly attenuated proportions, this bottle finds many visual connections within the Color in Clay installation at the Seattle Asian Art Museum. However, unlike the other celadon works in its vicinity, additional streaks of gold set it apart from the rest.

– Elisabeth Smith, SAM Collections and Provenance Associate

1 Soyoung Lee, “Goryeo Celadon,” Metropolitan Museum of Art, October 2003, https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/cela/hd_cela.htm.

Images: Celadon ceramics on view in the Color in Clay installation in the exhibition Boundless: Stories of Asian Art, Seattle Asian Art Museum. Photo: Nathaniel Willson.

Object of the Week: Form 19-3

Seattle Art Museum on Sep 24 2021

“The act of kneading clay and creating shapes connects me to the thoughts and memories deep in my heart.”¹
– Fujino Sachiko

Form 19-3, a new acquisition, is now on view in Folding Into Shape: Japanese Design and Crafts. It is a recent work by the Japanese artist Fujino Sachiko (born 1950), who began her art practice in textiles and fashion design, and later studied ceramics under the pioneering artist Tsuboi Asuka (born 1932). Inspired by the abstract ceramic works of avant-garde artists such as Yagi Kazuo (1918–1979), Suzuki Osamu (1926–2001), and Yamada Hikaru (1924–2001), Fujino ventured into ceramics, finding that the medium allowed her to express her artistic ideas most freely.²

Drawing on her background in fashion design, Fujino manipulates clay as if folding and shaping fabric. This sculpture’s intricate form is built up from geometric shapes, and balanced with irregular folds in gradations of grey. The folds create beautiful silhouettes like those of a dress, such as the one by Issey Miyake also on view in Folding Into Shape. The elegant texture of the surface was created by the application of matte slip through an airbrush.

Fujino creates her clay sculptures through the laborious process of coil-building and hand-sculpting without the use of maquettes. With an aim to create works that have a dynamic appearance from different angles, she shapes the clay intuitively and does not know the final form of the work until it is complete. Many of her recent ceramic artworks began with geometric forms but turned into more organic forms in the process. While the biomorphic sculpture takes on a floral form, it also invites the viewer to think beyond petals and blossoms. The artist has remarked: “My interest in the mystery of plants has been deeply rooted since my childhood, even though my work is not a direct image of flowers.” Indeed, seen from above, the sculpture evokes a painting by Georgia O’Keeffe.

– Xiaojin Wu, Atsuhiko & Ina Goodwin Tateuchi Foundation Curator of Japanese and Korean Art

1 Online exhibition catalogue, Forming a Voice, www.mirviss.com/exhibitions/forming-a-voice, p. 3.

2 Interview with the artist produced by Joan B Mirviss LTD in April 2021: https://vimeo.com/551679336.

Image: Form 19-3, 2019, Fujino Sachiko, Stoneware with matte glaze in white and gradations of grey, 19 1/2 x 18 1/8 x 17 3/4 in., Purchased with funds from Gordon Brodfuehrer in honor of the Monsen Family, 2021.19 © Artist or Artist’s Estate.

Object of the Week: Pool with Splash

Elisabeth Smith on Jul 30 2021

Having grown up in Los Angeles, there is something uniquely comforting about the scene of a sun-drenched swimming pool. David Hockney, of course, is one artist whose pools come immediately mind: his bright, seductive paintings of the 1960s and 70s are highly evocative images of life and culture in Southern California, and have rendered his name nearly synonymous with the subject matter.

For Hockney, “In the swimming pool pictures, I had become interested in the more general problem of painting the water, finding a way to do it. It is an interesting formal problem; it is a formal problem to represent water, to describe water, because it can be anything. It can be any color and it has no set visual description.”^[1]

If Hockney’s iconic pools are, broadly speaking, defined by their spatial flatness, color relationships, and reduction of form through painting, Robert Arneson’s sculptural Pool with Splash is a perfect counterpoint. His exploration of the pool and its contents takes shape through ceramics: each ripple and refraction of light is represented as an immutable piece⁠—fitted together like a puzzle⁠—with blue and green glazes. And much like Hockney’s A Bigger Splash, Arneson’s Pool is punctuated with a foamy burst, invoking the presence of a swimmer.

