Finding my Shanghai Clay Home

 乐天陶折Pottery Workshop in Shanghai feels like home.

Tuesday March 27

After the last trip to town, by Didi on Saturday, taking 2 hours in traffic, I am determined to find my way by Metro. Into my sack I pack toothbrush and change of clothes, clay tools and about 10 pounds of the porcelain I ordered in week two. I have found this clay to be unworkable for much of anything. I will try it for throwing today. So with a load on my back, I get a yellow bike and begin a ride to the nearest Metro stop, Jianchuan Lu, line 5. It is hot, load is heavy, it is further than I expect, but at last, I am on my way to the city. The workshop is open until 9 on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. I arrive about 3pm and set to work. I make some porcelain bowls and cups, then switch to the big pot brown clay and throw 2 BreadPots and lids and some mugs and bowls. I work until about 7:30. I leave the pots uncovered with a plan to come back tomorrow. I am happy to have a clay home in Shanghai and a clay sister here in Guo. Here is their website.

Upstairs display area

180 Shaanxi Nan Lu

It is not too far by Metro to the Rock and Wood International Youth Hostel near Zhongshan Park. I walk from the Metro to the Hostel, about 20 minutes.I have a small room with a bathroom and only a window to the corridor. There are towels, but I have forgotten to bring soap. I call Richard and then go to bed. I am lonely and tired.

Wednesday March 28
In the morning I have a western style breakfast at the hostel and then hop on a yellow bike to Zhongshan Park. The park is full abuzz, dancing, flute, parents with kids, old folks and men watching men at game tables. I walk and watch. I shoot videos of what they translate as "Square Dancing", dancing in the squares, which is very popular. The videos capture the overlapping sounds of the different dance groups practicing. Morning walk in ZhongShan Park 中山园 here.

I arrive at the Pottery Workshop at noon and set to working on the pieces I started yesterday.  The porcelain bowls have mostly cracked overnight. (Guo agrees that the high white porcelain is only good for slip.) Most of the other pieces are ready for me to trim. Patience is a big part of the clay process, but my time is short and a few pieces are lost in the rush.

Friday March 30
Back at the pottery I attend to my  work. At 5 I leave to go to change into clean clothes at nearby rental I found on bookings. I find the address down a small alley. The white bearded man who lives in the building hasn't a clue what I am talking about. A woman comes, she calls a guy. He comes on his motorbike 10 minutes later and opens a coded key box. No key! He calls a woman, who tells me that alas, the place is not available but she had updated it on the site. I am in clay covered clothes on my way to a seder with no where to stay for the night. I book a bed in a hostel (another story for later).
I get on a yellow OFO bike and ride to the old temple Ohel Rachel Synagogue, built by and named by Sasson for his wife. I change clothes in the bathroom and wander about taking pics until the seder begins. It is about 200 Shanghai Jews. Ohel Rachel Shanghai Seder

Travels to Shanghai Center

This week, I started taking the subway! I went to town three times, twice stayed overnight. It was time of dense experience. Here are the details of these trials.

Pottery Workshop Shanghai

On Saturday March 24: Sitting in traffic in a DiDi Chuxing (they bought out uberchina) heading to check out 乐天陶社 the Pottery Workshop on Shaanxi nan lu. 陕西南路180弄1号甲. It is a full hour away but I'm hoping to fit it into my life here. I got some clay from them when I arrived. One bag of porcelain that seems good for nothing without a wheel and some big pot stoneware that seems as forgiving as my wonderful BreadPot clay. Traffic in Shanghai is always terrible, the driver tells me. In the end it took over 2 hours and was only one of the travel frustrations of the day.
I checked out the Pottery Workshop and met the warm and friendly teacher Guo. I am looking forward to making it my clay home in Shanghai. From there I took the subway Line 10 to Longxi. I have been here five weeks now. Up until last week, slowed down by the broken ankle, my only outings were to see physical therapist Frank Fan and explore the neighborhood near Body and Soul, including a French provisioner right next door (ah baguette and brie) and LaoWai Jie, the Foreigner Street, with international restaurants. (Thai tonight!!). I came out from the subway with enough time to get to my appointment by bike. I tried to unlock a bike, but alas, my mobile network let me down. I could not receive the code. I walked fast, limping on my painful ankle, looking for a taxi, none around. I messaged that I would be late...that worked, so why not the bike. I found another bike to try and finally got one to work. Aargh. The travel frustrations stress me out, especially as I am not walking well or fast. Frank was sweet and understanding when I arrived sweaty and out of breath. After dinner of Pad Thai (alone), exhausted, too tired to figure out the subway home, I took a taxi back to my place. Third travel frustration--where I live is new and the address is a mystery, so the drivers have a hard time finding it. My phone battery is nearly dead, so my tools for communicating the location are fading fast. At last I guide him and I am back. 

