TOSHIKO TAKAEZU (1922 - )

Toshiko Takaezu brings to her art both the influence of her Eastern heritage and her Western upbringing. Her closed pots with their exquisite surface decoration range in size from palm sized to over five feet tall and from thin and sensuous to round and puffy. They have both a serenity and a mystery, and their organic forms speak of her close ties to nature. Takaezu is also noted for her long teaching career and the artists she has mentored. In addition to being widely collected and exhibited, her work has brought her recognition which includes Living Treasure of Hawaii, a Gold Medal Award of the American Craft Council, and several honorary doctorate degrees. Now in her 80’s she continues to work both in her studio and her garden, a work of art in itself.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT – TOSHIKO TAKAEZU

“In my life I see no difference between making pots, cooking and growing vegetables. They are all so related. However, there is a need for me to work in clay. It is so gratifying, and I get so much joy from it, and it gives me many answers for my life.

One of the best things about clay is that I can be completely free and honest with it. And clay responds to me. The clay is alive and responsive to every touch and feeling. When I make it into a form, it is still alive, and even when it is dry, it is still breathing! I can feel the response in my hands, and I don’t have to force the clay. The whole process is an interplay between the clay and myself, and often the clay has much to say.”1

1. Quoted in “Lecture Platform BioBox, Toshiko Takaezu.” http://www.ciweb.org/Lectures/takaezu.html

RESUME – TOSHIKO TAKAEZU

1922 Born, Pepeekeo, Hawaii

1948-1951 University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI

1951-1954 Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI

1952 McInerny Foundation Grant

1954 Lillian Haas Prize, Michigan Artist Craftsmen Show

1954-1956 Instructor, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI

1954-1955 Professor, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI

1955-1964 Instructor and Head of Ceramic Department, Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, OH

1958 Potter Mellon Award, Cincinnati, OH Founder’s Society Purchase Prize, Michigan Artist Craftsmen Show

1958-1959 Honolulu Academy of Arts, Honolulu, HI

1962 Pemco Award, Syracuse, NY Women’s Art Club Award, Cleveland, OH Founder’s Society Award, Michigan Artists Craftsmen Show

1964 Tiffany Foundation Grant

1967-1992 Professor, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ

1975 Fellow, American Craft Council, New York, NY

1980 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship

1983 Dickinson Arts Award, Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA

1986 New Jersey Governor’s Award

1987 Honorary PhD, Lewis and Clark College, Portland, OR Living Treasure Award, Honolulu, HI

1992 Honorary Doctorate of Fine Art, Moore College of Art, Philadelphia, PA Howard Behrman Award, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ

1992- Present Studio Artist, Quakertown, NJ

1993 Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI

1994 New Jersey Pride Award Gold Medal, American Craft Council, New York, NY Human Treasure Award, University of North Carolina, Wilmington, NC

1996 Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ

1997 Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts, Cedar Crest College, Allentown, PA

2004 Women’s Committee of the Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show Award for Distinguished Achievement in American Craft

BIOGRAPHY – TOSHIKO TAKAEZU

Toshiko Takaezu was born in Pepeekeo, Hawaii, the sixth of 11 children of Japanese immigrants. Her parents had come to the island to work in the sugar cane fields. Takaezu’s first experience with clay was in a commercial studio; she enrolled at the University of Hawaii in 1948 to continue her interest, studying with Claude Horan, and also studying weaving and design. She was attracted to the work of Finnish ceramist Maija Grotell, and in 1951 enrolled in Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, MI, in order to study with her, bringing a supply of Hawaii’s black volcanic sand to use in her work. Grotell became a mentor as well as a teacher, and during her three years there Takaezu felt she had found her path. In addition, Grotell passed on to her students her belief that ceramics was an art form that could be the equal of painting or sculpture, an idea just beginning to take hold.

Following graduation from Cranbrook in 1954, Takaezu began her teaching career, teaching at Cranbrook (1954-1956) and the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1954- 1955). In 1955 Takaezu traveled to Japan for eight months to immerse herself in her Japanese heritage. In addition to meeting renowned Japanese ceramic artists Shoji Hamada and Rosanjin Kitaoji, she lived in a Zen Buddhist Monastery and studied aspects of the Japanese culture such as the tea ceremony. At the end of her stay she believed she had found what she had been searching for, that it was not the Eastern pottery itself but the entire art and culture of the East that mattered to her, in particular the integration of art and life. Upon returning to the U.S. she accepted a position at the Cleveland Institute of Art in Ohio (1955-1964), taking a year (1958-1959) to return to Hawaii to teach at the Honolulu Academy of Art in fulfillment of her McInerny Foundation grant.

