A Beautiful Garden: Nitobe Memorial (Part I)

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The Nitobe Memorial Garden on the grounds of the University of British Columbia (UBC) is readily recognizable as a traditional Japanese garden. Like other gardens of this type, it provides an experience of tranquility. Even in an urban area such as Vancouver, Nitobe Garden offers a quiet refuge from daily life concerns and tensions that visitors might carry with them.

An interpretive guide to “understanding Japanese Gardens,” found on the UBC Botanical Garden website, asserts the following:

… it is almost impossible to clearly state what defines a Japanese garden. Many Japanese resist classifying and categorizing the various features of Japanese gardens.

The website attributes this reluctance to the idea that beauty “not explained allows the viewer to remain in a state of wonder.” This worthy observation applies as much to modern abstract painting as it does to historic patterns of landscape arrangement. Yet, in this and in the next post, I will articulate characteristics that enable us to distinguish a traditional Japanese garden from, for example, a casual English cottage garden or a formal French garden.

The UBC website acknowledges how “most visitors can tell when they have entered a garden created and maintained in the Japanese tradition,” crediting this perception to people who “are sensing the Japanese spirit that informs these spaces.” This may be due to how various strands within Japan’s cultural history have coalesced to form a recognizable ‘style’ manifest in its gardens. Among the results of such a melding process, we can identify and describe several features in the Nitobe Garden that are common to other well-known Japanese gardens.

We can begin by observing how gardens and parks found in the East and in the West have a number of shared attributes. Among them, most gardens and parks around the world feature a scheme for the arrangement of their various parts even if it is not readily evident to visitors. Many such places appear to promote and preserve a ‘natural’ quality among the things growing in them, even in formal gardens. Some gardens and parks accentuate this natural element, perhaps in deliberate contrast to surrounding urban areas. This fosters an impression that the plants, shrubs, and trees have grown where they are of their own accord, and in their own way, regardless of any horticultural tending they have received. Especially in the West, ‘nature’ and that which is ‘natural’ are seen as what does not readily bear the imprint of human interaction, and as emerging more from its roots than from our planning.

Western gardens and parks may have gates, but often their entrance designs accentuate pubic access, providing a continuity of experience for visitors who may have potted plants or flowers where they live and work. In this sense, these garden and park entranceways draw people in from what is less into what is more. In the process, visitors are likely to encounter familiar though markedly larger and more extensively planted shrubs and trees, many of which do not appear to have been shaped or altered by human hands.

Formal gardens both East and West usually have marked boundaries and even barriers between what is within and that which is outside. Traditional Japanese gardens are typically surrounded by view-blocking walls topped by a ceramic tile parapet. These indicate a formal boundary between the transient outside world of energy-charged daily activity and the stillness available within, where visitors are subtly bidden to release their grasp upon time and their surroundings.

Imposing entrance gates mark a portal to a different realm lying beyond, as much as they appear to provide a barrier protecting what is within. Though these gates and the walls around a Japanese garden may serve to keep out intruders and foraging animals, they exist primarily for the sake of those who enter and take time there. For one does not visit a Japanese garden in the way one might go to a park, as a context to pursue some activity like an exercise walk, but as a place to experience simply being.

In the next post we will continue to explore what is identifiably distinctive about traditional Japanese gardens like the Nitobe Memorial.

 

The Curve of Time: A Beautiful Book

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I discovered M. Wylie Blanchet’s cruising memoir, The Curve of Time, at Village Books in Fairhaven, Washington, not far from the Canadian border. Evidently considered a classic by readers in Canada, I had not known about her book despite having long been an active boater and avid reader about seafaring. With an evocative water color painting as a cover image, a forward by the Seattle-based writer Timothy Egan, and with the copy in my hand being the 50th Anniversary Edition in hard cover, I was intrigued and bought it.

