In the PROFILES section: Eight ceramic artists from Germany/Korea, Italy, Thailand, Spain, UK, USA. Coverage of EXHIBITIONS and EVENTS in Germany, Italy, Russia, Spain, Estonia, Thailand, France. In the section ARTIST JOURNAL, we present Skuja/Braden and Hsu Mei-yueh. And we also have interviews with artists IN STUDIO as well as listings of Dates, Courses, Seminars and Markets.
NEWS
PROFILES
Sun Bin Lim – Germany / Korea
Terry Davies – Italy
Pim Sudikham – Thailand
Adrian Brough – UK
mCLp studio Resmini & Pellegrino – Italy
Billa Reitzner – Germany
Lucien Koonce – USA
Sarah Heber-Kohlmann – Germany
EXHIBITIONS / EVENTS
The Faenza Art Ceramic Center – Italy
Russian Ceramists – Russia
Claudi Casanovas – Spain
CLAY – EU Project – International
Kohila Symposium – Estonia
Silpakorn Clay Works – Thailand
Venice Biennale 2022 – Italy / International
Dieulefit – France
9th Ceramic Workshop, Kusadasi – Turkey
BOOKS
New literature
ARTIST JOURNAL
Skuja/Braden (Latvia/USA) and Hsu Mei-yueh (Taiwan) – Ting-Ju Shao
IN STUDIO
Janina Myronowa (Ukraine / Poland) – Evelyne Schoenmann – Interview / Developing Skills
DATES / Exhibitions / Galleries / Museums
COURSES / SEMINARS / MARKETS
ADVERTISEMENTS
PREVIEW
Monika Gass
We have known each other for many years. What was it that made you come to Germany – with your excellent training and education?
In South Korea, I studied ceramic design and stage design and I learned good ceramic technique from Korean professors but my work tended to be uncreative. But I wanted to continue developing my own ideas and inspirations in my own sculptures. That was very difficult for me. In my M.A. course under Professor Suku Park, I was able to observe and understand the working process for creative work and how inspirations are developed. But my work still looked uncreative to me – so I looked for a very good professor who could help me.
Professor Suku Park recommended Professor Brandt at the Institute of Ceramics and Glass Arts (IKKG) and so I came to Germany to study under him.
What were the formative influences for you here in Germany? Korean ceramics are very highly rated here in the West.
I think modern German ceramic art is far ahead of Korea. There are professors in Korea who are able to teach sound ceramic technique. But I find some of the professors are lacking creativity. Perhaps South Korea seems to value ceramics of outstanding technical perfection higher than creative and original work although it lacks perfection. Personally, I appreciate that very much.
SunBin Lim
You are well known as an artist, for teaching and for sport as well: What do you favour of these three businesses?
How did you start?
That’s a tough question. Choosing between making, teaching, and cycling? The favourite one might be making. I used to think that I like teaching the most, but the Covid situation proved me wrong. During the Covid time I needed to teach online and I didn’t want to teach at all. I didn’t like teaching enough to like teaching online. I realized that in fact I just love to be in the studio.
To work at the university means I can be in the studio as much as I want with the students or by myself. That has kept me doing it for 23 years now.
For cycling, I’ve been doing it quite seriously for about 10 years. The type of cycling I do is called randonneuring or audax. Basically, it is a self-support long distance ride with a time limit.
It is not a race, but you cannot be too slow. And it can be quite long, the shortest one is 200 km, the longest one I’ve done is 2,000 km. It is almost like a pilgrimage. You are by yourself with limited resources. You cannot carry too much on a bike yet you have to have everything you need. I have become more patient, more enduring, more flexible, and smellier sometimes.
Pim Sudhikam
She began working freelance in 1992 in a small basement. Then she had a shop with a workshop until the workshop became too small and dealing with customers interrupted her concentration in the studio. Since 2004, Billa Reitzner has been working in a former laundry in the Giesing district of Munich and feels at home there. The shop opening on the courtyard has no fixed opening times, which gives her freedom and peace to work. Looking in through the barred windows of the large double door at the porcelain work gives a hint at what is concealed inside. In her showroom, Reitzner displays finished work on plain shelves and tables. Her studio is one door along, with two large windows and plenty of light on the large tables in the middle. Along the walls, there are cupboards, a slab roller, a test kiln, a wheel and the large electric kiln. Everything has its place, neat and tidy like the patterns on her ceramics.
