When I imagined my Decembrance for 2021 my intention was to look forward, to find optimism for the next generation. Instead it has been full of remembrance for a great friend. I have been also feeling lucky to be part of the nest my daughter and her husband have created for their newborn son. It’s a privilege to help them as they find their way as parents. Any infant is a huge reminder of the basics of life. We make soup, we hum, we remember, and we look forward. We arrived back in Brooklyn tonight, surprised to feel it dark so early and relieved to learn that tonight is the earliest sunset of the season for this place.
“Give the ones you love wings to fly, roots to come back, and reasons to stay.”
Over the last week Warren and I have been pouring through almost forty years of photographs looking for photos of Mikio. I am struck by how much has changed not only in our bodies but in the technology used to make photos–slides, prints, phones. I look at photos from the ’80s and then in my dreams I wander out of the frame and around familiar rooms, having conversations with family and friends who are long since gone. I am thankful for the impulse to click the shutter at so many events and mundane moments. In the daylight I shuffle around outside considering leaves, the brown curls, tattered edges in piles and drifts. I choose a few specific ones. The camera allows me a transformative moment of appreciation of plant material, pottery, light and memory.
Photography is naively believed to reproduce visual actuality, but in fact the images our eyes take in and the images the camera delivers are not the same. Taking a picture is a transformative act. Avedon’s high-contrast black-and-white photographs render people as we do not see them in life; our eyes spare us the particulars of decrepitude and sickness that the camera almost gloatingly records. In the case of my aged and diseased leaves, the camera exercises another of its transformative capacities: it confers aesthetic value on the apparently plain and worthless.
–Janet Malcolm, from Burdock, The New York Review, August 14 2008
For years I had a postcard in the studio by my wheel titled Nothingness, a calligraphic image by Mikio’s father, Tetsuzan Shinagawa. That image has loomed large in my imagination like the moon in December. It was both a pattern and an idea that slowly worked its way into my brushwork. I understood nothingness as an image, like Cézanne might have understood the mountain that he repeatedly painted. I looked at the quality of line and the openness of the mark. It was both structure and freedom and it moved through my body to be translated by my hand. I have made many bowls and plates for Omen over the years that are based on nothingness, and it has given me both direction and great freedom.
Mikio worked with the well known designer Stefan Sagmeister to design Talk To A Stone: Nothingness. Two years later Sagmeister said, “The first 60 pages are about nothingness, but I really only understood the concept about half a year ago. That if you understand that life is nothingness what unbelievable freedom that creates. If life is empty and with no meaning, then you really can start to build whatever you want to build, that nothing holds you back.”
–Stefan Sagmeister, quoted in, Sagmeister: Made You Look, by Peter Hall, Abrams, New York, 2001
I am struck when I look at pots in the bright light of our home or studio how different they appear than when they are in use at Omen Azen in New York City. The dark wood tables, the deep patina of the exposed brick and the soft light from the hanging paper lanterns emphasizes deep hues and alternative contrasts. During the short days of December I often find myself racing to photograph these images in the long shadows of shortened days.
“One of the characteristics of Japanese food culture is to first see and enjoy the food before it is eaten. To appreciate the meal with all of our senses is a fundamental root within Japanese culture. For both Catherine’s and Warren’s work, not only is there a beauty in their ceramics that we see, but we can also sense an essence that we cannot see with our eyes. It is the beauty of the artist’s heart informed by the soul and spirit of the imagination. Reminiscent of stars in the dark sky that twinkle and shine, we feel and capture the presence of Nature and Love.”
–Mikio Shinagawa, essay in Omen Azen: Whiteness to Nothingness, catalog and calendar, Sketchbook Press, 2013.
Yesterday and today I spent part of the afternoon planting garlic. Being outside, hands in the dirt, weeding and pulling out old vines, shifting compost—all these tasks move me out of my head and into physical attention where I notice the nuances of nature and relationships between growth and decay. I am struck by the smell of the frost bitten dill still hanging on by a thread or the withered Mexican marigolds that are particularly fragrant. Today’s goal was to plant garlic. I slip the garlic bulbs into the holes, sweep soil over them and cover them with a mulch of shredded leaves. The bulbs hold potential but are now gone from my sight. I trust they will grow. It is actually a mystery, the mechanics of how it all works, but perhaps that is why it is thrilling when they sprout and later when they are harvested.
In our friendship with Mikio he would often disappear for stretches of time, sometimes we might even be in the restaurant discussing a potential plate or bowl. I was left to wonder what next? He would return with an idea. His absences to Japan, Italy or California were often a mystery but for him nuances and projects were brewing. It was not unlike the miracle of garlic growing in the ground in the winter months.