As the dust jacket blurb indicates, Wylie Blanchet set off on numerous summer cruises with her five children on the same boat from which her husband had earlier been lost in 1926, and presumed to have drowned. 25 feet in length, 6.5 feet in width, and with a relatively small enclosed interior, Blanchet along with her children bravely explored the sometimes forbidding but always mysterious waters along the coast of British Columbia and its adjoining and deep inland sea.

Wylie (a.k.a., Capi) in the wheelhouse of Caprice, and with her family one summer

Those British Columbia waters are famous for the very strong tides running in and out of narrow fiord-like inlets bordered by tall trees and sheer rocky walls that rise up several thousand feet. The walls above the water’s surface are generally paralleled far down below by their unseen foundations. ‘Capi’ Blanchet notes how often her marine charts indicated depths exceeding 100 fathoms in these waters  (600 feet), with the final distance downward marked as unknown. Among other challenges, such depths make anchoring nearly impossible except when a boat is secured to the shore.

Caprice, against a rocky shoreline

With one set of clothes per family member along with a bathing suit, spare but adequate cooking equipment and tableware, minimal sleeping accommodations both within and on deck, and the crew possessing a seemingly boundless sense of curiosity and desire to learn, the Blanchet’s explored hundreds of miles of what at the time were largely unpopulated and untamed seascapes and surrounding terrain. Capi Blanchet’s well-told stories about her family’s adventures during their summer cruises provide the material for her fetching book.

For those who have traveled to or lived in the Pacific Northwest, the author’s prose brings alive the look and feel, and even the smell of the moist coastal air found in that region. It may bring to mind books like I Heard the Owl Call My Name, and Snow Falling on Cedars, novels that also effectively describe aspects of that alluring part of the world. Yet, like those others, Blanchet’s book hardly prompts a romantic longing to explore waters and lands that, as she presents them, are full of potential danger because of their wildness (bears, a cougar) and unpredictable weather.

Readers interested in doing some ‘voyaging’ with Capi Blanchet through reading A Curve in Time will observe how she records experiences from the late 1920’s and 1930’s, and published her memories of them in 1961. She demonstrates sensitivity and concern about our encroachment upon the communities of people who originally inhabited the land, and upon areas of great natural beauty. Her perspective and writing may perhaps best be seen as helping – along with many others – to lay an early foundation for our contemporary approach to ‘the environment’ (a term whose present use would have been unfamiliar to her), and our raised sensitivity about the cultures of First Nations peoples.

Having read Blanchet’s compelling book, I am now curious to read Following the Curve of Time: The Legendary M. Wylie Blanchet, a biography by Cathy Converse. Though often demurring from drawing attention to herself in The Curve of Time, Blanchet clearly was a formidable woman possessed of great practical intelligence and a captivating sense of adventure. Retracing her voyaging would be challenging enough for many experienced boaters, but exploring those same waters in a boat the size of her’s, with its dependent large crew and minimal accoutrements, may suggest caution to other equally capable navigators.

M. Wylie (‘Capi’) Blanchet around the time of her marriage

For first time visitors to the Seattle area who are not embarking upon an Alaskan cruise, I heartily recommend even a short round trip on one of the Washington State Ferries. Having commuted daily to college for a year on the ferry between Vashon Island and Tacoma, and having regularly taken the ferry to Seattle on weekends, I remember how a 20-30 minute ‘voyage’ across parts of Puget Sound can help one experience in an economical and time-sensitive way a genuine bit of the maritime Pacific Northwest – the kind of waters that Capi Blanchet explored nearly 100 years ago.

 

Chihuly Garden & Glass ~ Seattle

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On a recent trip to Seattle I visited the Chihuly Garden & Glass exhibit at Seattle Center. This collection of Dale Chihuly’s glass work, which includes both large and small objects and installations, provides a splendid way to become familiar with what the artist has accomplished so far over the course of his career. The extensive exhibit gives the visitor an excellent introduction to the methods that Chihuly has employed when embarking upon various projects and insight about how he has revolutionized many aspects of contemporary glass making.

