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ICSCERAMICSNEWS

the Internat ional Ceramics StudioKecskemét. Hungarykeeping contact wi th the ceramic community

• Masterclasses• Shozo Michikwa • Ilona Romule• Value of Reflection - Akio Takamori• Markus Böhm masterclass - images

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Orb

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Les Lawrence(USA)

ICONIC IMAGES . . . f rom the col lect ion

the INTERNATIONAL CERAMICS STUDIOApril 2012

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Welcome to the latest of our new style newsletters.

Images from the first masterclass of the year, led by German potter Markus Böhm, are on page 10 and 11. The kiln fired beautifully - very fast up to temperature and then held for several hours to bui ld up ash effects. This Kusakabe kiln is proving to be a relaxed and easy kiln to fire. Our tecnicians, Jakab and Klara have made a swing door for the kiln and it is now so easy to pack and just close the door - no stacking bricks. With the addition of its own roof the kiln can now be fired in all weathers and with little or no smoke it is better for our city centre location.

There are still some places available for our masterclasses. If you would like to participate in any of these courses, led by internationally acknowledged

artists, then please email as soon as possible. Details of the classes are on the next page and full information is on our website at www.icshu.org/programs

If you are considering a residency with us then please email for fur ther informat ion and an application form. We accept applications at any time but to ensure your preferred time slot please apply as early as possible. The value of an artist residency at ICS is highlighted in this issue featuring the figurative work of Akio Takamori.

We are always trying to expand the breadth of the work done here at the ICS and welcome your suggestions. We are be pleased to receive short articles or comments from past residents about their experiences on courses or residencies with us which can be included in future

issues.

The last issue was downloaded by over 1600 ceramists, potters, teachers etc. as well as being available online at ISSUU.COM.

Please email for any information or to discuss your ideas or send copy to me . . .

Steve MattisonInternational Co-ordinator and Residencies.icshu@hotmail.com

CERAMICSNEWS

RESIDENCIES IN AUGUSTDue to a cancellation by astudent group we have placesavailable this August . . . 2012

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Creative throwing and Soda glazeRuthanne Tudball1 - 7 May, 2012

For intermediate and advanced throwers with basic knowledge of the wheel. Exercises which will stretch and challenge your approach to throwing and will offer an opportunity to practice stretching your imagination and originality in your approach to form and decoration. This will be combined with soda vapour glazing.

Figurative mouldmakingIlona Romule21 - 27 June, 2012

During this 5 day workshop, Ilona Romule will demonstrate her step-by-step approach to design, model and mould making, describing how she transfers factory technology to a studio environment to create unique porcelain figures.

Paperclay techniques for sculptorsRosette Gault29 August - 4 Sept., 2012

“To gain expressive and technical freedom, I created an optimum balance of recycled paper pulp (cellulose fiber) and clay that allowed me to invent or rather ‘realize’ a system of non-linear construction and mixtures that are impossible with traditional ceramic clay to be fired in kilns. I was first to introduce these so called ‘radical’ and ‘revolutionary’ technical and expressive freedoms.”

Sculptural throwingShozo Michikawa8 - 14 May, 2012

Experience one of Japan's leading and most innovative ceramic artists in a five day master class. Shozo is an excellent teacher and and inspiring world class ceramic artist. Shozo will be demonstrating his unique process of cutting and faceting work that is then expanded on the wheel to produce his dynamic sculptural forms. Each student will have a wheel and will be able to explore these new techniques alongside Shozo.

MASTER CLASSES 2012Our popular series of short mastercourses continues in 2012 with our week long courses and one three week summer course.

Please visit our website for full details and prices of all our continuing education courses. Costs for the short courses are 150,000 Hungarian forints and include accommodation in single room, teaching, use of equipment and the materials.

www.icshu.org/programs.html

NEW DATES NEW DATES

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Inlay Coloured PorcelainSusan Nemeth2 - 8 October, 2012

My porcelain ceramics are inspired by historical textiles and wallpapers. Sometimes I find my patterns in the backgrounds or details of paintings by Henri Matisse, Paul Klee, Ben Nicholson, Eva Hesse and others.

The decoration is integral. Laminated sheets of coloured clays inlaid with hand cut patterns, are beaten, rolled and stretched before forming.

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Shozo Michikawa’s works have been called haikus in clay.

