| WAUKESHA – Two guest ceramic artists will present a slide lecture on “East Meets West: Anagama Wood-fired Tradition and Its Contemporary Applications” on Tuesday, March 6, at the University of Wisconsin-Waukesha. The presentation is set for 7:00 p.m. in the Commons Conference Room 101 at the campus at 1500 N. University Drive, Waukesha, WI 53188-2799.
Randy Johnston, an associate professor of art at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls, and Carlos Runcie-Tanaka, from Lima, Peru, will speak.
Since a wood-fired “Anagama” type kiln was built at the UW-Waukesha Field Station in the summer of 1997, artists have been attracted to it from around the state and beyond. It is the only wood-fired kiln in the UW System. The kiln is modeled after a Japanese type, which went out of fashion in the early 1600’s after several centuries of use in the Orient. However, the Anagama is enjoying new popularity because of the artistically interesting effects it imparts.
After earning a degree in art in 1972 from the University of Minnesota, Johnston went to Japan to study pottery under Shimaoka Tatsuzo, who was a student of the master, Shoji Hamada Mashiko. Shimaoka was awarded the title of “Living National Treasure”
in 1997. In 1990, Johnston, who had been working as a stone mason to support his art habit, completed an MFA at Southern Illinois University. He works as a studio artist and has taught at schools in 12 states as well as in Canada, Chile and Norway. He has shown his work throughout the country and has contributed to collections from coast to coast as well as in Norway, Canada, and Japan.
A Peruvian-Japanese installation artist, Runcie-Tanaka traces his artistic roots to the ceramic traditions of Hamada and Bernard Leach and has blossomed in such diverse media as stone, paper, video, photography, and glass. He has exhibited his work in many international venues, including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Santiago, Chile, the Museum of Modern Latin American Art of the Organization of American States, Washington, D.C., and numerous galleries and museums throughout Europe and the Americas.
Sponsored by the UW-Waukesha University Convocations Committee as part of its Visions & Expressions series, the program is free and open to the public. It was arranged by Jeff Noska from the UW-Waukesha art department and Christopher Davis-Benavides from UW-Milwaukee’s. Both ceramics artists themselves, they led the class that built the kiln at the UW-Waukesha Field Station near Waterville. |