An initial large room contains a display of smaller Chihuly creations set within the context of a selection of his baskets and related objects from First Nations peoples, as well as an assemblage of his large framed photographic prints of Native American individuals by Edward Curtis.

A large gallery within the exhibit features Chihuly’s Mille Fiori (a thousand flowers in Italian), inspired by memories of his mother’s garden. An information panel indicates that the pieces in this installation, gathered from several series of his prior work, “rely less on tools and more on the use of fire, gravity and centrifugal force.”

Two youngsters enjoying engagement with Mille Fiori while helping to provide us with an indication of the assemblage’s scale.

A display titled Ikebana and Float Boats is featured in a subsequent room. Having pursued glass making in Seattle and in Venice, both near significant bodies of water, Chihuly experimented with glass objects thrown into a river in Finland, where youth from the area in wooden boats helped retrieve them. Intrigued by the interaction between the objects, the light above, and the water below, the artist continued to develop these interests after traveling to the Japanese island of Niijima. There he became reacquainted with the glass globes traditionally employed by Japanese fishermen as floats for their nets, which he had first seen as a youth beach combing on Puget Sound. At the same time, Chihuly was inspired by the Japanese art of flower arranging, called Ikebana. He combined his interest in the glass globes with the inspiration provided by Ikebana and imaginatively adapted these forms within boat-shaped structures that have been displayed in galleries and upon ponds.

Another gallery space features large bowl-like objects from Chihuly’s Macchia series. As a guide at the Chihuly exhibit makes clear, no one has yet been able to produce a truly black form of glass. Yet, Chihuly has come close with his occasional use of very dark blue and purple. Through his Macchia series, he sought to incorporate every one of the other 300 colors that are available for glass making. Noticing that colors within stained glass windows often appear more alive when illuminated from behind by the diffused light of a bright cloudy sky, Chihuly began to experiment with including a white layer within objects between the inner and outer colored layers of glass. The presence of speckles and striations of additional colors results from when molten glass is rolled on a flat metal surface that has been sprinkled with multiple-colored bits of glass.

Near the end of a tour through the exhibit one finds a courtyard where an informative glassblowing demonstration is offered, which brings alive some of the challenges inherent in working with this medium.

Chihuly Garden & Glass provides a lively sense of the remarkable extent of the artist’s output, and the breadth of his highly imaginative vision for what can be done with glass as an art form. The exhibit is well worth a visit for those able to travel to the Seattle area.

Chihuly’s Glass Installations

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Marine Blue and Citron Tower, by Dale Chihuly, installed in 2021 at Taliesin West, Arizona

 

The making of art glass, especially when glassblowing, begins with glass melted in a furnace heated to over 2,000 degrees f. by gas-powered flames. As the artist works with the material, additional quantities of glass shards are typically added to the furnace. The added glass may be clear or colored, especially when recycled glass is employed, and other ingredients can be added to achieve a desired hue or tint.

Once, when my glassblowing instructor was scooping shards of recycled material into the flames, he accidentally lost grip of the metal scoop, which fell into the molten glass. To his delight, this produced a most beautiful and unexpected yellow color in the subsequently formed glass objects. Of particular note in Chihuly’s work is the conjunction of multiple colors, and the agate-like striations involving both colored and clear portions of glass.

 

At the most basic level, glassblowing involves attaching a glob of molten glass to the end of a tube-like metal pipe, which is then spun while air is introduced into it. At first this creates a globe-shaped object. Spinning the material fixed to the pipe can have an effect like that of a spinning pottery wheel upon wet clay. In both cases, the material can be formed into a symmetrical mass. But it can also be spun out of shape into a mess.