On a trip through New Jersey in the early 1960s she fell in love with the area of rural Hunterdon County. Determined to set up a studio there, she took a leave of absence from the Cleveland Institute of Art and bought a house in Clinton, NJ. A series of grants allowed her to take a few years to establish her home and studio, and when nearby Princeton University offered her a position in 1967 she accepted, and has remained there ever since, moving to her present home and studio in Quakertown, northwest of Princeton, in 1975. Takaezu taught at Princeton until her retirement in 1992 and was honored by the university with an honorary doctorate in 1996. In her teaching Takaezu emulated her own mentors in encouraging her students to find their own voice and style. Today she is still in touch with some of her former students and works with annual apprentices at her NJ studio.

Like many, Takaezu’s early work in ceramics was functional – teapots, vases, bowls – and she worked primarily on the wheel. During the 1960’s her work began to evolve. With the “moonscape” series her spherical forms became more organic, emphasizing their roundness and fullness. Her signature closed shapes were appearing, the openings getting smaller, although still recalling their functional beginnings with a tiny opening at the top. As her work continued to evolve the pots became sealed and also increased in size. Now, they were containers in a different sense; instead of holding things, they hold air, space. “The most important part of a piece is the dark, black air space that you can’t see. Just as inside each person is also the key to humanity.”1 They also hold other things too, as Takaezu made it a practice to enclose small clay pellets and inscribed poems in her pieces. There they remain hidden unless the piece is moved and you hear the soft “ping” of the shard or it breaks, and the poem is revealed.

In addition to spheres other shapes, reminiscent of nature appeared – “tree trunks,” “torsos,” – all suggestive of the curves found in nature. To promote even drying she suspended some of her larger forms in hammocks and was so taken with the effect, the hammock became part of the piece. As her pieces grew, they became too unwieldy for the wheel, and she began incorporating hand building techniques to reach new heights. A larger studio and kiln encouraged her to experiment with pieces so large the tiny artist had to stand on scaffolding to shape the clay and to move around the piece glazing and decorating. “I like the idea of going around the piece and glazing – it’s almost like dancing.”2

The surface decoration is equally striking, and some of her friends have described Takaezu as a painter on clay. She pours, brushes, and drips the glazes, sometimes shiny, sometimes matte, often layered and marked. The influences of both East and West are present as is her strong tie to nature.

As part of the generation that moved ceramics from a functional craft to a recognized art form, Takaezu has combined creative ability with creative spirit. “You are not an artist simply because you paint or sculpt or make pots that cannot be used. An artist is a poet in his or her own medium. And when an artist produces a good piece, that work has mystery, an unsaid quality; it is alive. There is also a nebulous feeling in the piece that cannot be pinpointed in words. That to me is good work.”3

Today, in her 80’s, Takaezu stays busy in her Quakertown studio and in her garden, a work of art in itself and a source of joy to her. In addition to her ceramic work, she has also been working in bronze, recently producing a series of bells which further explore the relationship of sculpture and sound. Among her many honors are several honorary doctorate degrees; the Gold Medal of the American Craft Council; named Living Treasure of Hawaii and Human Treasure of the University of North Carolina. She is still exhibiting her work, one of the more recent being “Echoes of the Earth – Ceramics by Toshiko Takaezu” at the Crocker Art Museum of Art, Sacramento, CA in 2007.

1. Carol Stickland. “Master of Art and the Art of Living.” Christian Science Monitor 89 no. 218 (October 6 1997): 10.

2. Quoted in: “Grounds for Sculpture: Toshiko Takaezu.” http://www.groundsforsculpture.org/c_ttakae.htm

3. “Toshiko Takaezu: A Thrown Form.” Ceramics Monthly 23 (November 1975): 33-34.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY – TOSHIKO TAKAEZU

Books and Catalogs

Barrie, Brooke. Contemporary Outdoor Sculpture. Gloucester, MA: Rockport Publishers, 1999.

Berg, Stephen. Toshiko Takaezu: 1989-1990. Princeton, NJ: Gallery at Bristol-Myers Squibb, 1990.

