Kettles, MCP, Summer at the Nash

June 15—July 30, 2004

Kettles: Japanese Artistry and American Artists was the first exhibition outside Japan to celebrate the Japanese tea ceremony kettle as a living tradition and as a source of inspiration to American artists.

The kama, or water-boiling kettle, is an object of beauty in the highly ritualized Japanese tea ceremony. Four contemporary and innovative Japanese kettlemakers, Suzuki Morihisa Shiiko and Miya Nobuho from Morioka in northeastern Japan, and Nagano Retsu and Eda Kei’ichi from Ninomiya and Sano City, honor traditional forms and methods while creating unique but useful objects that achieve their fullest meaning in chanoyu, or the Way of Tea. The kama, though little known in the United States, has inspired American artists, including Minnesotans Timothy Lloyd and Wayne Potratz. Lloyd’s small gestural vessels, formed from copper and other sheet metals, and Potratz’s cast kettles, imbued with personal symbols, demonstrate the continuing influence of Eastern aesthetics on Western artistic production.

Kettles: Japanese Artists and American Artistry was organized by the Carleton College Art Gallery, Northfield, Minnesota.