Along with his contemporaries Peter Voulkos, Bruce Conner, Viola Frey, Jay DeFeo, and others, Arneson is considered part of the “Funk Art” movement⁠—a loose affiliation of artists originally included in the 1967 exhibition curated by Peter Selz, Funk, at the University Art Museum at the University of California, Berkeley.

Arneson’s irreverent work and playful sense of humor, along with an interest in everyday objects and personal narrative, are just some of the movement’s characteristics⁠ (a reaction to the non-objectivity of abstract expressionism that dominated the 1950s). Arneson’s commitment to ceramics is also notable, and part of a larger effort to elevate the medium which, at the time, was considered merely decorative or utilitarian, and pejoratively relegated to a realm of “craft.” Measuring nearly 12 feet wide at its largest point, Pool with Splash is hardly utilitarian and its use as decoration is up for debate. Here, Arneson wryly upends the once-strict divisions separating “fine art” and “craft,” all the while making clear his mastery of ceramics. Now, if only we could swim in it!

– Elisabeth Smith, SAM Collections and Provenance Associate

[1] Matthew Sperling, “The Pull of Hockney’s Pool Paintings,” in Apollo Magazine, February 2017, www.apollo-magazine.com/david-hockney-pool-paintings.

Images: Pool with Splash, 1977, Robert Arneson, ceramic with glaze, 18 1/2 x 145 x 116 in., Gift of Manuel Neri, 82.156. A Bigger Splash, 1967, David Hockney, acrylic on canvas, 95 1/5 x 96 in., Tate Modern, London

Object of the Week: Bundle

Elisabeth Smith on Mar 26 2021

Don’t imitate me;
it’s as boring
as the two halves of a melon.
– Basho, translated by Robert Hass

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Indeed, Tanaka Yu’s ceramic sculptures convincingly appear as vessels wrapped in knotted furoshiki (wrapping cloth). And still, even after we are made aware of the work’s materiality, it is difficult to see the object as anything other than a textile whose woven structure conceals an object underneath. Here, imitation serves another purpose.

For Yu, who studied oil painting before working in ceramics, this effect of concealment allows her to invoke that which is hidden, prompting her viewers to consider the sculpture’s purpose, and ideas of functionality versus non-functionality. Within the context of Japan’s centuries-long history and tradition of ceramics, too – firmly rooted in the functionality of the object –Yu’s conceptual sculptures turn utility on its head.

However, for all its conceptual rigor, Yu’s Bundle series evidences a mastery of clay as well. Though the pieces appear to be slab-built, they are in fact coil-built. The artist, using Shigaraki-blended clay, deftly transforms the earthen material, exploiting its inherent and renowned plasticity, into a lightweight cloth. The distinctive yellow color, whose pigment is applied in thin layers by brush, further accents the newfound drapes and folds of the sculpture. The choice of color also refers to the type of yellow cloth often used to wrap a ceramic vessel within its storage box.

Yu’s Bundle, recently acquired by SAM, is a seductive work, and one that benefits from close looking, consideration, and reflection. The artist shows us that imitation, in this case, is far from boring, and can raise important questions about the use-value of objects and the functions they serve.

– Elisabeth Smith, SAM Collections and Provenance Associate

¹Shigaraki is considered one of the “Six Ancient Kilns” in Japan. The clay found in the Shigaraki area is rich in iron and feldspar, among other compounds, that informs its unique texture and color once fired.

Images: Bundle, 2019, Tanaka Yu, Matte-glazed stoneware, 24 3/8 x 16 1/2 x 16 1/2 in., Gift of Gordon Brodfuehrer in honor of the Monsen family, 2020.21.3 ©️ Artist or Artist’s Estate Image courtesy of Joan B Mirviss LTD, photo: Kani Hazuki.

