Hawai'i Craftsmen photo
Pot by Leroy Taba

The ever-changing
art of raku

By Treena Shapiro
Star-Bulletin

You never know what you're going to get when you throw a pot into a raku kiln, but you won't have to wait long for the results. The unpredictability and immediacy of raku is often what draws beginning potters in.

Raku is an art form in flux. Traditionally, raku tea settings have been fired for use in Japanese ceremonies. More contemporary raku features vases and free-standing sculpture.

But some potters need more. They need to throw more fuel in the fire. Or maybe a little salt will do.

RAKU HO'OLAULE'A 1999 JURIED EXHIBITION On display: Through July 22. Place: AMFAC Exhibition Hall, 745 Fort Street Mall Hours: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday-Friday and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday Kiln-building demonstration: 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. July 17, Linekona Art Center, $10 fee Call: Hawai'i Craftsmen, 596-8128

Rick Berman, a ceramics and sculpture teacher at Pace Academy in Atlanta, Ga., and guest juror for the Hawai'i Craftsmen's Raku Ho'olaule'a '99 introduced local potters to an experimental salt-and-charcoal firing technique called SALKU. Three of Berman's SALKU pieces fired at Kualoa Regional Park went on display last night as part of the juried exhibition at the AMFAC Exhibition Hall.

In SALKU, the firing temperature is hotter than that of raku, reaching upward of 2000 degrees F, and salt is introduced into the kiln during the firing, according to Jerome Heck, chairman of the Raku Ho'olaule'a. The salt forms a glaze and a pocked texture when it interacts with the clay body. In addition, the pots are "tumble stacked" in the kiln and come out with rough spots where they touched each other and the sides of the kiln.

Hawai'i Craftsmen photo
"Wishing for Tea" by Jerome Heck

Berman also contributed a raku saggar-fired vase to the exhibition. Heck said this technique involved putting sawdust in a coffee can with the vase, and firing it without a cover in a raku kiln. The smoking from the sawdust traps carbon in the glaze at the top of the vase, creating a layered effect.

Berman and the Urasenke Foundation selected more than 70 pieces that were pit- or raku-fired at Kualoa for the exhibition. Two of the pieces were created by Ken Kang, a potter and kiln builder who will demonstrate welded-wire raku kiln building on July 17.

Kang started doing raku pottery 25 years ago and made his own kiln shortly thereafter. He moved on to custom building kilns for others. "I wanted to meet the people doing raku," he said. It worked. Kang has been head of the Community Kiln at the annual Raku Ho'olaule'a for 14 years.

Hawai'i Craftsmen photo
Finished pots, above, crowed the campground at Kualoa
Ranch, where a mass raku-making session is held annually.

Kang said that on average, 175 potters sign up for the Raku Ho'olaule'a. Some are students.

Kim Coffee-Isaak, executive director of Hawai'i Craftsmen, sees the importance having young people participate. "The young folk will stick around and be middle-aged and do what the old folk are doing now," she said. "It will keep the stream of artists generationally moving forward."

Shigeru Miyamoto, a lecturer in ceramics at the University of Hawai'i, said young people bring enthusiasm and a different point of view. Pot races to build the tallest pot were added to the program at the suggestion of students. "That helped make it a little more interesting," Miyamoto said.

Hawai'i Craftsmen photo
An artist removes a pot from the kiln.The finest pieces from
the Kualoa event are showcased in the Raku Ho'olaule'a exhibit.

UH graduate student Aaron Padilla believes raku is a draw for younger artists. "The results are so immediate and so unpredictable at the same time," he said. "It's seductive because you're so close to the actual process, the heat, the fire, the brightness, the smoke.

"It's a medium or process that requires the artist to be one with their product through the entire formation."

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