Updates and Spates

Every monthish, maybe month and a half, I am fortunate enough to get a package containing one or two new Ceramics Monthly. I could write about how charged up they get me to learn more and try new things in the studio, but I wanted to share a very well stated description of an artist named David Hicks. The reason I'd like to highlight him is for his description of his creation process.

"I tend to work in short encounters with my wall compositions. These encounters are broken up into multiple focuses. For example I initially begin by producing five or so objects that will set the tone for a piece. Once that has been established, I work to make pieces that relate to or respond to those initial model objects. This process is usually a fast-paced process that is heavy handed and quick so I can keep my direction. I have a tendency to drift with objects in an evolutionary way. Works keep evolving and changing, and I keep it quick so I don't stray too far. Honestly this pace also keeps my interest fresh and focused." 

Hicks continues on, describing how he chooses objects and hanging methods for his seedpod inspired wall clusters which have such a fluidity and organic sense I can hardly stand it. The repetition of form, but not exact form or glaze pulls my eye in in a way that many other works of similar theory (collections of many smaller ceramic pieces grouped together) tend to loose my interest. 

If you're in need of some beautiful sculptures to look at or perhaps a great short article (this isn't the one from the Ceramics Monthly but it'll give you a little more of an idea) Check it out! It's what's inspiring me this week. 

I'm trying to really crank out work for a bisque fire this Thursday. I have been working on a few larger forms, and am still cranking on the slab plates. Any way! If you're a reader tell me about your creative process. I think the biggest reason David Hick's work  speak to me is because of the episodic quality to the collection of work featured. They have a real sense of exploration within a given time to me. I've worked for three (going on four) years in a borrowed studio space here at Susaki high school, and I think I may have to use his words to express how my creative process has worked here. Each day, perhaps week at best, is an episode of my imagination. I can rarely build up any type of concrete process or method, so my work comes in spates. My goal for this most recent outcropping was to create forms in sets. except for this beauty below. 

 

Until next time. Go create something! 

Surprise Firing and garden first (only photos!)

I'm supremely happy with the glazes on these pieces. 

Have a great weekend Ya'll! 

Gazed and bread bowl

Bad blogger! Just a week after posting about my efforts to go back to once a week I skip a week. LAME. No excuses, just the promise of two posts this week to make up for it. The studio has been in hyper clean (do not make messy again after deep cleanse that took 2 weeks) mode. Meaning I had (until this week) essentialy sequestered myself to glazing only. I did this mostly to fight of the seemingly inebitable return of floors with drips or splashes of slip, pockets of dust, and the more than occaisional misplaced tool. However I did manage to finish glazing the big vase forms I have been working on for the past several weeks. The'll go in the kiln sometime this week. Also managed to take a photo of my bread bowl. mixing bowls in Japan always leave my big baking recipeis overly full in my mixing bowls and generally feeling confined by the lack of space to stretch, so I made my own big bowl. The glaze didn't turn out astonishing, but I don't need it to be. This bowl was made to use, to have flour, egg, and all things baked good mixed within it. I can't wait to test it out, and baking gives my currently overly cold house both a delicious smell and pleasant warmth.

Enjoy the photos!
We'll see you later this week with a small change of pace perhaps.

What a HOOT!

Sorry for the delays in posting, Blogger was giving me some difficulties, but we've been to couples counseling and are staring to work through our issues. I've been a mix of all to busy to be in the studio, teaching my pottery course,getting the fall and winter garden in, and managing to do short bursts of good work when I can actually get my hands in the clay. In my course my students really wanted to make coffee mugs with faces on them. I've never once attempted any type of 3-d portraits or non abstract sculpting, so I took it as a bit of a personal challenge. One student was particularly interested in me showing them how to sculpt and owl's face, and being that I'd just received and e-mail from home about the newly spotted back yard bard owl of Plum Street, WV, it seemed all too perfect an opportunity to try my hands at it. The sculpting itself was fantastically fun, and really felt like a very natural process, but obviously something in my timing or technique was off because it did not dry evenly and is now marred by cracks.