Whereas hands are used in ceramics to do the primary shaping, with molten glass a number of tools are employed to achieve various effects. These include assorted molds which Chihuly and his assistants may use to produce the rippled edges in some of his finished pieces like those depicted below. Wooden paddles, tweezers, cutting shears, and a variety of other tools are used in the process of shaping the very hot glassware while it is being formed, sometimes pulling and stretching it, at other times changing its orientation by causing parts of a piece to turn in on themselves. All the while the glassware artist must periodically reintroduce the work in progress into the open end of the furnace, or apply a torch to its surface, so as to keep the material hot and malleable.

Lower image: A portion of Chihuly’s Persian Ceiling, lit from above

In recent years, Chihuly has become known for his sometimes massive installations of glass. These often involve a seemingly uncountable number of objects linked together by an upright frame, suspended from a rack, or cradled from below. Viewers might encounter these installations indoors where they are displayed as a chandelier might be hung, or placed in an outdoor setting.

 

With his artistic exploration of the possibilities inherent in the manipulation of molten glass, and by pushing the parameters of what conceivably may be accomplished through working with this medium, Chihuly has created a huge portfolio of truly remarkable work. Of note is the way that so many of his pieces simultaneously have a sophistication that appeals to specialists and collectors, while at the same time being works of art that bring delight and wonder to children as well as to those who may not credit themselves with being aesthetically aware or sensitive. Dale Chihuly has effectively devoted his career to helping others encounter and perceive beauty in new and unexpected ways.

Another Chihuly installation, Fire Amber Herons, at Frank Lloyd Wrights’ Taliesin West

Dale Chihuly and the Art of Glass

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Paprika Persian, by Dale Chihuly

 

Many of us associate glass as a material for art with beautiful stained glass windows, or with fine cut-glass objects. Yet, until the widespread impact of modern art, stained glass has most often been characterized by the two dimensional pictorial representation of biblical or historical figures and events. And decorative glass objects, especially when fashioned from clear leaded glass, have until recent times come largely in the form of functional vessels like vases and decanters.

The career of Dale Chihuly has coincided with a renewed interest in the artistic potential of glass when applied as a medium beyond the parameters associated with everyday objects. It was not until the second half of the twentieth century that many college and university art departments offered courses in and provided studios for work with glass beyond the design and making of windows, as well as for other materials such as fibers (e.g., weaving). This may have been due to a historic assumption that glassblowing and textiles, along with pottery, are best understood as being within the category of ‘crafts’ rather than as fine arts.

For these and other reasons, encountering the fruit of Chihuly’s longterm exploration of glass and its aesthetic possibilities can lead to an experience of stunning discovery. As we have seen regarding the evolution of David Shaner’s ceramics, Chihuly has moved far beyond producing beautiful but also utility-oriented objects, toward what may be more properly termed glass sculpture. Throughout the range of Chihuly’s work with glass we find a number of features that deserve to be noted. These include his appreciation for the capacity of color, form, texture, arrangement of parts, and scale to evoke interest and delight.

Capri Blue Seaform

Seagrass Seaform

Chihuly’s use of color immediately captures our attention as we view his work. Unlike the challenge faced by those who draw or paint, where choosing and mixing color is a more direct process, color selection and its manipulation within molten glass is more complicated. In glass making, as it is for ceramicists who work with glazes, the artist must attend, at least at a basic level, to some chemistry, the physical plasticity of the material, and be open to chance regarding both.

Another noteworthy feature of Chihuly’s glassware is his intentional inclusion of areas of opacity, translucence, and transparency. With all three of these variables, his manipulation of surface reflectivity – a property often associated with high quality glass – deepens our appreciation for his work. He achieves beautiful effects when he allows these differing aspects of his materials to appear adjacent to one another in the same finished pieces. I find this to be especially apparent in the two pieces depicted immediately below.

Two sculptural glass works by Dale Chihuly (name and date uncertain)

An additional feature of Chihuly’s mature glass work is the variability of the form and of the shape of the objects he has created. As the artist’s portfolio has expanded with the development of his career, he has moved well beyond the pursuit of symmetry, practical utility, and manageable size, with regard to the items he has fashioned. This is especially true of the large scale installations to be featured in a subsequent post.

