Japan: Clay in Japan

Full Course Description

Japan offers a unique laboratory to study both by observation and hands-on experience of the influence of culture, geography, and geology on the growth and development of material art. This course was focussed on ceramics. The six-week experience was essentially divided into two distinctly different but related parts, each of which provided a structured learning environment with very particular outcomes: The first part of the course concentrated on the development of a personal sketchbook / journal through a temple stay and visits to contemporary and historical sites of production and studios in central Japan. Important architectural sites, both old and new, from Okayama to Kyoto and Nara were visited. An interim review of the sketchbooks was concentrated on the interpretation of the accumulated drawings from each student into a spatial object or objects that were fired in the kilns of the Kuramaki Studio in central Nara Prefecture. Although this process would be the focus of the latter part of Wintersession there was ample opportunity for further visits in the historically significant region surrounding the studio. The course culminated with a documented exhibition of the “Clay in Japan”, in Japan.