I've also been continuing to try and work bigger! This vase in the most recent attempt at larger scale workings, and I am quite pleased with the way it's turned out thus far. The new firing time table is up for this term, and we are quickly heading towards a bisque firing. I'm excited and ready to get some new pots coming out of the kiln again!

Glad to be back in the posting business. We'll see ya'll on Thursday with more new work.

We now return to your regularly scheduled programming

The mountains are bursting into vibrant greens after yesterday's Spring storm, and the remnants of cherry blossums are a pleasant change to the debris that typically clogs the gutters just after a rain. I'm sorry to have gone AWOL on ya'll, but I've been playing the cherie tour guide for my mother and the father for the past two weeks. If you'd like to hear about our travels in more detail feel free to hop on over to my other blog (some time next week once I write about our trip). It's about my travels here in lovely Japan land (  thedailybfg  ). Now that that little explanation and shamless self advertising is over and done with, let's get to the meat of the days ceramic meal.

My parents, crafts-people as they are, share my love for hand made things, and my mother esspeically has an affinity for pottery. We saw, and even procured a few, beautiful pieces on our travels. The reason I share these pieces with you, my internet darlings, is primarily to show just a handful of examples of the types of work I am exposed to every day. The constant reminders that there is a world of unknown potential and skill before me in this field. So enjoy the little mini tour of work, and hopefully we'll be fully back to normal this time next week.

Bizen-Yaki

Odo-yaki

Odo-yaki

Odo-yaki 

(currently unknown location, but supposedly 200 years old)

Nagasaki local artist 

Nagasaki local aftist

currently unknown 

Oh yeah! Before I sign off here . . . Tabe Sensei was recontracted at Susaki High School! So raise up your glasses and give us a song! All of the worries are gone. Another year with a great friend and many many more chances to continue making my pots.

Can't wait to get back in the studio.

Bizen-yaki frog

See you Monday!

Green

Today it's raining cats and dogs, and I am helping Tabe Sensei clean out her office. In early April I'll know if she shall be returned to me or not. Keep them fingers crossed.

Being that most of this week was lost to a fantastic 3 day English camp, and I havn't gotten any studio time this week, I am unsure what to say of these forms. The green glaze can be spectacular, but also a bit frustraitingly inconsistant.  The first piece pictured came out exactly as I wanted it to, but on the others the green's vibrance faded to a slightly more olive green. It's still interesting and a nice color, but not what I really gunning for. The last form pictured is a large open toped flower vase.

May your weekends be wonderful and dry!

Dedicated to

The end of March has rolled around. The first traces of Spring's warmth  touch our days only to be blown out to sea by the chilled winds that come down the mountains to the coast. The weather isn't the only thing experiencing the winds of change. This time of year marks the end of the Japanese school year, and (to my mind) the strangest of Japan's different practices. If you are a teacher or administrator in the public school system there is a chance that you will receive a command from on high that you must change schools. Every year a certain percentage of teachers are shuffled. I asked around my office today and the general consensus seemed to be that no one (no matter age or ranking in the education system) stays at one school for more than 10 years. Five was the most frequently guessed number. The accepted reasons for this jumbling is that it keeps teachers from becoming too settled. By having to adjust to new environments and different coworkers everyone stays excited (hopefully) and avoids stagnation. 

For the younger teachers this systems seems to be an accepted frustration, but for me it means that my life at work could be changing in huge terrifying ways. There is a chance that my English department will change (I love my fellow English teachers, and, while I am sure others are nice, I don't care to exchange any of them for new faces), but even scarier - there is a chance that Tabe Sensei, the pottery and craft teacher, will be taken away from me. This leads me to (FINALLY) the point of today's post. 

