Father's Day & Japanese Ceramics

Alex brought Matthew B. Crawford's book Shop Class as Soulcraft on this weekend venture. Briefly perusing the first few pages of the book, I am transported back to my Junior Year Abroad trip to Japan. The University of Colorado's Seminar on Art and Religion was a rag-tag group of twelve students lead by a husband / wife professorial team. Essentially this was a independent study year based out of Kyoto Japan. My emphasis was on ceramics and pottery. As a Junior High Student, I started studying pottery at the Old Fire House on the Hill in Boulder, Colorado. Betty Woodman, a now quasi-famous Boulder ceramics artist, taught the class.

I will never forget the day my mother embased me while touring Betty's contempory cinderblock house during one of her annual pottery sales. "Betty, my son says the walls of your pots are not very thin." She graciously rolled her eyes, seeing my face turing red and said that she suffer from the flue during the time she threw these particular pieces. The thickness of the walls of your pots showed the acumen of your talent at the wheel. Betty really didn't care how thick the walls of her pots were, she was much more concerned about the overall artistic result created by wet clay crystalized by fire and glaze.

So springboarding from my highschool and college studies to my Junior Year in Japan, I found myself neck deep in the study of Japanese ceramics.