SAM Shop: Creative Pottery with Deb Schwartzkopf

Chelsea Werner-Jatzke on Jun 30 2020

Earlier this month we had to cancel a book signing event featuring highly regarded Seattle potter, Deb Schwartzkopf. We were so sad to miss this chance to learn about her innovative techniques and see her newest collection of work in person, but the good news is, you can find her new book online at SAM Shop! Learn more about this artist and her book below.

Explore and gain new skills in pottery with local artist Deb Schwartzkopf in her recently published book, Creative Pottery: Innovative Techniques & Experimental Designs in Thrown & Handbuilt Ceramics. This book provides tutorials in the basic tools and techniques for beginners, while also refreshing foundational skills with new techniques and inspiration for experienced potters. The introductory chapter includes essential information, such as: setting goals, building a basic tool kit, setting up a wheel, and making and using templates. Later chapters add complexity through ideas such as decorative edges, bisque molds, and throwing closed forms.

Deb Schwartzkopf introduces these foundational and new techniques to potters through step-by-step photos, templates that can be used by readers, and beautiful photos of her work and the work of other active American potters. In each chapter, she profiles one or two potters, showing images of their work and asking them questions about their techniques, inspiration, and artistic process. These profiles provide readers with context about current work in the field and illustrations of how the techniques and ideas taught in the book can be employed. Through this book, potters can learn how to create many forms, including: cake stands, bud vases, goblets, teapots, pitchers, dessert boats, and juicers, all illustrated with photos and clear instructions.

Schwartzkopf is a studio potter, instructor, and active artist in Seattle. Her studio, Rat City Studios, has evolved into a communal clay establishment, where she teaches classes, creates her pottery, and mentors assistants. Schwartzkopf was born in Seattle, earned her MFA from Penn State University, and taught at schools including: University of Washington, Ohio University, and Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She was named Ceramics Monthly and Ceramic Arts Daily’s 2019 Artist of the Year. With her pottery, she works to make tableware that infuses life with purposeful beauty. Learn new techniques or inspire an artist you know with this new book, on sale now at the SAM Shop.

– Pamela Jaynes, SAM Gallery Coordinator

Images: Quarry Publishing, matisse lb photography

Object of the Week: Mizusashi (water jar) with bamboo

Chelsea Werner-Jatzke on Apr 12 2019

A few weeks ago I had the privilege of attending a traditional Japanese tea ceremony at a Zen Center in the Bay Area. It was one of those days when spring felt imminent—no longer a distant dream.

The tea house at Green Gulch was a sacred site in many ways. Set off from the rest of the property, the building and its surrounding garden were a tranquil respite, maintained impeccably; entering the tea house required intentionality and following certain rites, such as the washing of hands and kneeling to take off shoes before entering.

Once inside the tea house, I and the other nine guests were asked to take in the immediate environment, to observe the details and beauty of that which surrounded us. The thatched roof, tatami mat floor, textured walls (made from clay and straw), and aroma of the interior—cedar, used to heat the water—were some of the first things I noticed and appreciated. As the tea was made, served, and consumed, the ceremony was replete with actions and gestures grounded in gratitude.

As the ceremony progressed, the importance of tools became clear. Generally, different utensils are used for different occasions and seasons. For example, at this tea ceremony in early spring, the kettle hung from the ceiling while in other seasons it would be lower, below the floor. Other utensils included a water jar, water scoop, tea scoop, and whisk—each carefully selected for their express purpose.

One of the most important components of the Japanese tea ceremony, water jars hold fresh water for the making of matcha green tea. This water jar, or mizusashi, in SAM’s collection, with a black lacquer lid is beautifully decorated with stalks of blue bamboo—a subtle but striking illustration. The piece is by Eiraku Myōzen, one of only a few female ceramicists who were able to have a successful career in early 20th-century Japan. After Myōzen’s husband—also an artist—passed away, she took his place leading the Eiraku workshop in Kyoto, one of the leading manufacturers of ceramics in the region.

