After his father’s interest expanded to avant-garde flower arrangement and modern containers, he established his own kiln in 1974, with the help of another Japanese potter well known in the United States, the late Makoto Yabe from Ipswich, Massachusetts.

After graduation from the arts and crafts department of the Ishikawa Prefectural Industrial High School, Michihsa studied ceramics with his father and then joined his father’s studio, Hokuto, which was constructed on the site of an old samurai residence that once belonged to the Honda family, and is now one of Kanazawa City’s Important Cultural Properties.

About the influences on his work, Michihisa says that he has been strongly influenced by the environment in which he spent his childhood - the spacious, historical temple grounds and gardens and the perpetual changes in nature. When he speaks about the influences from Japanese ceramic traditions, he focuses solely on the ceramics of the prehistoric Joomon period, because he senses the powerful spirit of those potters whose work continues to energize him. Just as many of his sculptural pieces reflect the bold textures of stones in the temple garden and the dramatic shadows that emerge and change throughout the day, his most conscious imagery comes from his continual dialogue with the dramatic and subtle changes in the earth for which clay is a metaphor. Yes his vase forms suggest tender reverence for his father’s art as a flower arranger.

However, the beauty and tranquility of his environment is not the only dominant influence on his work. He attributes the strongly accentuated lines of his pieces to his love of rock-and-roll music (he is a guitarist in a rock-and-roll band) and Japanese film animation. And it is this tension between the contrasting bold lines of the forms and the soft, earthy surface textures and colorations that distinguish all of Michisa’s functional and sculptural ceramics -conflicting values that he does not feel compelled to resolve because, together, they represent the larger, truthful outline of his life.

In order to achieve variations in the texture and color of the basic white Shigaraki clay he uses, he employs various treatments, such as adding crushed porcelain or a fire resistant terra cotta clay, both of which enhance the texture of his fired pieces. His limited use of glaze is highly selective, and generally includes a white feldspar rich glaze. This rather unique surface manipulation of Shigaraki white clay has brought him distinction in more than 20 prizes in many competitions since the beginning of his career in 1974, including several Grand Prices in the annual Ishikawa Modern Art Competition.

Like his father, Michihisa particularly enjoys teaching ceramics, and specifically to young children of pre-school age. He and his father, with two additional teachers, offer ceramics classes in Studio Hokuto to a broad range of ages, and the studio has produced several potters with notable reputations.

This exhibition at Keiko Fine Japanese Handcrafts is Michihisa’s first solo exhibition in the United States, during which he will demonstrate his work at the Harvard Ceramics Program in Cambridge, Massachusetts.


William Thrasher