Current Exhibition

Soaring Voices: Recent Ceramics by Women from Japan
September 9 – November 6, 2010
Opening reception: Thursday, September 9
6-7 pm: Private reception for members and special guests
7-9 pm: Public reception

Workshop:  Thursday, October 21, 5-7pm
Learn about Japanese culture and art while creating small contemporary works of art in ceramics, jewelry and sculpture.  Led by Yuko Yagisawa, MSCD Associate Professor, Jewelry Design and Metalsmithing and Tsehei Johnson, MSCD Visiting Assistant Professor, Ceramics. Free and open to the public.

Soaring Voices: Recent Ceramics by Women from Japan
features 87 works by 25 exceptional women artists who reflect Japan’s rich and innovative ceramic culture.
 
For thousands of years, women have been highly active in the production of ceramics but their names have largely been unknown. Soaring Voices demonstrates the shift in Japanese society toward individual women artists becoming recognized in an artistic realm traditionally held by men.

The exhibition provides contemporary interpretations of a traditional art form through the work of women artists using a range of methods, materials and motifs, many inspired from the natural world. Other sources of inspiration pay tribute to Japan, such as Noh theater dance movements (a form of classic Japanese musical drama that has been performed since the 14th century) and kimono patterns of the Edo period (1603 to 1868).  Commentary on themes such as beauty defined and an exploration of East vs. West is threaded throughout the works.

Soaring Voices features pioneering ceramicists spanning generations, including members of the founding generation of Japanese female potters, such as Asuka Tsubio, Kiyoko Koyama and Takako Araki whose colorful works are innovative in form and concept. Other artists, including Eiko Kishi and Fuku Fukumoto, incorporate ancient literature and Noh traditions to create a context within their work of a deep connection with nature, a significant motif in the work of Japanese artists.

Hiroko Miura, curator at the Museum of Contemporary Ceramic Art at the Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park and lecturer at Kyoto Seika University, is the exhibition curator.  Miura has developed numerous contemporary ceramics exhibitions in her ten years at the museum.

Co-curator Maya Nishi and president of hus-10, Inc. has curated a number of major exhibitions including major retrospectives on Luci Rie and Hans Coper, among others. Her research and work on Japanese ceramicists has led to numerous publications, lectures and workshops throughout Japan and the U.S.

A fully illustrated catalogue accompanies the tour with essays by curator Hiroko Mirua and Louise Allison Cort, Curator for Ceramics, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. It is published by Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park.

Soaring Voices was developed by The Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park, Shiga Prefecture, and hus-10, Inc., Tokyo, Japan and tour organized by International Arts & Artists, Washington, DC.  The exhibition was generously supported in part by the E. Rhodes & Leona B. Carpenter Foundation and the S&R Foundation.

The CVA is open late First and Third Fridays during the exhibition until 8 p.m. and will be open until 10 p.m. on Saturday, November 6 to celebrate Denver Arts Week “Night at the Museums.”

Hours: Tuesday-Friday 11am-6pm, Saturday noon-5pm. www.MetroStateCVA.org
Admission is free.

IMAGE: Etsuko Tashima, Cornucopia 03-III, 2003, stoneware and glass

back to top>