While this new acquisition will not be used in the tea ceremonies at SAM, tea ceremony demonstrations—or chado, “the way of tea”—take place on third Thursdays at 5:30 pm and third Sundays at 2:30 pm. I have a feeling it will change the way you look at and think about everyday—and not-so-everyday—utensils.

– Elisabeth Smith, Collection & Provenance Associate

Images: Mizusashi (water jar) with bamboo, early 20th century, Eiraku Myozen, porcelain with blue glaze, 7 7/8 × 7 1/2 × 6 in., Gift of Mary and Cheney Cowles, 2018.2. Photos: Elisabeth Smith.

Object of the Week: Ai-Apec Stirrup Spout Vessel

Elisabeth Smith on Nov 30 2018

Among their many achievements, Mochica (also known as Moche) society is well-known for their innovations in and mastery of ceramics. Celebrated for their figurative vessels—often resembling animals, plants, deities, and even adult activities—Mochica ceramicists produced a variety of exquisite forms whose painted and sculpted surfaces reflect the vibrant life, religion, and culture of the Mochica people.

Mochica stirrup spout vessels, in particular, would take on complex and figurative scenes. Named for their resemblance to stirrups, such vessels are identifiable due to their wide body, which connects to an elegant circular hollow handle. Though unsure of exactly what was stored in these vessels (until recently it was believed that their purpose was mainly funerary), it is likely that they contained beverages like corn beer (chicha). Equal parts beautiful and versatile, stirrup spout vessels were also functional: in the high elevation deserts of Peru, the narrow spout would prevent the evaporation of the vessels’ liquid contents.

In this Ai-Apec Stirrup Spout Vessel on view in the exhibition Cosmic Beings in Mesoamerican and Andean Art, an anthropomorphic figure stands surrounded by six peaks topped with snail shells, which also share anthropomorphic features. Holding a staff, the stoic figure—Ai-Apec, the chief deity of the Mochica—dons a patterned tunic and pendant earrings in the form of feline heads, as well as a helmet with two more feline figures.

Generally, Mochica vessels are slip-painted and bichrome, with red decoration on a white or cream background. However, this Ai-Apec vessel is much darker—a type of ceramic known as blackware; the dark color is achieved through a firing process that removes oxygen from the kiln, causing iron compounds in the clay to turn black. Not only does this piece represent a mythical continuity between the Mochica and later Chavín and Chimú cultures, but it represents an artistic continuity as well—such blackware ceramics were also made by the Chavín and Chimú.

– Elisabeth Smith, Collections Coordinator

Image: Ai-Apec Stirrup Spout Vessel, ca. AD 200-500, Mochica, blackware ceramic, 10 × 8 1/2 × 8 in., Gift in honor of Assen Nicolov, 2018.3.2

Object of the Week: Xing ware-type

Elisabeth Smith on Mar 2 2018

Sometimes I find myself struck by the contemporaneity of ancient objects, how something made hundreds or thousands of years ago can embody an aesthetic or message relevant to today. Take this Chinese Xing ware-type ewer, for example. Created during the 10th century, the porcelain vessel—with its white glaze and spontaneously placed markings—feels, to me at least, like it could have been made this past century, alongside works by artists such as Lucy Rie or Mary Heilmann.

Ceramics have no doubt made a comeback in the art world, a trend which suggests that the once rigid division between art and craft (and therefore ceramics) is no more. As art critic Roberta Smith rightly articulated in 2009, “It can’t be said enough that the art-craft divide is a bogus concept regularly obliterated by the undeniable originality of individuals who may call themselves artists, designers, or artisans.”[1]

Though today we might be less inclined to differentiate between artists and artisans, in 10th-century China there would have certainly been a distinction between makers commissioned by imperial courts and those who produced commercially. Xing ware, produced in what would today be China’s Hebei province, caught the attention of the Tang imperial court and epitomizes Tang-era porcelain: the purity of its clay was unusually low in iron and titanium oxides (contaminants) and very fine grained. Fired in the kiln at 1250 degrees Celsius or higher, this porcelain was unparalleled in its sturdiness, translucence, and pure white color.