“According to Buddhist teaching, there is a very close interdependence between the natural environment and the sentient beings living in it. These verses express the essential gentleness of the human spirit. They tell us that we should not only maintain gentle, peaceful relations with our fellow human beings, but that it is also very important to extend the same kind of attitude toward the environment.”
—The Dalai Lama, April 11, 1997, in the preface to Mikio’s book of his father’s calligraphy, Talk To A Stone: Nothingness, A Joost Elfferts Book published by Stewart, Tabori & Chang
I grew up as an atheist. But after losing someone in our close circle I can’t help but feel like I see them everywhere. I dream about them. I hope to speak to them again. I remember the turn of a wrist, the habit of speech. One of our early visits with Mikio was at the height of autumn at our house in Maryland. Mikio brought one of the chefs from Omen who had not yet been out of New York City. Our driveway was stupendously covered in yellow maple leaves. The chef took a walk at dusk and returned after dark covered in yellow leaves like he had been rolling in nature.
The Lesson Of The Falling Leaves
the leaves believe such letting go is love such love is faith such faith is grace such grace is god i agree with the leaves
I took my dog walk with Luna a bit early today. We had been to visit a friend in Fredericksburg and I needed to stretch my legs. The air was warm and the clouds grey on one side of the sky and the sun low on the other side. The trees were stark against the dark clouds, shadows rippled through the neighbor’s pasture, the pale green of a hillside was reflected in a still pond. As I tried to capture something of the moment in a photo, a group of five swans flashed bright against the dark clouds. Everything felt interconnected—the swans contrasted against the dark sky, resurrecting my memory of the family of swans that nested on our pond this year. All linked together—the moment, the memory and the future.
Speaking of memory, we have been digging through our archive of photos. First I sought images of my pregnant body for Zoe as she moved through her own pregnancy. Then I’m amassing pictures of her as a newborn to discern family resemblances with her son Larkin. Most recently we are gathering photographic evidence of our long friendship with Mikio Shinagawa who recently passed away. He was a true friend, mentor, a great connector and encourager in our life. These deep dives in images and memories remind me of the interconnectedness of our neighbors, ancestors, landscape, food and artwork. Mikio always tried to remind us of our connections, in New York, Virginia, Maine, Japan and beyond. While we often looked to our past, Mikio always asked us to look toward the children of our future.
Q: What do you hope readers will take away from Cloud Cuckoo Land?
A: I hope readers are reminded of our myriad interconnections: with our ancestors, with our neighbors, with other species, with all the kids yet to be born. I believe that the more we can remember how much we’re all in the same boat—the more we can train ourselves to imagine, recognize, and remember our connections—with the bacteria in our guts, the birds outside our windows, the meals on our plates, and the children in our futures—the better off we’ll be.
Welcome to another series of my decembrance project. Each year the accumulation of 21 images is part memoir, part ode to the light as we count down to the shortest day of the year. It is a glimpse of the pots I have been making, the growing and browning things that catch my eye mixed with poems or quotes that resonate with the moment. Each year as the calendar shifts to December I wonder, Is it darker this year? The leaves have piled higher and deeper. The wind registers a different chord. By writing I remember that my task is to pay attention to the moments of light no matter if it is sunrise, flat noon, sunset, or candle light.
Even this late it happens: the coming of love, the coming of light. You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves, stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows, sending up warm bouquets of air. Even this late the bones of the body shine and tomorrow’s dust flares into breath.
When I talk about my work I often use analogies inspired by seeds and gardens. Today as I dug through photographs of myself while pregnant to share with my daughter — who is due to have her baby a day before her own birthday — I thought more about roots. I came across so many images of Warren and I building our house, studio and kilns. We have collaborated to bring up our child, fire our kilns, exhibit our work and dig our roots. The land was pasture when we bought it. We have planted trees and flowers, vines, vegetables and ideas. It took me a long time to feel like Virginia was my home. Many cycles of the seasons have turned their heads. I can look back to see how we have grown our roots and admire the passing summer and welcome the fall.
Dahlia in cw bowl with wf wire sphere
As I dig for wild orchids in the autumn fields, it is the deeply-bedded root that I desire, not the flower.
Tonight, June 21st, marks the end of this series. Technically, yesterday may have been the accurate marking of the solstice. But the 21st is what I think of as the the longest day of the year here in Virginia. It really feels like true summer. Hot, humid and still we worked in the depths of the kiln. I am grateful for the long hours of daylight. It’s hard to find a poetic sense of completion so I write as if I had the last pencil on earth to capture evening glimpses of light.
Write as though you had in hand the last pencil on earth,
-Charles Wright, from “Body and Soul,” A Short History of the Shadow, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2002
