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pulsate with a sense of raw life; they also represent a
departure from his earlier smoke-infused pieces, executed
w h e n h e w a s a s s o c i a t e d w i t h t h e a v a n t - g a r d e , n o n f u n c t i o n a l
ceramic movement, Sodeisha. Lined up in a neat little
colony in one corner of his half of the studio is “Spring Snow
12–13,” an ongoing series that has been shown at the Taiwan
Ceramics Biennale in 2010, the Museion No. 1 gallery in
Budapest in 2011, Joan B. Mirviss in New York in 2012,
and the Watson Arts Centre in Canberra in 2013. The works
comprise heavy coils of clay piled atop each other to create
irregularly staggered formations. Imprinted with the marks
of their maker’s hands, Satoru’s pieces evoke the febrile
e n e r g y t h a t s h a p e d t h e c l a y.
When I comment on the vivid, somewhat artiicial hues
of their blue, green, and orange glazes, Satoru chuckles.
“Do they look artiicial? And not natural? When someone
talks about a ‘natural’ style in the context of ceramics, I don’t
think of the colors and forms found in nature,” he explains.
“The lurid blues, copper greens, and oranges in this series,
for example, may not mimic the natural hues of nature. But
for me, they express the unconscious memories of the clay
that lie dormant within. And as a matter of fact, the colors
themselves are the result of all-natural glazes derived from
wood or straw ash, sometimes mixed with some copper.”
Satoru’s current approach to his work seems to date from
a momentous episode three decades ago, when he lost his
studio in a landslide. Unnerved by the brutal force of nature
that had upended his life, he realized that his chosen medium
was not just a material but a manifestation of the power of
nature itself; the energy and life force he felt in the clay were
the same as those that brought about the natural disaster
that had assaulted his way of life. Subsequently, he came to
understand that clay was “a total system of life, with myself
living within it.”
Seeing himself almost as a conduit to express the “luid,
mobile energy lying dormant in the clay,” Satoru insists that
a s h e s t a r t s a p i e c e , h e h a s n o d i r e c t o r f o r m a l s e n s e o f t h e
shape he will eventually create. “In a way, you could say that
my work takes on a fortuitous form that emerges out of theSatoru ‘s monu-
mental works,
including a broken
spare of Pre-
Copernican Mud,
1996, surround
the artists’
Lake Biwa home.BLOUINARTINFO.COM | MARCH 2016 ART+AUCTION
He realized the energy and life force he felt in the
clay were the same ones that brought about the
natural disaster that had assaulted his way of life.