It is my great pleasure to introduce Yuka Tabe. Mother of two, graduate of Kochi Gaidai, metal worker, ceramics enthusiast, Susaki high school teacher, and one of the BEST people I have had the pleasure of meeting. Tabe-sensei studies in college focused on education and craft. In college she loved working with metal, but has had to teach everything from painting to making glass beads. She conducts her classes in a way that allows the students to learn through doing and experimentation. The art classes are the most familiar feeling for these american eyes. The courses she runs seem much more like a dialog between students and teacher, instead of the teacher lecturing a class (which is how many of the other classes appear to go). I have had the pleasure of spending the past year and two thirds enjoying every day of work a little bit more because of the friendship she has given me.

We've shared many wonderful discussions on the different uses and forms that international clay artists have chosen to grow into. This dialog, often sparked by a shared gander at a fresh copy of Ceramics Monthly, frequently drifts toward the concept of function and tradition. Through gesture, dictionaries, and Japenglish I can gather that for some Japanese potters (or, dare I hazard to say artists in general) have the notion that there are forms and styles that are such a part of their history that there are methods that must be followed. That is not to say that Tabe-sensei says that there is no room for creativity in Japan, but that by following the more traditional shapes, glazes, and aesthetics the artist might become, in a way, more connected to their past. The designs and aesthetics she mentions manifest in our conversations, and in her pieces.

I could devote a whole new blog to writing out every kindness she has shown me over my time in Susaki. She's helped me meet local potters, spent days with me driving from gallery to gallery in the hopes of getting my work on display, and she's granted me access to the studio and tools that let me feed my ever growing pottery obsession. Without her kindness this blog simply wouldn't be possible, and I am so very thankful for her friendship. She is often so busy being a teacher, mother, and friend that I fear her creativity gets overshadowed. Like so many, she isn't creating works of art to seek money or recognition. She creates to teach others how to express themselves, and I find that very inspiring indeed.

Even if she has to change schools I know we'll stay in touch, but I figured it was important to share her huge contribution.

We'll see you on Thursday with some new work photos.

Copper and Iron

The kiln is open, and all but one piece survived. This firing included a lot of new glazes (the two pots above both feature my favorite new glaze, an iron red that has me just totally enchanted), but along with the new glazes, which I will continue to show piece by piece as time goes on, I also tried a new decorative technique. I wrapped some copper wire around two of the pieces, the bowl pictured above and a coffee mug. I tried this on some old test chunks and it produced a fantastic blackish silver that was incredible, however my tests were with a very small amount of wire. I opened the kiln this week to find that a single loop of copper wire is more than enough to not only create the desired dark mettalic flair, but to simultaneously fuse the pot to kiln shelves in a matrix of solidified metal bubbles. The coffee mug was lost in the process of chiseling away the binding copper, but the bowl and its fancy new copper skirt were dislodged with relative ease. I thought I would have to scrap the piece because of the sharp edges, but, low and behold, Tabe-sensei came to the rescue with her metal grinder, and after a quick safety lesson I was sanding away the metal into a truly unique foot for a bowl that might just be my favorite work to date (might even be going into my extremely tiny personal collection).

As I said I fully plan to continue posting more and more photos of the new work that came from this firing, but Monday will be a very special post. A tribute to one of the  best things to happen to my life in Japan and in the continuing quest to keep pottery on my brain and my hands dirty. What could it be?
Well, guess you'll have to tune in on Monday to find out.

Have a great weekend folks. See you Monday

Little Creature

Monday's here, and Kochi feels warmer by the day. I've got a time table filled with final exams to write and grade all week so, unfortunately, studio time will take a hit. The vase above was named by Yuka Tabe (the ceramics instructor at Susaki High School). She is my fellow adventurer in the ways of muddy creations. When this little fellow came out of the kiln last spring she excitedly exclaimed, "KAWAII!" (cute! in Japanese).  When asked why she said, "It's like little creature. I think, very very cute" So it came  to be called Little Creature.

Siblings 

We'll see you on Thursday with the opening of the kiln, and who can say what else. 

