Joan Takayama-Ogawa: Ceramic Beacon

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ceramic beacon
zaiden
Tea was a focus for Takayama-Ogawa from the start due to
its interwovenness with the history of ceramics. Tea-related
objects also held personal cultural connotations and signified her
Japanese-American family roots. As an Asian Studies major who
spent a year in Japan during college, her heritage is central to her
identity. She had a take on teaware that was however, distinctively
her own. She stepped back from functional intentions and
instead approached teaware as a strictly sculptural launching
point. By 1990, she had developed her own signature “Ogawa-O”
teapot (FIG. 1). Shaped like a doughnut, her tilted spin on the
teapot had a large void at the center. It was a sharp contrast to
the formality of Japanese ceramic canons. Flouting tradition, she
began to find her own path. Takayama-Ogawa treated the elegant
functional object as a surface for her gleaming painted decoration
in her initial work with metallic glazes.
(ABOVE, FIG. 1)
Madhatter’s Teapot #1
1990
Glazed earthenware
(RIGHT, FIG. 2)
Sea Urchin Tea Set
1992
Glazed earthenware
1991 was the first significant turning point in her artistic development
after her father passed away. The natural world and its
fragility were a pre-existing concern dating back to her college
years in geography at ucla. With the loss of her father, this apprehension
began to move towards the forefront in her outlook. The
same year, she went to the same dive spot in Hawaii where she had
always visited. For the first time, she noticed the coral was suffering.
Human-induced environmental disaster became a topic she
could not ignore, long before it became mainstream conversation.
She tapped the textures, patterns, and colors of underwater life for
some of her sculptural tea sets that paid homage to nature (FIG. 2).
She began absorbing her outlook, fears, and proactive personality
in the objects from that time on.