Her breakthrough came with the Diessen Keramikpreis in 2003. For the first time, a wider public became aware of her with her fabric porcelain (cf. New Ceramics 3/06, p. 28-9).The same year, she received an honourable mention at the International Ceramics Biennial in Gyeonggi, Korea. However, she soon returned from her “excursion” for the discovery of new surface structures with the greatest possible transparency and pushing the limits in what were ultimately figure-like fabric coverings, concentrating again designing functional utensils and crockery.
(Maria Schüly)
Billa Reitzner
Monika Gass speaks to Lucien Koonce
I have followed you on social media for nearly fifteen years, and I continue to see your amazing pieces; they are so beautiful! How did you come to create such awesome surfaces, colours and forms?
What I make now has been a continuous journey for about that same period of time, beginning back in 2009. I will elaborate on the specific event for this present body of work in a bit. It all started with employing the “kurinuki” technique when making my vessels, and, during that beginning period, starting to fire with Chris Gustin in his anagama, as well as becoming friends with Jeff Shapiro. Gustin’s vast knowledge of wood firing presented the ideal environment to fire my work. And I consider Jeff to be a mentor as I have looked to his knowledge and creativity for inspiration. Coupled to this is the interest I have had in the Japanese aesthetic regarding wood firing, as well as their traditions surrounding the various forms that I make, such as the chawan/tea bowl and the guinomi/sake cup. Jeff Shapiro’s knowledge in this area helped to solidify the direction I wanted to explore in my ceramics.
What kinds of expectations did you have when you started, what kind of ceramics did you start with, and were there ever changes in forms and/or material, as well as the firing process?
I had never worked with clay until I was a student attending East Carolina University in my hometown of Greenville, NC. I fell in love with the medium, ended up majoring in it and getting my BFA. I went on to get my MFA in ceramics at the University of Iowa and have continued to work with clay for all the years since, although sometimes rather sporadically. My beginning work was done on the wheel, and I focused on making covered containers.
Lucien Koonce
This artist residency gave me an impressive feeling of freedom that we find within ourselves during sustained concentration. The alternation between “secluded time” in the studio and “open spaces” in the city produced in me an exceptional synergy. I was able to give myself time to create, to devote myself exclusively to working with clay, which is what I value most in my working life. I therefore centered myself. All my senses were activated, stimulated. I renewed my bearings. A balance was established.
I modelled the clay with great assiduity, every day in cooperation with Davide Merendi, coordinator of the FACC, and its art director, Mirco Denicolo. The Faenza Art Ceramic Center provides optimal conditions for creation with a well-organised practical framework, conversations and reflections.
The general title of my work is “toucher pour voir/toccare per vedere/touch to see”.
I discovered a local earthenware, very plastic, with a terracotta colour, used coloured clays, lilac, green, anthracite, blue, red with soft colours, tried low temperature firing, 1000°C.
(Nathalie Doyen)
TOUCH TO SEE 3, coloured clay, needle-pierced, 1000°C, 10 x 8 x 8 cm photo Tiziana Del Vecchio
The International Ceramics Symposium in Kohila, Estonia, in July 2022 made interesting encounters with international ceramic artists possible for us. The 3 or 4 week symposiums have already taken place more than 20 times. Many well-known artists have worked in this special place and an important collection of excellent contemporary ceramic art from all over the world has been assembled.
Kohila is located on a river, 30 kilo-meters m inland from the Estonian capital Tallinn. In summer, the time of the “white nights” when it hardly ever gets dark in the north, music festivals and art symposiums take place in health resorts with lake promenades, embedded in a lively cultural landscape with poetry, concerts and exhibitions. Ten ceramists were invited to work for three weeks at the Manson House in Kohila, which mainly serves as a music school. The symposium was organized and run by Lumi Kristin Vihterpal & Jekaterina Kultajeva and a team of local helpers, who sourced the wood for two 70-hour anagama firings, for example. Experienced wood-firers such as Aigi Orav and Külli Koiv were there, who also arranged visits to workshops and museums or night-time walks through the wetlands.