Similar in form to late Tang dynasty ceramic ware, this ewer is especially unique due to the greenish-brown splashes of glaze on its porcelain-white body. Used as a wine bottle, this vessel bears similarities to many late Tang wares, though it was unlikely to have been produced in a Xing kiln.[2] Perhaps it is the simplicity of form and coloration that makes this work feel so modern, or, conversely, that so many contemporary ceramicists find (for good reason) inspiration in the rich ceramic traditions of China, where porcelain was perfected and produced exclusively for centuries.

– Elisabeth Smith, Collections Coordinator

[1] Roberta Smith, “Crucible of Creativity, Stoking Earth Into Art,” New York Times, March 19, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/20/arts/design/20dirt.html.

[2] The shape and glaze of this ewer is similar to Xing porcelain, but the clay texture is not nearly as fine. For more on this work and Chinese porcelain more broadly, see Julie Emerson, Jennifer Chen, and Mimi Gardner Gates (Porcelain Stories: From China to Europe, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000), 38.

Image: Xing ware-type, 10th century, Chinese, porcelain with white glaze on white slip, green-brown stripes, 5 1/2 x 2 13/16 in., Thomas D. Stimson Memorial Collection, 51.122

Object of the Week: Colored Vases

Chelsea Werner-Jatzke on Feb 26 2016

“An artist can only raise new questions and offer insight into social change after reflecting on the feelings of the time. I don’t see art as a highly aesthetic practice…Rather than thinking of my projects as art, they attempt to introduce a new condition, a new means of expression, or a new method of communicating. If these possibilities didn’t exist, I wouldn’t feel the need to be an artist.” –Ai Weiwei¹

“At different times I’ve worked in different mediums. For me, the variation is not an artistic judgment, but a necessary choice. It’s just as normal to eat with chopsticks, as it is to eat with forks or hands. Different circumstances call for different tools. I try to express ideas with the most appropriate available materials and forms.” –Ai Weiwei²

“Making choices is how the artist comes to understand himself. These choices are correlated to one’s spiritual predicament, and the goal is a return to the self, the pursuit of spiritual values, and the summoning of spirits. These choices are inherently philosophical.” –Ai Weiwei³

Ai Weiwei is super active in the world of contemporary art, posting to his Instagram, posing as a drowned Syrian refugee, decorating Berlin’s Konzerthaus with 14,000 life jackets. Not all of the commentary about him is positive, and I’m sure that’s as he would like it. He’s stated in the past that he desires uneasiness; that he deliberately moves away from the self-indulgent comfort of creating things to use his skills or to get praise. He wants to think critically and to act on his convictions. He wants to unsettle and to motivate. Definitely from his own perspective, he is a conceptual artist, a political activist, and an advocate for self-discovery.

Ai’s art still depends—in a really essential way—on its visual impact. The striking visuals he’s able to concoct are the rhetoric he uses to promote his provocative agenda. He may not think of art as a “highly aesthetic practice,” but the work speaks for itself. Just think of his Sunflower Seeds. The work is less than compelling as a printed phrase: “One hundred million hand-sculpted, hand-painted porcelain beads, made to look like sunflower seeds.” As a realized artwork, it captivated people.

Ai thinks about the forms as a means to an end—his end is pointing others to self-consciousness, sparking in us a challenge to accepted systems of belief, provoking critical responses and inspiring action—but they’re still necessary means. They are his way of communicating. He can’t even be sure that his art will communicate what he wants it to do. All he can be sure of is that viewers will experience the physical artwork. Many of us who look at his works will come away with different conclusions; such is the open-endedness of art, politically-driven or otherwise. All we have is the thing, so I say, let’s look closely at it.

