We're excited to introduce our dear friend Shoshi Watanabe and the collection of chawan (tea bowls) he made for TEA TEA TEA.
Shoshi is a Japanese ceramicist and educator based in Los Angeles. His work can be found at Zakka Bakka and in galleries and restaurants across the US and Japan. He has been a close friend of our dad's for over a decade, and we grew up surrounded by his pottery. His world is what taught us to appreciate ceramics, and eventually led our dad to Japanese tea ceremony. This is our first art object, and it only felt right that it came from the person who set TEA TEA TEA in motion.
The collection comprises three glazes, seven bowls each, named by our dad after his favorite summer flower, hasu (lotus). Each color represents a part of the plant:
- Renge (蓮華): the blossom, in red-orange-brown
- Hasuha (蓮葉): the leaf, in green-white-cream
- Hasuike (蓮池): the pond it floats on, in grey-blue-brown
What follows is a look inside the mind of a man who spends his days with clay.
INTERVIEW:
Could you tell us a bit about your background, and your journey with clay?
Well, I lived in Russia from five to ten, then moved back to Japan. From eighteen I've been in LA, and this is where I still make work. Apart from my art practice, I'm also a full-time lab supervisor at UCLA, and I teach classes at USC.
Clay's kind of been around me all my life. Japan has a very rich history with clay, but I also saw a lot of pottery growing up in Russia. And Russia has a lot of traditional crafts, which I really loved as a child. Going to these art markets on the weekends, little tchotchkes and pots and vintage stuff. I think all that's influenced my practice.
And when I went back to Japan, my school had a ceramics class from elementary through high school. I started touching clay in fourth grade, and the interest built slowly until I was doing it almost every day in high school. But my bachelor's is in biology, because I was also interested in science, insects, and plants. During my undergrad years I was taking some art classes, especially ceramics, and by the time I graduated I decided I'd go into grad school. There were two years between undergrad and grad where I was doing flea markets, art markets, little gallery shows, trying to build up my portfolio. And then I went into grad school, and that's when I really considered becoming a professional.
I've always liked the simple idea of making and selling things. My other interests in research and science are very intangible. You research for a year or two, and then at the end of it, what am I providing? Some knowledge, some ideas, but I'm not really proving anything. I like the old-school idea of making something and then getting something back for it.
Do you think your research and science background influences your approach?
It might. But I think you're touching on what a practice means. Any kind of practice, whether art, sports, or martial arts, involves development through research: just trying different things, collecting data on what went the way you didn't want it to go, and then steering it toward the way you want it to go. Just simply finding out what happens when you do some things.
You can go different paths in ceramics, or any practice. I'm more heavy on the glaze side, which is closer to chemistry and science. So I do get that comment. It helps that I have some background in chemistry, and even simple math. But my wife is a veterinarian and has a doctorate in research. She made me realize that what I do is so elementary compared to what research scientists do that I wouldn't want to call it a chemistry practice.
Could you go into how you met my dad? I feel like I've known you for a long time, but even I don't know exactly when it started.
I hope I remember right... I've known your dad for like ten years, so when we met, you were in high school. We had a mutual friend who said he had a friend who's interested in doing ceramics, and is a photographer, also in the arts. That friend turned out to be Shingo-san. We would meet every week or so, and he'd come to my studio and we'd make some work.
I think what also connected us was that we both like food. I don't cook much, but Shingo cooks a lot. We like to eat, taste, and talk about food culture. And then later on I learned that Shingo was involved in more of the healthy living, healthy eating, cultivation, farming world, which was interesting for me too. I think that's where we connected beyond our art interests. Now we're doing tea and ceramics, but there's always been this underlying appreciation of food, healthy food, and the cultivation of that culture.
When you're making a pot, what are you focusing on, physically or mentally?
You start with an idea, or an image, of what you want to make. So the actual thought process comes before you're on the wheel, like what kind of clay you want to use, what texture, what colors you might want on the piece. That will affect the choice of your clay. Depending on what I'm making, if it's for a client or something more personal, the shape might be more exact or a little more vague.
