after a month in america I am back in japan. we start firing chiaki's kiln in a week. back to work.

I was invited to participate in a recycled materials mailbox art exhibition in Nagano this summer. Fuyuko and I went down the street to the metal scrap yard and asked the owner if we could have a few things. I found a few BBQ grills, something that looked like a rusty steel chair and part of a cabinet. The exhibition starts July 28. I’ll post more info about the gallery








Found object: part of early 20th century wooden cabinet, acrylic


I had the idea for the wooden cabinet as soon as I picked it up.












Found object: Japanese style BBQ grills.
by far the most time consuming. The brittle aluminum kept cracking and breaking and without right angles or straight lines, lining everything up was a long process of trial and error. The end result looked like a submarine so I painted an octopus on the inside.
aluminum grills, wood, enamel and acrylic.





Found object: “steel chair” –not sure what it was exactly-
simple to put together, but took a lot of time to fit all the wood into the irregular shape.
wood, steel, acrylic with polyurethane finish.

worked with chiaki on another flamenco set design last week.

we decided the composition of the straw rope by throwing pieces on the canvas and taping them where they landed.

A twisted mess of straw and straw rope laid out near the kiln.

Everything came together nicely in Tokyo.

The set was for Yuri’s solo flamenco performance in Roppongi.

Curtain call with Yuri, the band and Chiaki.

(srry, this post is in Japanese only)

got back from from sasayama last week. hadnt seen john, amy or aly for a while so it was good to be back and spend time with everyone, hard work (as always). I really didn't have much to put in the fire though. when I sat down to make new pots I hadn’t really touched clay for 5 months and couldn't concentrate and ended up throwing out a lot.
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the firing went well, john has opened the kiln and is satisfied with the results. Even though the pots turned out well the firing was somewhat somber. with amy moving back to Canada and aly moving to another part of the country and me so far away it was the last firing we’ll all do together. probably the last firing ill regularly go to. Since I met john on a bicycle trip to sasayama in 2007 ive never missed a firing and I don't look forward to that period of my life ending. ive gotten so much out of my time working with John. more than just pottery he’s helped guide my understanding of the art world, how to live in japan and walk the line between the two cultures and he’s been a good friend. practically speaking I know its for the best though. The only way to seriously improve my ceramics is to start taking more responsibility for the decisions going into the firng process and take a more of a leadership role in chiaki’s kiln near my house.