Myriad kami
My father passed last July after a quick decline from an injury that sparked a mental health crisis and worsened his chronic pain.
During the aftermath, I lost interest in my work. The painstaking effort of reproducing my illustrations in sgraffito was too much for me, and while I can still appreciate the aesthetics, it started to feel emotionally irrelevant. I went in search of a new direction.
raku
After trying several other decorative techniques in stoneware, I came across a guide: How to Make a DIY Raku Kiln. I’ve always been inspired by traditional Japanese ceramics and aesthetics, so I threw myself into the project.
While it took quite a while to figure out what I was doing (and with several missteps), firing in the raku kiln has become its own form of therapy. For someone whose style has always been tightly controlled, there is both fear and relief in the volatile, immediate, unpredictable nature of raku and saggar firing.
the collection: myriad kami
The title of this collection references the Japanese Shinto religion. In Shinto, Kami are the deities that represent the divine energies or life-force of the natural world.
Each piece in this collection was created using different techniques within the realms of raku and saggar firing, each evoking its own particular energy. The process of making ceramics is about exerting forces on actual literal earth in an act of creation. The collection embodies the interplay between the natural world, human innovation, and time, with pieces that pay homage to nature and/or appear to have spent ages underground or below water, now reclaimed.