I usually have a general shape in mind, but I start on the wheel and try different shapes out first. I'm not thinking too much, but I am thinking about how it might be used, what kind of shape might be interesting for the colors or designs I have in mind. It's a balance of those while I'm throwing. And if I'm making a roughly similar shape for a limited production, I might throw two or three practice forms, just drafts, like you'd draft something before your real drawing. Then I'll start creating the pieces I'll actually use.
So mentally there's always a dialogue, but for the most part you're thinking about it before, and once you're on the wheel you hit the next dimension?
Well, I play a musical instrument too: the shakuhachi, a traditional Japanese flute. My teacher and I have these conversations about art in general. And I think ceramics is somewhat similar to playing music in improv. You have a general sense, maybe chords that you follow, or a general idea in mind. And then things affect the making, if you're very keen on your senses with the material.
Some people are more in control, they like to be a hundred percent in control. But if you want to be in conversation with your material, clay work and also music, there's a dialogue you can have. How soft your clay is today, how humid it is, and how your body is. Am I a hundred percent, am I a little tired? You might go a little slower. Maybe mentally you've got a ton of shit going on in your life. I don't think that necessarily affects your piece negatively. Maybe it's more of a release, and you might be more free when you make your piece.
In terms of music my teacher was talking about humidity, because the sound frequencies are different depending on the humidity and temperature of where you're playing that day, if it's a smaller room, larger room, a cathedral kind of room. The resonance is different even depending on which direction you're playing or who you're playing with and so on. So it's always a conversation with the instrument and how you play to make the best sound that day. I don't know if that's the other dimension you're talking about, another dimension in the sense that it's not only me. I'm trying to make something that I think is the best I can express on that certain day, with this certain material, in a certain condition.
Is there a way you would describe what you're after in your work?
For functional work, I'm drawn to an idea my ceramics professor mentioned casually. He said, a really good tool is one that you don't think about when you're using it. A good pen, even a Sharpie, good glasses, you kind of forget you're using it. If it's not a good tool, you're more conscious that you're using the tool. Which might be more like weight balance or ergonomics, logically speaking. But I don't really go into too much detail. I feel it and make sure it feels very good. That's what I strive for, a piece that you forget about when you are actively using it.
There is another idea, from my shakuhachi teacher. We were talking about the sound of these flute players that are Japanese national treasures. And my teacher described an ambiguity to the sounds they play. It's maybe not masculine or feminine. There's a balance of both, it takes you beyond the identity of the performer. To me that means it speaks universally. I like using bright colors, but I don't want it too bright, so I make it a little more muted. In general I like colors that are more ambiguous, like a gray-blue-green you can't really describe with one word, or a transition from a beige yellow to a cream. And ceramics, glaze specifically, gives me those shades. I've developed more skills in that area, to create ambiguity in color, shade, and tone.
It seems like each thing your teachers said has been a through line in a lot of what you do. And they blend over, right?
There's a lot of crossover with that kind of stuff if you're willing to play with it. Some artists don't want to play with it, they want full control, or they only play in a specific setting, or always aim for the perfect shape they want. I don't mind it being a little different, a little rounder today or a little straighter, as long as it's within my general idea of that shape and how it's going to be used.
Is there a moment in the process you really look forward to?
I do like the first pull of the day. When you center the clay and start shaping the walls, that's when I feel like I kind of know my condition that day, how I'm doing. The first pull of the day, I think, is a pretty big one for me.
What did you want these chawans to be, as opposed to bowls you might make for yourself?
It's a collaboration, so I thought about your teas. And we did talk with each other, but I had ideas of which colors and textures and shapes might go along with, let's say, your hojicha. I made the bowls thinking about which teas each might go with. I don't want to say which goes with which, because there is a different answer for everyone, and really any of them can be used with any tea. But I wanted some connection to the TEA TEA TEA products, so there is a closeness between the bowls and the tea.
So do you imagine not just matcha in the chawans? They could be used as a regular cup too?