Bowling Green State University, Fine Arts Center Galleries. Contemporary Clay: Master Teachers/Master Students. Bowling Green, OH: Office of Marketing & Communications, Fine Arts Center Galleries, 1999.

Clark, Garth. American Ceramics 1876 to the Present. New York: Abbeville Press, 1987.

______. American Potters: the Work of Twenty Modern Masters. New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 1981.

Edwardsville, IL, Southern Illinois University, University Center Gallery. Toshiko Takaezu: Tapestries and Recent Ceramics. Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois University, 1988.

Grotell, Maija, Jeff Schlanger, and Toshiko Takaezu. Conversation with Maija Grotell. New York: American Craft Council, 1968.

Kato, Ruiko et al. The Art of Toshiko Takaezu: Toshiko Takaezu Retrospective. Kyoto, Japan: National Museum of Art, 1997.

Manhart, Marcia, and Tom Manhard, eds. The Eloquent Object: Evolution of American Art in Craft Media since 1945. Tulsa, OK: The Philbrook Museum of Art, 1987.

Morinoue, Hiroki, Toshiko Takaezu, Duncan Dempster et al. Recent Paintings by Hiroki Morinoue; An Essential Balance: Works by Toshiko Takaezu; Prints by Duncan Dempster, Melinda Morey, Rob Noland, Jeff Tam. Honolulu HI: Contemporary Museum, 2001.

Morse, Marcia. Legacy: Facets of Island Modernism. Honolulu, HI: Honolulu Academy of Arts, 2001.

Saville, Jennifer. Toshiko Takaezu. Honolulu, HI: Honolulu Academy of Arts, 1993.

Schlanger, Jeff, and Toshiko Takaezu. Maija Grotell: Works Which Grow from Belief. Goffstown, NY: Studio Potter Books: 1996.

Smith, Paul J. Toshiko Takaezu: Four Decades. Montclair, NJ: The Montclair Art Museum, 1990.

Smith, Paul J. and Edward Lucie-Smith. American Craft Today: Poetry of the Physical. New York: American Craft Museum and Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1986.

Takaezu, Toshiko. Toshiko Takaezu: Ceramics, Weaving, Painting. Honolulu, HI: Honolulu Academy of Arts, 1973.

______.Toshiko Takaezu, Recent Works. Portland, OR: Contemporary Crafts Gallery, 1980.

Takaezu, Toshiko, Felice Fischer, and Darrel Sewell. The Poetry of Clay: the Art of Toshiko Takaezu. Philadelphia, PA: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2004.

Takaezu, Toshiko, Lucinda Y. Gedeon, and Ronald A. Kuchta. Toshiko Takaezu. Purchase, NY: Neuberger Museum of Art, 2001.

Yake, Stanley. Toshiko Takaezu, the Earth in Bloom: a Tribute. Albany, NY: MEAM Publishing, 2005.

Periodicals

Anderson, Daniel. “Mentoring: Past is Prologue.” Studio Potter 31 no. 2 (June 2003): 26-29.

Brown, Conrad. “Toshiko Takaezu.” Craft Horizon (March 1959): 22-26.

Chambers, Karen S. “The Great Convergence: A New Clay Movement Rises Out of the Marriage of Earth and Fire.” American Style (Spring 1996): 28-37.

Genocchio, Benjamin. “Art Review: Master Who Turns Mud into Vessels of Beauty.” The New York Times. September 11, 2007.

Glueck, Grace. “Expressiveness in Ceramics with Dazzling Glazes.” The New York Times. July 11, 1997.

Hurley, Joseph. “Toshiko Takaezu: Ceramics of Serenity.” American Craft 39 (October 1979): 2-9.

“In Recognition.” Ceramics Monthly 49, no. 6 (June/August 2001): 53-79.

Kangas, Matthew. “Toshiko Takaezu.” Sculpture (March 1998): 66.

Levin, Elaine. “Los Angeles: Toshiko Takaezu: Japanese American National Museum.” Sculpture (Washington DC) 25 no. 2 (March 2006): 68-69.

Lynn, Vanessa. “Rounder than Round: The Closed Forms of Toshiko Takaezu.” American Ceramics 8 no. 4 (1990): 18-25.

McCarthy, Gerard. “Toshiko Takaezu at Charles Cowles.” Art in America 91 no. 2 (February 2003): 114.