Given all this, the name Chihuly has become synonymous with paradigm-shifting glasswork that is vibrant and joyfully attractive.

Dale Chihuly with one of his large glass installations in the background

The Beauty of a New Dog

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Tissot at 8 weeks, and a self-portrait by his namesake (it was the eyes!)

 

After experiencing some health issues this past spring I decided it was time for us to consider getting a new dog. Our rat terrier mix, Puddums (or Pudsie), died a few years ago at the happy age of 17. We still think of her affectionately and have missed canine company after moving back South in retirement.

Our oldest son with Pudsie

As Spring began to warm up south Louisiana, we thought it might be nice to have a similar addition to our household if we could find another puppy like Pudsie had been. A local shelter had a litter of rat terrier-mix puppies ready for adoption and the little guy in the photo at the top seemed just right.

His name is Tissot (pronounced ‘Tea-so’), named after a favorite Franco-British painter whose work I have often featured here. Now about 5 months old, he has lived mostly during the daytime on our screened porch. It has proved to be a good place for him to figure out that ‘elimination’ best occurs outside rather than on the floor. With the wave of Southern summer heat we have been experiencing recently, he enjoys cooler afternoons and nights in my study.

He still possesses some of his very sharp ‘baby teeth’ and is a tenacious chewer, even at the expense of some stucco on the porch! Various versions of a well-known brand of hard rubber toys have proved the most resilient to the onslaught of his teeth. We joke about him being perhaps a cross between a fox and a whippet, given his long back and tail, as well as his alertness to anything that moves and his remarkable speed relative to his small size. One thing not so small are his ears, which may have a correspondingly high sensitivity. To my surprise, my playing a small scale of three or four notes on a new recorder prompted him to respond with a mournful howl!

His uncertain lineage may include a retriever of some kind. For he never seems to tire of fetching a thrown ball, and he loves to walk with a stick in his mouth. His high energy level has proved good for me in that we take a brisk two and a quarter mile walk five to six mornings a week through the woods and by a wide creek. As a result, I am in better shape. But our walks leave me hot and tired, and him ready for more. I like to think of him as my ‘therapy dog,’ except that I sometimes wonder if he is not the one who might need therapy! Especially when he is turning in fast, tight circles in his often successful attempt to grab the white tip of his long tail. Yet, he will not be a puppy for ever.

A wise friend who is a retired neurosurgeon said something recently that has stayed with me. We were visiting together while his dog was seeking our company and attention. He said that dogs may be the only animal made by our Creator whose primary aim in life is to please us. No matter how independently-minded some dogs can be (Tissot may have some Jack Russell terrier in him), my friend’s comment rings true in my experience. Caring well for a dog, even a smaller one, is not inexpensive and may involve a considerable time commitment. But it is hard to put a price on all-around better health and the pleasure of canine companionship.

A painting (The Hammock) by Tissot’s namesake from the artist’s society painting days

Transfigured By Beauty

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James Tissot, Jesus Goes Up Alone Onto A Mountain To Pray

 

In a painting whose title refers to one of Jesus’ common practices, James Tissot portrays him as caught up in prayer, an involvement he widely encouraged his followers to pursue. Regarding prayer, the Catechism in The Book of Common Prayer may surprise us. To the question, what is prayer, we find an answer which begins with these words: “Prayer is responding to God…” Jesus modeled a life wholly centered on responding to God, in heart and mind, in soul and body. On one occasion, he appeared transformed while at prayer. Over time, his followers discerned how God was fully present within him.

The story of his Transfiguration on a high mountain, reported in the first three Gospels and commemorated this past Sunday, provides a narrative demonstration of this truth. What Tissot depicts regarding Jesus when alone at prayer was later revealed semi-publicly on that mountain in the company of Peter, James, and John, as well as with the heavenly apparitions of Moses and Elijah. It was then fully revealed in Jesus’ Resurrection appearances.

