ART LIVES TORIDE Where Art Is Born

Since my father was a sculptor, I also worked as a sculptor until I was about 43 years old. I started making pottery when I went to teach at a college. There was a big electric kiln there. I was excited about doing it, so I took a class and learned how to do it.

After I retired from college, I wanted to have my own pottery class so I bought a gas kiln. I thought I needed a little training to teach people, so I did it for about three months, and it went well. I thought, “This might work well,” and started holding a pottery class.

As I work on it, I contemplate many things. Sculpture isn’t something that sells well, so sculptors are very lonely. But pottery is cheap and useful. Therefore, to some extent there are more customers. I could see people from time to time, so I wasn’t lonely. It was rather fun.

Also, as I am the second generation of a sculptor, I have a certain view of what sculpture is like and art, both in a good way and in a bad way. When I was doing sculpture, I was trying to catch up with that. But for pottery, because I had never worked with it before, I enjoyed developing my sense of values according to my own point of view.

It was not so different when I became a potter. Because I was drawing patterns on the surface when I was a sculptor too.

I make some earthenware (ceramics), but most of my works are porcelain (stoneware). I make a variety of series, and each piece is completely different. But what I have been working on is the large bowl which is like an underground type. However, you know, if you try to make something like that from the beginning, it won’t work out.

I started with the idea of drawing ordinary plants, and I kept on drawing, but no matter how much I tried, I still felt that there was something missing. I felt bad for the customers, who have been buying my work because they love it. So I added some underground stuff, and the plants I had worked so hard on at the beginning really came into their own.

I am not a maniac. I’m just saying that there is a high percentage that a work starts to move when it comes in contact with a taboo. This kind of thing, of course, won’t be placed in the department store’s tableware section. They wouldn’t even be listed here either.

It feels like a path opens up only after you work on it so hard and experiment with different kinds of elements. It’s like you suddenly feel released. And that’s how the work gets better too. But if you aim for that from the beginning, it won’t work. You can never go straight. You have to explore. It is always by chance.

At first, I carefully draw one by one, but when I’m finished, it’s like I just fall into it. It is done in an instant. That’s the fun of expression.

Pottery is not free. If it were sculpture or painting, you could do whatever you wanted because it is freedom of expression. But pottery is a product, there are certain things you are not allowed to do. For example, political or sexual matters.

There are times when I think I should make a statement about what is right; however, to be straightforward in my work, it just doesn’t feel right to me. That’s why I end up playing tricks. But at the same time, I also feel like it is not right to say not to touch such silly things.

Sculpture is a sanctuary, so to speak. But a vessel is something that is part of our daily life. So, I do it within the context of that. Sculpture has a long history of being a statue, and even now, I feel that sense of idolatry remains, but I would like to be in a place where it is not. Sculpture and contemporary art are big. They are very big. Physically, too. I want to make them small and put them in my pocket. When I think about it, I feel there are some things I can do.

With art, there is a place where a great person judges whether it is good or bad, but with pottery, you judge it yourself. I think it’s nice to work in such a place.