Ceramics Festival/Museum Visit

---

I went to Ich'on one weekend to see the ceramics festival. This festival is huge and is in many different places within Korea. Unfortunately it isn't the big one that is the Biennial International Ceramics Festival, but there was plenty to see it being just Korean. It was inspiring to see the old techniques blending with the new styles, or foreign styles. We weren't there very long, but I found it a lot of fun. I think I was the only one that was that excited though. ^^ I was able to see pieces from Rudy Autio and Peter Voulkos (?can't spell) who are two very famous ceramicists in the USA. If you want to see their work let me know, I don't want to post these pictures.. 😉 I bought a couple of books on modern korean potters with their work. One is just artists who have some interesting work in Korea, and the other is about Korean descendents who moved or were forced to move to Japan I think from the Joseon Dynasty. Their work isn't Korean and maybe it's not really Japanese either. So it kind of fascinated me. I can't read a whole lot of the book, but there are some small parts in english instead of korean and japanese. I want to know how to do these glazes so bad. None of them seem to run, maybe they have the recipe down where they were able to do enough testing to get it pretty close to perfect. It is very sad that they lost the celadon recipe completely and all they have is a substitute to the older, more perfected one. I noticed a lot of the Korean work is white, earthtone, celadon, blue cobalt and red iron painted slip. Once in a while i see the red oxblood glaze or this really deep beautiful blue glaze, but not as often as the celadon-like glaze.

This same weekend we also went to the Seoul Arts Center to see 3 different exhibits with our professor. I was able to see modern korean painting, some animation exhibit which I have pictures (we were allowed), and the traveling Tiffany exhibit (you know the jewelry). I wasn't too excited about the jewelry one, but the others were good. I did try really hard to appreciate the Tiffany exhibit, even more because I wasn't excited about it. I guess I just don't find jewelry stimulating or interesting enough to really pay close attention to it. I was able to respect the crafstmanship, but the actual work didn't inspire me. Maybe I just don't know enough about fine metals to make a good judgement.

This was a big museum weekend for me though, first it was the Seoul Arts center with 3 separate exhibits then one big museum of ceramics in Ich'on plus outdoor exhibits. I was pretty tired, but there are so many museums I want to see while I am here. I don't get to see alot of museums in Burlington, but hopefully I'll get around to see more once i return. I'm hopefully going to do a lot of things once i get back. At least during the summer, I won't have time during the semester. I'm already starting to dread the semester, but it can't be avoided. I wish i could become more a part of the art community here, but I hope I can make up for that once I get back to the states. I have been able to talk to a couple of local artists, but it is always limited because of the amount of time it takes to communicate an idea with a language barrier.

---

Photos

Transformer
Human size sculpture, there were a few of these in basic wood and in color.

Museum
Blown up characters the size of the room (they were pretty big)

BAM!!
I liked this animation exhibit, it brought back memories and used the medium of animation to express deeper ideas and questions.

Festival
Unloading of the climbing kiln, I was surprised it was actually being used instead of just "decoration".

Climbing kiln
One of the two they were unloading

Clay!
Kids playing in clay, they had a few tents with demos and classes with wheel throwing and hand building.

Pottery
Again, stand upon stand and row upon row of pots, vases, teapots, mugs, and anything else you can make out of clay were displayed.