Exodus 24 provides the background for this, and tells us something astonishing: “Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up {Mt. Sinai}, and they saw the God of Israel.” In Exodus 34, we learn that when Moses came down from the summit, “the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God. When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses… they were afraid to come near him.” The text suggests that Moses then started putting a veil over his face for the sake of those who were unused to, or unprepared for, the glory and power of God’s immediate presence.

Paul, in 2 Corinthians, extends and also alters this idea of the veil. Instead of it being a means to protect people from a direct encounter with divine glory, the veil has become in Paul’s letter a kind of impediment. When our hearts and minds are not open to God, nor sensitive to God’s power, we become hardened. We become hardened in such a way that our hearts and minds are veiled, preventing us from perceiving God’s glory.

But Christ has set aside this veil. As a result, “all of us, with unveiled faces, {see} the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror (2 Cor. 3:18).” And we “are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another, for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.” Through prayer, we also are transformed.

Fra Angelico, The Transfiguration (San Marco, Florence)

The Transfiguration of Jesus is all about the unveiling of God’s glory. Jesus takes Peter, John and James up with him on a mountain to pray. While he is praying, the appearance of his face changes, as does his clothing. In contrast with the Exodus and Pauline images of light shining on a surface, Luke presents God’s glory as coming from within Jesus. In other words, he radiates God’s glory rather than reflecting it. Luke tells us that Moses and Elijah, who appear with him, appear in his glory. This may mean that Jesus has shared his glory with them in a way that prefigures what he will share with all of his followers after his Resurrection.

This should lead us to ask a good question: If we feel like there is a veil between us and the divine presence, where does this veil lie? Does God ‘hide’ behind a veil, either to protect us, or challenge us? Or is the veil within ourselves, formed by our spiritual blindness and our lack of openness to how the Holy Spirit imparts glory? Paul suggests that our experience may be like that of the earlier Israelites, for whom hard-heartedness caused them to be blind to the bright light of God’s glorious presence, whether in Moses’ face or when reading and hearing the Law. Hard-heartedness can be equally blinding for us, veiling the glory that is all around us.

And where, according to Paul, do we find this glory? We find it in the faces of everyone who has been open to God’s transforming Spirit. In other words, we can find it in each other, as well as in ourselves. For this reason it can be like looking into a mirror, as the glory that we will perceive in others is the same glory that they can perceive within us.

Yamasaki’s Graceful Architecture

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Minoru Yamasaki behind models of the proposed World Trade Center towers

 

Minoru Yamasaki was one of the most significant American architects of the mid-twentieth century while also one of the least known. Since 9/11, almost everyone has seen images of his now lost World Trade Center towers that formerly crowned the southern tip of Manhattan. Yet many are unfamiliar with the man who designed and gave them their attractive and delicate facades. I first encountered Yamasaki’s distinctly modern yet historically informed approach to architecture as a child while my parents were on furlough from mission work in Japan. It was likely because of Yamasaki’s Japanese heritage that they became interested in his Northwestern National Life building in Minneapolis, opened in 1965, which he had designed for that company’s new headquarters (images below).

The Northwestern National Life building has design elements recognizable in a number of other structures designed by Yamasaki. His career-long approach to architecture consistently incorporated a classically inspired modernism that features a verticality and gracefulness of design, an approach which appears to owe as much to the great European gothic cathedrals as it does to Greco-Roman antecedents. This quality of his work is particularly evident in the decorative plaza towers and buildings he designed for the 1962 World’s Fair U.S. Science Exhibit in Seattle (now the Pacific Science Center, below).