“My partner is nature itself and I need to get along well with it otherwise the result will be unsatisfactory. All I do in the process is to give a little helping hand to the ever transforming clay to assist the way it wants to go.”

Though his techniques are diverse, Michikawa always strives to create ‘functional’ pieces.

"No matter how styles change I always insist on creating pieces that can actually be used. Pottery was originally an integral part of people.”

Many have attempted to define the ephemeral Japanese philosophy and aesthetics of “Wabi Sabi”, founded on the acceptance of the transitory nature of things. Perhaps contemplating one of Michikawa's teapots would

be enough to reveal the modern manifestation of this vision of the world. Indeed, every one of his works is the reflection of nature and time, a haiku that distills classic and contemporary, emotion and charm. His pots are intriguing because they are full with contradictions. They have a contemporary feel, yet are somehow timeless; they have a sculptural appearance, yet serve functional purposes; they reflect an urban aesthetic but look as if they have grown from nature.

On first seeing his work, you think they are handbuilt and sculpted from blocks of clay but all are created on the wheel, pared down and expanded from within. He describes the process as having a conversation with the clay and only helping it to go the way it wishes.

AT THE INTERFACE OF NATURE AND ART

Shozo Michikawa’s mastercourse SCULPTURAL THROWINGtakes place 8th - 14th May, 2012. Please email if you wish to join the course.Born in Hokkaido in 1953, Shozo Michikawa is one of Japan’s leading ceramicists and has exhibited worldwide. He will be teaching his throwing techniques, particularly in making triangular and square forms.

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Ilona Romule’s mastercourse FIGURATIVE MOULDMAKINGtakes place 21st - 27th June, 2012. Please email if you wish to join the course.

There is no ultimate explanation of the way daily life transforms into artwork. For Romule there exists a relationship independent from her surrounding life, her feelings and the final result – the porcelain figure. “I only use my technical skills and the given possibilities - then this three-dimensional story appears. Porcelain is only the language and the tool of my expression,” Romule describes. “Discovering

porcelain for myself I start to feel a deeper responsibility about what I am doing. I see endless numbers of untried possibilities.”

“My stories are partly pages from my life, my ideas and dreams. I think of games, symbols and situations where the main heroes are Woman and Man, although sometimes depicted as animals or hybrids. Altogether it creates a self-portrait of my feelings and imaginations,” she describes.

Latvian artist Ilona Romule transfers factory technology to a studio environment to create unique porcelain figures.

Ilona Romule has received international recognition with her slip cast porcelain figures. A frequent symposia artist at

the International Ceramics Studio in Kecskemet, Hungary, and at the Art Centre Zvartava in Latvia, Romule has also been a featured artist at the Guldagergaard Ceramic Research Center in Denmark. Her works have been shown at the International Porcelain Triennial in Nyon, Switzerland; the World Ceramic Biennale in South Korea; and the International Triennial of Silicate Arts in Kecskemet, Hungary

FOCUS ON Ilona RomuleIlona Romule is a studio artist from Riga. She was granted her Masters of Fine Arts Degree in 2003 from the Latvian Art Academy. Ilona has received international recognition with her slip cast porcelain figures  and   is renowned for her use of semi-erotic imagery both in the form of her fine porcelain pieces and also in the surface decoration.

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three week workshop with MASAKAZU KUSAKABE18th June - 6th July, 2012. Please email to apply as soon as possible.

To hold a Masakazu Kusakabe teabowl is to hold the quintessential spirit of the universe in your hands.

The thick, porous Oribe glaze of the vessel feels warm to the touch while the curves and crevices of your palms and fingers comfortably rest around the uneven walls of the bowl. The green and black glaze and vessel shape transmit the intensity and energy of the artist. You may also hold a teabowl with wood ash glaze that embodies its chance encounter with ash that resulted in variegated shiny and matte surfaces on the vessel walls that resemble the heaven filled with stars.

Discover the traditions, techniques and technology behind Japanese wood-fired ceramics. Masakazu Kusakabe shares everything you need to know to begin or improve as a wood-fire ceramist with his tried and tested recipes for a variety of wood-fire glazes using his Smokeless Kiln.

Masakazu Kusakabe’s kilns produce traditional ash-glazed surfaces in relatively short firing cycles with no smoke.