SAM’s one work by Ai Weiwei, Colored Vases, is on view at the Asian Art Museum in Volunteer Park. It delivers what it promises. Nine ceramic vases are arranged in a pattern much like a bowling pin setup—there are three rows, with four vases in the back row, three in the middle row, and two in the front row—only the headpin is missing. The artist has applied a base coat of industrial paint in a bold hue—such as yellow, pink, lime green, or plum—to each vase. A second color in high contrast to the base layer covers the lips and shoulder of the vase, then drips down the body. Some vases have long drips like the tendrils of a plant, while others are shorter, like polychrome stalactites. The paint drips are irregular, and they seem natural.

Contrast is especially important to this work: there’s contrast between the traditional form of the ceramic vases and the bright and contemporary paint colors applied to them; contrast between the two colors on one vase, and contrast in the range of colors among the whole group; contrast between the normally grainy texture of a ceramic pot and the flatness of industrial paint. There’s probably contrast, too, between what Ai Weiwei thought of and what you take away.

—Jeffrey Carlson, SAM Collections Coordinator

Sources:

“Reconsidering Reality: An Interview with Ai Weiwei.” In Ai Weiwei: According to What? Edited by Deborah E. Horowitz. Prestel Verlag: Munich, London and New York, 2012. Published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name, organized by the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, in association with the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., and displayed at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C., October 7, 2012-February 24, 2013; the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, Indiana, April 5-July 28, 2013; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Ontario, August 31-October 27, 2013; Pérez Art Museum Miami, Miami, Florida, November 28, 2013-March 16, 2014; and Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York, April 18-August 10, 2014.

“Making Choices.” Translated by Philip Tinari, from The Grey Book, November, 1997. Reproduced in Ai Weiwei. Phaidon Press: New York, 2009.

i. According to What, 38
ii. According to What, 39
iii. Ai Weiwei, “Making Choices,” 128

Image: Colored Vases, 2010, Ai Weiwei (Chinese, born 1957), ceramic with industrial paint, approx. 17 x 22 in. each. Seattle Art Museum, Purchased with funds from the Estate of Robert M. Shields, 2013.33, Photo: Nathaniel Willson.

Artist Yee Sookyung on embracing the imperfect

Dawn Quinn on Jan 28 2016

Beauty is often associated with symmetry; Order, even lines, and pleasing color palettes are all indicative qualities of something that aims to catch the eye. The earliest Western theory of beauty can be found in the works of Greek philosophers from the pre-Socratic period, such as Pythagoras. The Pythagorean school saw a strong connection between mathematics and beauty. Notably, they believed that objects proportioned to meet the golden ratio (two objects are in the golden ratio if their ratio is the same as the ratio of their sum to the larger of the two quantities) were more attractive. Many greats including Da Vinci and Dali have incorporated the number in their works. Artist Yee Sookyung—currently showing work in the exhibition Paradox of Place: Contemporary Korean Art at the Asian Art Museum—does not.

Rather than create pieces that follow this long-held belief, she takes existing pieces of art as well as broken shards, bits, and pieces of work made by traditional Korean master ceramicists (what she calls “ceramic trash”) and turns them into gold—literally.

“My concern is not about the history of Korean ceramics, but it is to play with the fragments which exist now, and this is different from the ceramics masters who produce all of the ceramics adhering to traditional methodology,” Yee said. “Korean traditional ceramic masters break almost 70% of the product that don’t reach up to the standards of masterpieces. So I put the broken bits and pieces of ceramic trash together, one by one, as if putting together a jigsaw puzzle. I covered them with 24k gold leaf, and I wanted to emphasize the crack. In Korean, the word for crack is also the same for gold.”

She describes the process of the pieces coming together in a rather romantic, predetermined way:

“A broken ceramic piece finds another piece, and they rely on each other,” Yee said.

The result is ultimately sculptural, anthropomorphic, and universally beautiful.