U.S. Science Exhibit towers and buildings, 1962 World’s Fair, in a vintage photo

The 1962 Michigan Consolidated Gas Company building in Detroit (below) was Yamasaki’s first ‘skyscraper.’ The stonework tracery and narrow windows on the facade of this building, as well as the arcade of columns surrounding the glass-walled atrium on the entrance terrace level, are recurring motifs in his architectural designs. Some of these elements can also be found on Yamasaki’s 1960 College of Education building for Wayne State University (further below), as well as Olin Hall and other buildings he designed for Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota.

 

The Michigan Consolidated Gas Company building, Detroit. Plaza Sculpture by Giacomo Manzu.

The College of Education building for Wayne State University (Detroit, 1960)

Above: Olin Hall (Science Building) and lecture theater for Carleton College (Northfield, MN, 1961)

Watson Hall dormitory (1966) adjacent to a Japanese Garden at Carleton College (note how the exterior columns subtly curve outward at the base)

Above: McGregor Conference Center, Wayne State University (Detroit, 1957), exterior and interior

Yamasaki’s design for the Reynolds Metals Regional Sales Office (below, 1959) incorporates elements found in the buildings featured above while also architecturally acknowledging the business of the company that commissioned it. Evident is the architect’s use of ornament clad to the facade of the building, but here in the form of a metallic visual screen attached to the building’s exterior. These elements, as well as the open terrace, and the glass-walled atrium surrounded by columns, are design features that we find over a decade later in his plan for the World Trade Center.

Some aspects of Yamasaki’s architectural work such as the terrace and reflecting pool adjacent to his McGregor Conference Center, as well as to his Reynolds building, may appear to embody an aesthetic sensitivity characteristic of Japanese culture. Raised by a Japanese family in America, Yamasaki – while recovering from serious illness and surgery – traveled to Japan, Italy, and India, in 1953, on an extended sojourn that provided not only recuperation but also inspiration.

Not all of Yamasaki’s designs are characterized by strong vertical lines and distinct angles, as well as by detailed surface ornament. Two notable exceptions are his 1956 St. Louis Lambert Airport terminal building, and his 1964 West Gym for Carleton College (both below).

Despite the passage of years, Yamasaki’s architectural designs continue to have a fresh and winsome appearance. His buildings stand apart from many examples of urban modernism, where reflective glass-clad buildings often appear indistinguishable from one another and where attention to human scale seems overlooked, especially in the experience of those who approach such structures. By contrast, Yamasaki’s buildings remain attractive and inviting.

Yamasaki displaying a scale model of his Wayne State College of Education building (above), and as featured on the cover of TIME magazine (1963).

The completed twin towers of the World Trade Center prior to 9/11

David Shaner’s Beautiful Ceramics

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An intriguing sculptural pot by David Shaner, with an unglazed exterior

 

Through his love for ceramics, David Shaner became an accomplished artist whose work was and is widely known for his mastery of traditional pottery techniques as well as for the red glaze that bears his name. The influence of Japanese potters as well as those who studied their work is evident in Shaner’s own earlier pottery. Over the years his interest in non-traditional pot-making grew into a developed pursuit of what we might call ceramic sculpture. Here (below) are three Shaner pots that show his willingness to explore forms that move beyond the circular shape we usually associate with clay that has been molded on a rotating wheel and bat (or platter on which a pot is shaped). Notice the manipulation of the rims of the second and third pots, as well as the presence of the Shaner’s Red glaze on all three.

     

In Shaner’s work, these explorations of the plasticity associated with raw clay then progress to more dramatic departures from traditional pot making. Such pot making is largely focused on forms where the subsequent utility of the result is at least suggested if not also intended (as with Shaner’s teapot displayed in a prior post). In addition to the pot depicted at the top of this post, I share below a number of my favorite examples of what I have referred to as his ceramic sculptures.

