“Still Life – TORN“, was selected as one of 15 finalists for John Fries Memorial Award 2011. My work demands tight control of the wet clay on the spinning wheel.  This time while shaping the vase to be, I felt a need to tear it while spinning, so the result will be individual and raw.

This is the very first work I created after I gave a birth of my son in 2011. I could not walk well after loosing lot of  blood from complicated birth and additional operation. However, I was dying to get back on my potter’s wheel.

I went back to my Chippendale studio only 3 weeks after terminating from the acute room in a hospital. I was physically and emotionally torn. To be honest, it really does not matter about the prize nor award…this is my memorial work and one of the works that I am proud of.

A torn vessel.

An evidence of one violent heartbeat in a flat time line.

Unresolved.

Unglazed.

Silent.

The monotonic sound of the wheel halts.

And then again.

Only when all the vessels were put together, through a process of negotiating shape, character and space, I could hear my voice, a far cry.

This is my first work soon after giving birth for the first time.

An experience that has left me torn and fragile.

By myself, in the studio, I could only surrender the past and reform.

Text by Keiko Matsui