Yeah, why not. It's America. It's a cup. You can have fun with this idea of tea, as long as you know the traditional way it's used, the way of preparing it, how you should drink it, the appreciation of the bowl, the matcha, and the practice itself of drinking it. There is a meditative aspect, but also, there's a reason why it's called a practice. There's a little bit of tension involved in drinking it, relaxation and tension both at the same time. A chawan is a tool for practice in the way of tea, but it is also essentially a functional drinking vessel. Try different ways of drinking out of these bowls. I can picture iced oolong, or the matcha calpico sodas Shingo makes.
So mostly the colors were your feeling of what might lend itself to our tea lineup.
Yeah, there's also the idea of seasons with traditional tea ceremony. So the colors for these three bowls, in the traditional sense, the blues could be more of a summer color. The greens could be a spring color. And the browns and reds might be more in the winter, to make you feel warmer. But the blues I chose are not the bright summer blues of lakes and rivers, and the greens are not the happy greens that sprout in spring. The ones I chose are a little toned down. So maybe that's more Californian, where the seasons are blended together. These bowls might be able to be used during a longer duration of the seasons, or regardless of season.
There are potters in Japan who are solely focused on chawans, trying to perfect them. Is there a part of the chawan that's especially challenging to nail?
I've always thought it was a very specific shape, with a particular ratio of height and width. But now I feel it's a little more loose, more open than I thought. There are so many different sizes of chawan. The summer ones are more open, and the winter ones are more closed and narrow, again for warmth, keeping the heat in.
If there's a difficulty, it's in understanding how it's going to be used. There should be an understanding of how the chasen works inside, and the chadamari, where after you drink it there should be some remnant of the green in a tiny divot at the bottom. But maybe less that, and more the idea of what the chadamari means: thinking of the whole process as a ritual, how the visual ending of the ritual should look. Does the green look like a landscape when you are done, like a small pond in the middle of a stone? There are a lot of interpretations you can make out of these specific ideas that come with drinking tea and using the bowl. If you have an understanding of it, you can play around loosely. The understanding was very hard, though. I do not think I know it to the depth a tea master does. I'm still learning.
Is there a question nobody really asks you about your work that you'd want to talk about?
I kind of answered some things I don't really talk about in interviews, like that idea of the tool, and the androgyny of sounds and objects. And there's also a thing that's stuck in my head about artifice. This is again something I remember from my ceramics teacher, Adrian Saxe.
In Japan our culture appreciates nature. We can feel a lot of awe in nature, it's just beautiful. Artists are drawn to that, the beauty of things in nature around us, and we try to recreate it. And with ceramics, it's very easy to say, oh, this looks very natural. He said, to make something that actually looks natural, you have to be fully in control. Nature is sculpted by the forces of nature and follows a logic, it is not accidental. But when we think of beauty in nature, I think a lot of us like to think that a "natural" or "organic" look is unintentional. Accidents and unexpected happenings can be embraced, but the decision should be intentional.
What are you excited about right now?
I have some time to make some larger work, so I think I'll work on that. There are also a couple shows coming up. I'm in a kintsugi show, which is exciting because I don't see myself as a kintsugi artist, but I have a piece I made with my really good friend, Yosei Shibata, which we've sat on for years. We showed it once, but this time we were invited to show it in the Japanese American Cultural Center gallery. So that's been exciting. And I'm excited about this TTT launch. I thought the box was beautiful, the way you guys designed it, and the calligraphy was really cool.
What music are you listening to in the studio these days?
Right now, Japanese rap, and Vocaloid, the computer-generated vocal songs. Some of it can be annoying, but as a genre it has become really avant-garde and interesting to me. I always fall back to '80s and '90s music, though. I like the sound of that generation.
Our thanks to Shoshi for making these bowls, and for taking the time to talk!
The full collection of bowls is now available online at tea-tea-tea.com:
You can see more of Shoshi's work at shoshiwatanabe.com and on Instagram at @shoshiwatanabe.
Shoshi is also one of the people behind ZAKKA BAKKA, an experimental retail and exhibition space in Los Feliz. They carry ceramics, apparel, and handmade objects from a rotating cast of Los Angeles-based artists, and are open Sundays from 12- 4pm. If you are in Los Angeles, stop by and say hello. Find them at @zakkabakka.shop.