Watch the artist describe this process, the act of combining histories, and the many layered metaphors buried in her large-scale work. Experience Thousand and all of its perfect imperfections in Paradox of Place at the Asian Art Museum.

SAM Art: A focus on ceramics

Seattle Art Museum on Mar 27 2012

Through much of Greek art history—from the abstract grave or cult carvings of the Cyclades to the generalized portraits of the Hellenistic period—the Greeks often depicted women as ideals of beauty and grace. For both men and women, in fact, Greek beliefs held that external appearance was the manifestation of internal character. As a result, the artistry lavished on appearance and personal adornment rivals that given to public monuments.

This small ceramic figure was created in a world where Greek culture was dominant, and on the move. Following the path of Alexander the Great’s conquests across Europe and West Asia, Greek art and culture spread across the Mediterranean world. Ceramic sculptures already had a long history in these areas, but arguably reached an apex in the Greek region of Boeotia during this period. Produced in multiples in workshops, their compact size and relative inexpense allowed them to be exported to major Hellenistic markets. Tanagra figurines—these finely modeled figures of seated, standing and dancing women—exemplified the Greek ideals of femininity, celebrating the perfection inherent to beauty.

Seated tanagra figurine, 4th–3rd century B.C., Greek, Boeotia, Hellenistic period (ca. 323-31 B.C.), terracotta, pigment, 6 1/2 x 3 5/8 x 4 1/2 in., Norman and Amelia Davis Classical Collection, 66.101. Currently on view in the Ancient Mediterranean and Islamic art gallery, fourth floor, SAM downtown.

SAM Art: Brendan Tang’s “Manga Ormolu”

Seattle Art Museum on Jan 25 2012

The new incarnation of Here and Now, the museum’s new acquisition space, focuses on recently acquired contemporary ceramics. The works now on view reveal their desire of bridging the past and present. These hybridized vessels express their synthesizing of visual histories from Eastern and Western cultures.

Focusing on the intermingling of stylistic traditions, Brendan Tang’s Manga Ormolu blends cultural references. Here, a dynamic robotic form seems to discard the skin of its prior form as a Chinese Ming dynasty vessel. The artist has said, “this narrative is personal: the hybridization of cultures mirrors my identity as an ethnically-mixed Asian Canadian. My family history is one of successive generations shedding the markers of ethnic identity in order to succeed in an adopted country—within a few generations this cultural filtration has spanned China, India, Trinidad, Ireland and Canada.”

Manga Ormolu version 5.0-h, 2010, Brendan Lee Satish Tang, Canadian, born in Ireland, 1975, ceramics, mixed media, 16 1/4 x 11 x 7 1/2 in., Margaret E. Fuller Purchase Fund, 2011.27, © Brendan Lee Satish Tang. Now on view in Here and Now, new acquisition gallery, third floor, SAM downtown.

SAM Art: Rescued Treasure

Seattle Art Museum on Nov 2 2011

Sometime in the 16^thcentury, a ship was carefully loaded with tens of thousands of Vietnamese ceramics and set sail across the South China Sea. It never reached its destination—off Cham Island, near the port of Hoi An, the ship and its cargo sank. This plate was salvaged from the wreck in the course of an open-water excavation in 1997-99. The excavation yielded wares as varied as celadons, polychrome enamels, and blue and white. All of the artifacts from the shipwreck date to the late 15th and early 16th centuries, when Vietnamese ceramic production and export had reached its peak in terms of numbers and aesthetic appeal. The formal beauty and sophisticated ornamentation of the so-called “Hoi An hoard” reveals the high level of artistic achievement reached by Vietnamese potters at that time.

Plate with floral spray, late 15th-early 16th century, Vietnamese, blue and white ceramic, 9 in. diameter, Gift of Mary and Cheney Cowles, 2000.133. Currently on view in LUMINOUS: The Art of Asia, special exhibition galleries, fourth floor, SAM downtown.

This is one of the five Hoi An works included in the museum’s current special exhibition, LUMINOUS: The Art of Asia.