Humble Master

Whether creating art or molding an apprentice,Toshiko Takaezu remains loyal to her trinity: gardening, cooking, making pots.

By: Ilene Dube

Artist Toshiko Takaezu.

SURROUNDED by beets, burgundy bush beans, peppers and broccoli, Ben Eberle is down on his haunches, pulling up weeds.
   Little purple plants with ruffled leaves sprout everywhere, even in the gravel. "That’s shiso," or Japanese mint, he says. "It’s what they use in Japanese restaurants to (garnish sashimi)."
   Working in the garden is "trial by fire," says Toshiko Takaezu’s young apprentice. "She teaches me. You have to love working outside."
   Clearly he does. Near the completion of his 13-month residency with the esteemed ceramic artist and sculptor, he has contributed everything from driving, household chores and companionship to completing a full body of his work. "She makes certain there’s time to continue as a young artist," says the recent graduate of Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. Ms. Takaezu received a 2004 honorary doctorate from Skidmore after a 35-year affiliation, first on the summer faculty and later as artist-in-residence. She also holds honorary doctorates from about five other universities, including Princeton, where she was professor of ceramics for 25 years before retiring in 1992 at age 70.
   Wearing a white kimono with a bright purple and gold batik design suggestive of her glazing patterns, Ms. Takaezu is rescheduling an appointment with a Feldenkrais practitioner who has arrived at the same time as a reporter and photographer. Although she tries to keep life simple, the days leading up to her show at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Aug. 7 to March 6, 2005) inevitably wind up hectic.

Toshiko Takaezu lends her spirit to the form.

   Ms. Takaezu’s trinity is gardening, cooking and working with clay, so it is only appropriate that her apprentices learn these skills. Mr. Eberle, who lives in the barn of Ms. Takaezu’s Quakertown residence and studio, learned about the apprenticeship through his best friend, who preceded him in the position. He doesn’t get to cook much. "She’s the queen of the 20-minutes dinner," he says.
   "Interns worry if I’m going to like what they cook," says Ms. Takaezu, a petite women with thick white hair and handsome facial features. "I have everything organized in my mind, and I do a lot of experimenting. We have mostly organically grown vegetables and chicken." There is always rice, too. If her cuisine seems to have a Japanese influence, it is because Ms. Takaezu was born to Japanese parents in Hawaii in 1922.
   Her half-acre property, where she has lived since 1975, is filled not only with the abundant vegetables and fragrant perennials that attract bees and butterflies, but her sculpture and pots. The moon pots, eggs, closed pots, trees and other forms have been described as appearing to have fallen from another world.
   "There’s a silence about them that conveys through their endless play of color and light what we are unable to say about our condition," wrote the poet Stephen Berg during a 1990 exhibition of her work at The Gallery at Bristol-Myers Squibb in Lawrence. "What are these forms? What do they mean? What are they for, these humble elegant spirits that attract us so powerfully… her work moves with the energy of reality, resonates with the profundity of friendship in its prehistoric root meanings: to love: not to hold in bondage."

One of Ms. Takaezu’s bells that was cast in bronzeat the Johnson Atelier.

   It’s one thing to have seen these works at Grounds For Sculpture ("Three Graces," 1994), the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., the Museum of Contemporary Crafts in New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Baltimore Museum, the Boston Museum of Fine Art and elsewhere. It’s quite another to see them in their own backyard, all together, with their creator. They do appear to be living creatures, forming a community.
   "The clay is alive and even when it is dry, it is still breathing," Ms. Takaezu is quoted as saying in The Penland School of Crafts Book of Pottery (Bobbs-Merrill, 1975). "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."
   Mr. Eberle helps to move the large, heavy pieces from the studio to outdoors, and in and out of the kiln. Many of the larger pieces are fired at Skidmore, where there is a bigger kiln, but whenever possible Ms. Takaezu prefers to work at home.
   "Life and art are one in her home," wrote Hunterdon Museum of Art Executive Director Marjorie Frankel Nathanson in the catalog of a 1998 exhibit there, appropriately titled Toshiko Takaezu: At Home.
   In the kiln we see a "Blue Moon" from which the bottom blew out. "It’s such a shame; shrapnel goes everywhere," says Mr. Eberle. A restoration artist will fix it; there’s about a 5 percent accident rate in the kiln, according to Mr. Eberle. Ms. Takaezu has said she doesn’t always plan the colors, because it may not come out as planned. The work evolves and she lets it lead her.

Moon pots lining the enclosed porch.

   "Her pieces are sculptural and painterly, and infused with poetic impulses, often embracing the unforeseen crack or the runaway drip as welcome elements of the overall design," says Dominic Mercier of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
   Some of the bells have already been taken to PMA for the upcoming exhibition. The bells are worked first in clay, then cast in bronze at the Johnson Atelier in Hamilton, where Ms. Takaezu has been bringing her pieces for nearly 35 years. With the recent closing of the Atelier, Ms. Takaezu had to work hard and fast to complete the last of six bells.
   "She is working harder than ever," says Susan Wallner, who produced the award-winning documentary, Toshiko Takaezu: Portrait of an Artist, in 1993. The film will be shown at the exhibit and aired on NJN Aug. 1, 10, 20 and 30.