The complexities of loading and firing a wood kiln, unique glazes and firing techniques used to obtain surface effects, and experimental approaches will be discussed during this workshop.

He is the co-author of "Japanese Wood-Fired Ceramics", the first comprehensive English-language guide to ‘yohen’, the Japanese

classification of wood-firing effects, colors and surfaces.

Cost of this three week workshop is 260,000 HUF and includes, accommodation in single room, studio space, tuition and three group firings in the smokeless wood kiln included. The extra costs will be for the clay you use.

MASAKAZUKUSAKABEGLAZES FOR WOOD FIRINGKusakabe imbues his ceramic vessels and tea ceremonial wares with his love of nature, his interest in astronomy, and his deep spirituality.

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Akio Takamori's figurative pottery is among the most distinctive in contemporary ceramics. Often characterised as a hybrid between Eastern and Western art - traditional Japanese graphic art fused with a contemporary search for self-identity conveying an eroticism that is playfully truthful and optimistic without being shocking or embarrassing.

In recent years the overtly sexual imagery of his vessel forms of the 1980’s and early 90’s have

given way to quieter, more contemplative sculptural work reflecting Takamori’s continually evolving relationship with clay.

He c rea tes v i l l agers , schoo l ch i ld ren , shopkeepers and infants all modelled from memory. Drawing on his childhood in Japan, Takamori creates loose communities of figures that are made up of individual pieces with unique, carefully crafted identities.

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above: “Sitting Girl”, in the opening exhibition of Museion, the studio’s gallery in Budapest.The opening was a celebration of the new works gifted to the collection during the last ten years.

left:Akio making “Standing Man” and finished piece.

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"The vessel form was very important to me.  It provided me with a good deal of surface to paint on, also it is a dimensional form that has an inside and outside.  For me the vessel has become the shape of the human body. 

I have learned much from historical ceramic figures in China, Japan and the Mediterranean.  They all hold so many human stories behind them . . . physicality exists on the other side of spirituality and intelligence. 

Physicality could be an entrance to instinct and intuition, where we might find something beyond spirituality and intelligence."

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Akio Takamori's ceramic sculptures evoke an eerie sense of reality and presence.

Often drawn from childhood memories of small-village life in Japan, his standing and sleeping figures depict ordinary people going about their day-to-day existence.

The series he created in Kecskemét depict his interpretation of the ‘socialist utopia’ seen on a visit to the Communist Sculpture park in Budapest. Here these towering sculptures have a final resting place where their day to day relevance has been frozen in time.

In Takamori’s sculpture park series young Japanese men and women translate these universal, heroic gestures to a more human scale, gentler and more benign. Revolutionary socialism becomes social democracy.

“I’m influenced and intrigued by many different types of human images and objects. I wonder about the details of those lives. I wonder how many of those details would change if that person had lived in a different time or culture. How many would stay the same. I try to push past assumptions.”

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Markus Böhm Woodfire courseImages from Markus’s course last week.

photos by: Maite Leyun

next issue - images from Ruthanne Tudball “Creative throwing course” and Shozo Michikawa “Sculptural Throwing”

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ICS WEBSITEwww.icshu.org

MAILING LISTIf you would like to be added to our mailing list just email icshu@hotmail.comWe do not pass on your information to anyone else.

EMAIL ICS Steve Mattison - Residencies and International Contacticshu@hotmail.com

Kormos Emese - Hungarian and exchange student contacticshu@t-online.hu

FACEBOOK Photos and news are available on Facebook. Go to the link below and click “like”.http://www.facebook.com/ICSHUNGARY

NETTY van den HEUVEL

The movement or step from a two dimensional drawing to a three-d imens i ona l ob j e c t ha s been fascinating me for seventeen years. How a piece comes into this world and takes space. The results are constructions, some related to buildings, some others to minerals and crystals. When a situation changes, energy comes free. This energy can be used for creating. Theinternational studio for ceramics in Kecskemét, created that situation for us and made exchange possible. Thanks for that.Energy never gets lost.

Netty van den Heuvel (Netherlands)

Why Artists in Residence ?

the INTERNATIONAL CERAMICS STUDIO . . . keeping contact with the ceramic community

International Ceramics StudioH-6000 KecskemétKápolna u.1.Hungary

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