Whimsy and Wonder
“Beanie Babies Teapot” (2009), by Keiko Fukazawa
A mid-career survey of ceramic work by Keiko Fukazawa opens tonight at El Camino College
Keiko Fukazawa must be having loads of fun. Her whimsical ceramic creations often make us smile but at the same time they are elegant and thought-provoking. Christopher Knight of the L.A. Times recently devoted lots of ink to her exhibition at the Craft and Folk Art Museum, but a chronologically more comprehensive show is now on view at El Camino College. “Culture Clash,” billed as a mid-career retrospective, is aptly named. There’s a whole lot of clashing going on. The opening reception is tonight from 7 to 9 p.m.
“Scholar’s Rock 1” (2009), by Keiko Fukazawa
The nail the hammer missed
Referring to Yasunari Kawabata’s sublime novel, Fukazawa points out that she was born in “the snow country,” Niigata prefecture, in northern Japan. She moved to Tokyo with her family when she was 12 and a few years later attended Musashino Art University where she studied painting and earned her undergraduate degree.
Painting eventually took a back seat to ceramics. In 1984, Fukazawa was off to California to glimpse first hand the pottery evolution and revolution that had been spearheaded a couple of decades earlier by Peter Voulkos, John Mason, and Ken Price, among others.
“Jingdezhen Teapot” (2013), by Keiko Fukazawa
Moving to Los Angeles, Fukazawa enrolled at Otis Art Institute and studied with Ralph Becerra, whose colorful and graceful creations clearly helped formulate her own impish sensibilities.
However, growing up in a conservative country where the squeaky wheel didn’t get the grease and the nail that raised its head promptly got hammered down, Fukazawa, who was born in 1955, probably has her mother to thank for being able to sidestep the norm, i.e., being a housewife with two kids.
Fukazawa says that her mother was unconventional and perhaps wanted to become an artist herself, if society and circumstances had permitted. When Fukazawa first told her, at age 17, that she wanted to study painting, her mother stood solidly behind her decision.
Also, she points out, her mother was an excellent cook and spoke often about the visual pairing of ceramic dinnerware and the meals that brought it to life. I’m reminded of a little book by Junichiro Tanizaki called In Praise of Shadows, in which he writes: “It’s been said of Japanese food that it is a cuisine to be looked at rather than eaten. I would go further and say that it is to be meditated upon, a kind of silent music evoked by the combination of lacquerware and the light of a candle flickering in the dark.” In other words, the plates, the eating utensils, and the food should harmonize. To get it all just right is truly an art.
“Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom #1” (2013), by Keiko Fukazawa
A playful approach
“Culture Clash” isn’t Keiko Fukazawa’s first appearance at El Camino College. In 2007 she was paired with her husband, photographer Dennis Callwood, for a two-person show.
“I’ve known Keiko for a long time and have loved her work,” says curator Susanna Meiers, “and I thought it was time to do a full-on solo show. I love the new work that she’s doing, the Chinese work. We had shown some of the graffiti work earlier.”
The Chinese work that Meiers is referring to originated from the two month-long residences that Fukazawa had in 2013 and 2014 when she stayed in Jingdezhen, considered the porcelain capital of China.
“Shoot for Tomorrow” (2001), by Keiko Fukazawa
Essentially, Fukazawa takes serious subjects and playfully subverts them. For example, she has created porcelain busts of Chairman Mao, partially covering him with porcelain peonies, a reference to the Great Leader’s decree to let bloom a thousand flowers. Clearly they don’t always bloom the way one hopes they will.
She’s also created ceramic Chinese landscapes freckled here and there with corporate logos and produced what look like “scholars’ rocks” (Chinese objects of philosophic and esthetic veneration that are traditionally made with special stones, carefully fitted with carved wooden bases). Except that Fukazawa’s stones are actually Beanie Baby toys that she was cast and glazed with a vivid range of colors).
Lest we think that Fukazawa is baiting or mocking Chinese culture she emphatically claims that this is not the case. Her work may appear at times to have a socio-political subtext, but the artist doesn’t consider her work to be political.
“Take and Don’t Regret It” (2000), by Keiko Fukazawa
Another reason why Fukazawa doesn’t wish to rock the boat is because tensions between China and Japan occasionally rise to the surface and she doesn’t want to be part of them. On her first residency in China, Fukazawa says, everyone was open and friendly. On the last trip, due to some diplomatic ripples, a bit less so. Her Chinese translator told Fukazawa that it was better to downplay her being Japanese. A taxi driver, on being told that Fukazawa was American, remarked (seemingly unconvinced) that she didn’t look American.
This sense of not quite fitting in has followed the artist for some years now.
“Being an outsider might be a little bit of an advantage,” she says. “I’ve been in America for a long time but still I feel like an outsider here, too. I mean, I’m American and I’m proud of being an American, but…”
But you have two or three perspectives?
“Yes, two or three, or maybe I don’t belong to any.”
“Trademark” (2000), by Keiko Fukazawa
And yet it’s this outsider’s vantage point that fuels and underlines much of her creativity.
“What I think of as characterizing Keiko’s work,” Meiers says, “is an ability to move from culture to culture, and to absorb the techniques and the images of (each culture). She’s able to take all that in and then sort of regurgitate it, but having digested it in a way that gives it a completely different flavor.”
The result, Meiers adds, is very gentle. “It talks to me, and it’s not ever heavy-handed.”
The pieces come together
Another key series well represented in “Culture Clash” is the one called “Art and Deviation,” and it’s a collaborative effort between Fukazawa, her husband Dennis, and a number of incarcerated inmates. Fukazawa first created several large plates and other vessels, fired them up, broke them into pieces, and gave several of the fragments to the inmates to decorate — which they did with drawings or graffiti before returning the shards to her. She then decorated a few shards on her own and reassembled the work. The quilt-like results are fascinating, clearly a recontextualized hybrid of images.
Keiko Fukazawa, photo
Viewed all at once, “Culture Clash” is a visual playground. “I’m very excited to see all my work together, old and new, all in one place,” Fukazawa says. She hopes that the exhibition will then generate ideas for a new direction in her work. Fukazawa has an active imagination and right now it seems to be in full stride. As I said at the beginning, she must be having a lot of fun. It’s that kind of show.
Keiko Fukazawa: Culture Clash is open this evening, Thursday, with a reception from 7 to 9 p.m. in the El Camino College Art Gallery, 16007 Crenshaw Blvd., Torrance. On Tuesday, the artist conducts a gallery walk-through at 1 p.m. Hours, Monday and Tuesday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. plus Wednesday and Thursday from 12 noon to 8 p.m. Closes March 31 (the gallery will not be open March 14-17 because of Spring Break). Call (310) 660-3010 or go to elcamino.edu.