Toshiko Takaezu began to challenge the idea of ceramic forms as functional objects in the late 1950’s.

   Through the flurry of spring activity, Ms. Takaezu allowed herself a trip to New York State for an annual morel foray with former Princeton students. She continues to keep in touch and maintain relations with past students, and recently completed a bell as a 9/11 memorial to the 13 alumni who lost their lives in the World Trade Center bombing. Dedicated in fall 2003, it is located near the recently renovated Chancellor Green humanities building, surrounded by a meditation garden.
   "The turquoise of the piece matches the trim on the building," says Ms. Takaezu — another happy accident.
   Mr. Eberle takes a visitor to see the kiln. "Her trees were done in molds here. They were handbuilt in the ’70s," he says. The tall, towering pieces of ceramic comprised an installation, Devastation Forest, and were on exhibit at Skidmore, says Mr. Eberle.
   Ms. Wallner visited the actual Devastation Forest in Volcanoes National Park in Hawaii with Ms. Takaezu while making her film. "The forest had been covered by hot molten lava. It killed the trees and left skeletal remains," says Ms. Wallner. "It had changed so much since she’d been there before. She made the tall trees as a response to Devastation Forest.
   "Hawaii is critical for her, a touchstone," continues Ms. Wallner.
   The senior producer for NJN’s State of the Arts realized, once she started working on the piece about Ms. Takaezu, that it had to be more than the usual 5-minute segment. "I fell in love with her and had to do something bigger. She’s such a treasure. We flew to Honolulu, where her brothers and sisters live. She had a separate little apartment, and we stayed there a couple of days. She’s a good talker and always gets invited to great places."
   Ms. Takaezu continues to escape the New Jersey winters by spending three months in Hawaii every year. These days she visits with her siblings and takes care of her health. During that time, the apprentices get to focus on their own work. Mr. Eberle, who majored in English at Skidmore and squeezed in pot making when time permitted, spent the winter months working on teapots. They are primitive, whimsical, made of slabs of clay and colorfully glazed. Each has its idiosyncrasies. Mr. Eberle explains that some of them pour, but mostly they are decorative more than functional — a direction Ms. Takaezu encouraged him to take.
   "Ben did some real good things on his own," says Ms. Takaezu. "They are fine, interesting and creative pieces."
   "I learned from her to give more than you take," Mr. Eberle says. "It all comes back eventually. It’s amazing how many good people there are in her life because of her good nature."
   When entering Ms. Takaezu’s house, a visitor removes her shoes, another nod to the artist’s Japanese heritage. There are more colonies of her forms inside, everywhere, like a family of ceramic dumplings (Ms. Takaezu had 11 siblings in her family). They are lined up like bowling balls underneath a large walnut table that can be used for work or for entertaining guests, like her friend Jack Larsen, the textile artist she met while at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan in the early ’50s.
   More moon pots line the long enclosed porch Ms. Takaezu added on to her house during a remodeling project. "I had an architect. I told him what I wanted. He had his own ideas but it didn’t work out," she says.
   We sit on the deck, and look up at one wall of the house where a bronze female form holds a cabbage leaf over her face. The work is by West Windsor artist Francois Guillemin, who worked at the Johnson Atelier with Ms. Takaezu. "We’ve exchanged some pieces," she says. "He made the cistern." She points to an enormous copper barrel that collects rainwater from the roof for her garden.
   "On the outside, her character is humble and generous, but she has a Winston Churchill core," says Mr. Guillemin later on. At the Atelier, he worked with her on making bronze bells from her ceramic ones. During a recent visit to an office building in Plainsboro, Mr. Guillemin came upon one of her bells and used the wooden paddle to ring it. "It needed that," he says. "She’s a living treasure. Too bad there isn’t a living treasure award."
   In fact, there is a Living Treasure Award, and Ms. Takaezu received it in Honolulu in 1987.
   From the deck, we can see Mr. Eberle at work in the garden. "I’m envious of what he’s doing," she says. "I’d like to do it myself, but he’s doing it so well every day."
   She says she still gets inspiration from Hawaii. "You can’t help it. But most of my work is here and I do the best work at my own place.
   "This is the best location for me," she continues. "It’s close to Philadelphia and New York, and I can grow my vegetables. My mother loved gardening very much and made things grow well. My sisters worked in the garden but not to the extent I do."
   Looking out again at Mr. Eberle, she says, "He loves his garden. He has to do his own work. The next intern will come and pull weeds and Ben can do his work."
The Poetry of Clay: The Art of Toshiko Takaezu will be on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia, Aug. 7-March 6, 2005. Museum hours: Tues., Thurs., Sat.-Sun. 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Wed., Fri. 10 a.m.-8:45 p.m. Admission costs $10, seniors/students $7, pay-what-you-wish Sun. On the Web: www.philamuseum.org



Toshiko Takaezu: Portrait of an Artist will be broadcast on NJN Public Television’s State of the Arts: Aug. 1, 6 p.m.; Aug. 10, 6:30 p.m.; Aug. 20, 8:30 p.m.; and Aug. 30, 1 a.m.