On Tuesday I will go to Pottery Workshop again, this time to work. I can pay to work there by the day or the week, plus 25Y/kilo for any work fired. 

Flow of Wisdom

The porcelain of Jingdezhen goes back long and deeply into Chinese history. Jingdezhen porcelain, developed in the Song and Tang, was a treasure of the Ming and Qing Dynasties. The processes that make this clay workable are codified from the days of the Imperial kilns. In my first days of working in the studio at Jingdezhen, it was this fine white clay itself that invited me. I began exploring the clay in my hands, making, as I often do to start, stones and bones. The clay was soft. The weather was rainy. The clay, as it slowly dried, became chalky and fragile. This clay, made mostly of feldspar, is difficult to work. The stones and bones gathered to dry. Students gathered to wonder why I was making these stones, sticks, spirals, bones. 我还不知道。I don't know yet, I answered.




When I arrived here I thought I would do some work with bamboo, inspired by the lashed bamboo scaffolding seen in construction sites all over Asia and intriguing to me since my 1975 visit to China. Bamboo is an amazing plant, a grass really, that spreads its shoots shallow and far.
The bundle of bamboo trimmings I got from a gardener on campus the first day was of little use but to attract attention from students curious about the foreigner as I worked outside the studio sorting and trimming. Again, the answer to the question of what I was doing was "我还不知道? I still don't know". This not knowing was alien to the way of thinking here.


This batch of bamboo never found its way into the work. At some point I would know, or I would not. Some pieces come together after much consideration and planning; others find their way to being through the working. This was the kind of work that was to develop through the work, without clear ends.

Still unsure as to how to proceed, I, at last, appropriated a 3 meter split bamboo with a soft arching curve, with its strengthening divisions exposed and began to consider an installation using these made and found materials. I washed the bamboo and considered how to use it.

The stones and bones were finished to the "ring like a bell" density of the 1300C fire as my time in Jingdezhen was ending. And gently ring they did. I lashed the the ends, hung the bamboo from a tree branch outside the studio with help from James Gao and WuFei. I printed inspirational quotes in English on slips of paper that were tied to the lashing. These were copies of the ones I gave to students after an English Walk and Talk earlier in the week. Rich in cultural reference, I had explained the meanings to them. Quotations from Picasso, Martin Luther King and other Westerners were added to Chinese voices, from Buddha, Lao tze, Confucius, Dalai Lama, and Mao.

I sorted the stones were sorted by color of clay, from Tianbao clay browns to porcelain whites with painted cobalt blues and stripes of white clay through cobalt base between. I lashed each unglazed stick with ends glazed as jewels and hung it from the end of the bamboo. Together they rang lightly in the wind. A horseshoe shaped porcelain stirrup supported the other end. Stones flow like geologically from dark to light. A listening head looks up for more, absorbing knowledge dripping from above.

It didn't last long. I heard from friends that children pocketed the stones and by the end of May Day Festival it was gone. So it goes. Friends enjoyed the language of my art and process and will remember, as I remember the making.

Jingdezhen tile for Argentina

In early April, while working at the Jingdezhen Ceramics Institute 景德镇陶瓷学院 in Jiangxi Province, China, the porcelain center of the universe, I received an email request from Cristina del Castillo to join in a collective mural tile project "Tiles of Artists III" in Argentina. I began a porcelain tile to the specifications requested. The color theme is blue and green, perfect for the Jingdezhen porcelain tradition. On the last night of my stay in Jingdezhen I was joined in my studio by an enthusiastic group of students and artists to paint the tile I had prepared. I had inscribed a circle on the square tile and then a grid upon the circle. Certain squares were prepainted with either green or cobalt blue underglaze. We could each choose to sgraffito (carve through) the color or paint with underglaze color on the white parts. I left the tile in the hands of Zhong, who glazed and fired it and has by now shipped it off to Argentina. Here are some pictures and videos of that night and the tile.

Xiao Li 李鹏, John Zhong钟友健, Tony Bi, We Fei 吴菲, Judith Motzkin 莫思怡, James Gao 高翔 , Dean Huang黄金雷, Hu Di 胡笛(Li Wenying, Ric Swenson, Agatha Gao, Kim and others also contributed)


TonyBi and Wu Fei signing the tile


















Wu Fei


















Tony

















James, John, Dean














Hu Di



















the fired tile