A number of these examples of Shaner’s explorative work with fired and glazed clay are termed his series of ‘pillow’ pots, suggested by their rounded ‘puffed-looking’ forms. In addition to his regard for the work of fellow potters, Shaner admired the sculpture of the modern Japanese artist Isamu Noguchi, as well as that of the British sculptor Henry Moore, with whose work he felt an affinity. Below are some more examples of Shaner’s ceramic art.

David Shaner’s traditional-looking pots represent well his skills and lifelong dedication to mastering the medium for his chosen work. His sculptural art is more immediately identifiable as representing a vision expressed in ceramics that was uniquely his own, and which continues to be widely admired.

  

David Shaner taking a break, and another example of his work as a ceramic artist.

The Beauty of Shaner’s Red

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David Shaner, Tea Pot {Japanese style, 1977), with Shaner’s Red Glaze

 

Shaner’s Red is a polychromatic glaze named after the potter who first applied it to many of his pots. I became familiar with Shaner’s Red on extended visits to family friends who had a pottery studio and a kiln for firing clay at their ranch in Montana. My parents had met them on a ship returning from Japan, where our friends had pursued their interest in traditional ceramics. In addition to throwing pots, they collected a range of examples of ceramic artwork including Asian and Native American, as well as contemporary work by David Shaner and others associated with the Archie Bray Foundation, in Helena, MT. As a youth, I found the color of Shaner’s red and sometimes green and gold glaze alluring, in part because of its variability during firing. In addition to buying assorted mineral and other glaze components, Shaner also gathered found ingredients for his glazes much like weavers often gather natural materials for dying wool.

One brief biographical statement offers this tribute to David Shaner: “His exquisitely formed vessels with their understated glazes are a reflection of the man himself, a man in harmony with his environment and at peace in himself. Shaner was also noted as a teacher, a collector, and a generous contributor to the world of ceramic art and the field of environmental protection; his gardens which he called his ‘spiritual work’ included notable specialized collections.”

Among those who pursue the art of pottery, the color known as Shaner’s Red is a familiar reference point for glazes applied after a first firing of shaped raw clay. Though the red coloring is largely due to iron oxide being in the mix, this glaze by David Shaner is well known for the way it often morphs into other colors during the firing process, with beautiful results. A canister style pot by Shaner (below, 1988) displays this color variability, which is to some extent within a ceramicist’s ability to manipulate while yet retaining an unpredictability that is often a feature of this art form.

Some examples, below, of pots by other artists displaying something of the range of colors yielded by the application of Shaner’s Red.

                     

Here is one ‘recipe’ for Shaner’s Red: 527 Potash Feldspar; 40 Talc; 250 Kaolin; 40 Bone Ash; 213 Whiting; 60 Red Iron Oxide; 2% Bentonite. The significance of the numbers and the nature of these elements are foreign to me. But they are doubtless meaningful to ceramicists who mix their own glazes. The point in sharing these details is to illustrate how, regardless of the precision involved in finding, measuring, and mixing these elements, the exact outcome of their combination and application cannot be foretold in advance.

Shaner was once asked about this at a workshop he had given. A participant later reported that “his reply was something to the effect that to make it look right, you had to be in the right phase of the moon, hold your tongue just right, call on the correct kiln gods, etc. He was obviously kidding but what he was saying is that this is a tough glaze to work with.” Another potter who has applied the same glaze offers this observation: “… the cooling schedule most affects Shaner’s (and other) iron reds. Shaner’s needs a long slow cool, or firing down, for the red color to resurface…”

Having introduced what is perhaps Shaner’s most widely-known contribution to contemporary American ceramics, his eponymous glaze, I plan in a subsequent post to share further about him and provide additional examples of his pottery, especially in light of his later transition from traditional pot making to what is more properly termed ceramic sculpture.

David Shaner in his studio (1989)

The photos behind him appear to include one of the esteemed Japanese potter, Shoji Hamada, at work on a pot (upper right). Another photo (top right) features an example of Shaner’s own work that is clearly influenced by the Japanese folk art tradition (the tea pot illustrated above).