Waterlogged

It seems Thursday has officially come and gone before I could get my post up, but we'll press onward never the less. Tuesday and Wednesday this week were consumed by copious levels of humidity and constant rain. This made drying work quite interesting. I am convinced the ceramics studio holds moisture more than any other room in the school. 

 

Despite the moisture, this week saw the coming of many new and wonderful things in the studio. Monday and Tuesday were fantastic days of throwing. I am finally comfortable enough with my bowls and cups that I am willing to be more adventurous with my forms. Specifically, I want to work on vases, containers with lids, and tea pots. However, this jump to more difficult forms comes with a much higher level of challenges. Thankfully, Monday was one of those rare days in the studio where I seemed to have what one could only describe as magic hands. My imagination and my hands were almost in sync (this is so rare I can't even begin to articulate how pleased I was!). The forms were flying off the wheel. 

Vase forms were especially problematic and frustrating for me during my formal education (as minimal as it was). So one can only guess how large my grin was when the above pictured beauty was lifted from the wheel. 

 I hope that this will become my potter's mark. I find signing my work to always appear clunky and a bit like a drunk 5-year-old got hold of my leather hard green ware. I've never made a stamp before, but the fingers are crossed in hopes that it works out well.

Tomorrow I'll load the kiln with 23 new pieces, and come Monday I'll hopefully have lots of new work to test my four new glazes on. Assuming my bisque firing goes well, and no work is lost, this will be the most satisfying collection of pots in my year and a half in Japan. Thanks for being a part of the journey. Stay tuned for Monday's slides of older work.

May your weekend be filled with sun, smiles, and satisfaction. 

Purpose

I have been creating pottery in Japan for just a little over a year and a half now, and shown virtually none of my work. I hesitated to publish or post any of my pieces because I kept telling myself I was working towards some type of major unveiling. The problem with that is that I get virtually no feedback on my work (other than my own opinions), and as a young, completely unknown, foreign artist (who's Japanese is, let's face it, worse than infantile) I am not the most desirable addition to any local galleries. SO, in an effort to finally get feed back and get my work out there, I am starting this web space dedicated to my ceramics.

Just to fill in some gaps left by my brief artist statement, My name is Andrew (Bear) Sartorius and I have a ceramics problem. . . It started a long time ago. I was raised in the wild parentage of two wonderful people who met at a craft fair. My father, the fine wooden spoon carver, and my mother, now an ex-stained glass artist, filled our home with objects of wood, metal, and earth that had been shaped and molded into these wonderful forms. Of these fine crafts I found the ceramics aways caught my eye the most. However I studied English literature in college and didn't take my first ceramics class until the fall semester of 2009. A friend of the family happened to be the ceramics professor at Marietta College, and I signed up for a continuing education course, after graduating from The College of Wooster, with him. Once I started I couldn't stop. It just feels right for me to have my hands working in the clay. There are only two other things that have felt as right in my life - mentoring kids as a summer camp counselor and cooking. Shortly after my ceramics class ended I discovered I had been accepted as a participant in the JET (Japan Exchange and Teaching) Program. So, I picked up and relocated to Susaki City in Kochi Prefecture, Japan. Fortunately for my newfound addiction, the high school I was placed in has a beautiful (but simple) ceramics studio. 

And that's the story. Every chance I get I sneak down to the studio I lucked into having at my disposal. I am out to learn through doing, and improve my skills and creative abilities. I hope this blog will give others a chance to see my work and tell me what they think is successful and what isn't. Perhaps some day this will turn into more than a digital gallery of my work and creative process, but for now enjoy!

New bowls fresh off the wheel this Monday.
I am not a fan of this clay body, it's quite rough, and the glazes I have tend to come out a bit dull on top of it. These 7 mark the end of it.

My first vase form in Japan. Made last March.

A tea bowl from this Autumn's firing, and my first adventure in reglazing. 

One of my first pieces to come off the wheel in Japan.

This is one of the few pots no longer in my possession. It now assist's a recent addition to the 30 and up age bracket with his morning rituals. Hope it's treating you well Colin!