Mead-Hajduk, Althea. “A Talk with Toshiko Takaezu.” American Craft 65 no. 1 (February/March 2005): 46-52.

Merino, Tony Dubis. “Form and Energy: The work of Toshiko Takaezu.” Ceramics Monthly 46 no. 3 (1998): 37-38.

Meyer, Susan E. “Pottery of Toshiko Takaezu.” American Artist 33 (February 1969): 42- 47.

Morse, Marcia. “Toshiko Takaezu: Contemporary Museum, Honolulu, HI.” American Ceramics 14, no. 1 (2002): 53.

Newhall, Edith. “Toshiko Takaezu: Philadelphia Museum of Art.” ARTnews 104 no. 1 (January 2005): 130.

Schlanger, Jeff. “Toshiko Takaezu: At Home.” Studio Potter 27 no. 2 (June 1999): 46- 52.

Schmidt, James. “Toshiko Takaezu.” Ceramics Monthly 38 (January 1990): 36-37.

Schwabsky, Barry. “The Perfect Cabbage, the Perfect Pot.” The New York Times. July 13, 1997.

Sewell, Darrell. “The Poetry of Clay: The Art of Toshiko Takaezu.” Ceramics Monthly 52 no. 10 (December 2004): 42-44.

Stevens, Mark. “Harmonic Convergence. New York (July 14, 1997): 74-75

Strickland, Carol. “Master of Art and the Art of Living.” Christian Science Monitor 89 no. 218 (October 6 1997).

Targan, Barry. “Toshiko Takaezu: Outer Quiet, Inner Force.” American Craft (February/March 1991): 30-35.

Thomas, Skeff. “An Iron in the Fire.” Ceramics Monthly (January 1998): 57-60.

“Toshiko Takaezu: A Thrown Form.” Ceramics Monthly 23 (November 1975): 32-37.

Video and Other Media

“Craft in America DVD Complete Series.” PBS, 2007. DVD (1 Disc).

Mori, Yoshiko. “Toshiko Takaezu, a Potter’s Work.” (S.I.): A. Mori, 1998. VHS

Takaezu, Toshiko. “Clay with Toshiko Takaezu.” North Bergen, NJ: Hudson Video Productions, 1974. Video

______.“The Life of a Potter.” Chautauqua, NY: Chautauqua Institution, 2006. CD

______. “Toshiko Takaezu.” Trenton, NJ: NJN Video, 1993. VHS

Takaezu, Toshiko, Martin Lucas, and Jeff Schlanger. “Toshiko Takaezu at Home.” Clinton, NJ: Hunterdon Museum of Art, 2000. VHS

Takaezu, Toshiko, and Susan Wallner. “Toshiko Takaezu: Portrait of an Artist.” Princeton, NJ: Films for the Humanities & Sciences, 2002. VHS

Takaezu, Toshiko, and Gerald Williams. “Oral History Interview with Toshiko Takaezu.” Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 2003. Cassette tape. GALLERY REPRESENATATION – TOSHIKO TAKAEZU

Charles Cowles Gallery, 537 West 24th Street, New York, NY 10011

Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art. 2004 Baltimore Avenue, Kansas City, MO 64108

Perimeter Gallery, 210 W. Superior Street, Chicago, IL 60610

WEB SITES – TOSHIKO TAKAEZU http://charlescowles.com Extensive resume for Takaezu http://www.perimetergallery.com/artist/detail.html?artistid=32428222531399113 Takaezu at the Perimeter Gallery with resume and links to exhibits http://www.carolinaarts.com/807greenhill.html Link to Pernille Aegidius Dake, “Encapsulating Spaces.” Carolina Arts (August 2007). http://www.princetoninfo.com/199809/80930p01.html Link to Angela Capio. “At Home with Toshiko.” Published in U.S. 1 Newspaper, September 30, 1998. http://www.tonyferguson.net/toshiko.htm “Toshiko Takaezu” by Tony Ferguson, written in 2005. http://www.groundsforsculpture.org/c_ttakae.htm Article on Takaezu. http://clevelandartsprize.org/visart_1962.htm Toshiko Takaezu, winner of the Cleveland Arts Prize, 1962 http://www.flickr.com/photos/cakeandpiecreative/sets/72157594294517432/ Photos taken at Takaezu workshop

September 2007