(Karin Flurer-Brünger)
Anagama firing
The 59th Venice Biennale 2022 took place from 23 April to 27 November 2022. This Biennale has been held every two years since 1895, making it the oldest Biennale in the world. Under the title The Milk of Dreams, curator Cecilia Alemani invited 213 artists to an exhibition in the 80 national pavilions. As always, fascinating contributions were on show in the Giardini in Venice’s Castello district, where participating countries present their national pavilions. The themed exhibitions put together by Cecilia Alemani could be seen in the Arsenale.
Milk of Dreams dealt with the upheavals of our present. A statement in the press releases summarizes this: “The Milk of Dreams is not an exhibition about the pandemic, but it inevitably registers the upheavals of our time. As the history of the Biennale di Venezia clearly shows, in times like these art and artists can contribute to presenting new forms of coexistence and endless new possibilities for change – artistically interpreted.”
The curator, who lives in New York, also gave new impetus to the traditionally white and male-dominated art scene by emphasising diversity at this Biennale. The jury made a clear stand not only with the presence of the projects, but also with the awards to two internationally acclaimed artists from the Black Community: Sonia Boyce (UK) and Simone Leigh (USA) received the most important prizes of the show – two Golden Lions.
(Monika Gass)
“great white fear” Jana Euler, Frankfurt + Brussels, 2022, glazed ceramic
Hsu Mei-yueh (Taiwan)
Hsu Mei-yueh (born 1970) created the Internal Ocean series in 2011 and 2012, which consists of plant-like objects with large compound leaves or compositions with bud-like structures. After settling in the countryside of Tainan in 2015, her works unleashed their inner energies with a freer and more open spirit. Since 2014, Hsu has been self-consciously exploring her inner visions, letting her life experiences and thoughts and feelings about things slowly accumulate until they surface and visualize spontaneously as shapes and colours from the unconscious. The artist creates as her hands follow her mind, epitomizing Nature as visual objects, and even unexpected, strange surprises.
Skuja / Braden (Latvia + USA)
Skuja Braden is an artist duo formed by Inguna Skuja (from Latvia) and Melissa Braden (from USA) in 1999. Working in ceramics, they apply various ornamental styles, and draw on themes from literature, art, and current political issues. They are not only an art group, but also life partners.
The most recent highlight of Inguna Skuja’s creation is Selling Water by the River, the exhibition at the Latvia Pavilion in the 2022 Venice Biennale, which showcased more than 300 ceramic works with cartoon realist sketches presented as installations. Half of them are new works, and the others were created by the duo in the past twenty-four years. Water is the main idea of the exhibition. To the artists, flowing springs are closely associated with life and spirit. Skuja Braden incorporated Zen proverbs into their works, reminding the audience of the things or truths that they have known but forgotten.
(Ting-Ju SHAO)
Hsu Mei-yueh
Skuja / Braden
Janina, let’s start with your biography and your professional career.
I was born and raised in Ukraine, and I started my ceramics training there. Firstly, at Art College in Donetsk, and later I continue my studies at the Lviv National Academy of Arts in Ukraine. In 2012 I started my training in Poland at the Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Art and Design in Wroclaw. Since then, I developed my career in Poland. I had two years’ experience of working in a ceramics studio at the Institute of Design Kielce before I decided to come back for PhD studies at the Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Art and Design in Wroclaw.
Lately, you’ve been changing your locations so fast it makes one dizzy. You are invited to symposia and residencies around the world. Right now you’re in Montana, aren’t you?
After finishing my studies in Poland, I decided not to have my own studio but to travel around the world and visit different ceramics centres. It brings me so much joy and I feel that during this time I learn a lot. Right now, I am in Montana in the United States as an artist in residence at Archie Bray Foundation, Speyer Fellow. It is my first time joining a Long-Term Residency, here at Archie Bray it can last one or two years.
(Evelyne Schoenmann)
Janina Myronova
