Dialogue - Tetsuya Hioki -

"It's Tsuchiya after all," Hioki Tetsuya states frankly, and his works moved the hearts and hands of many people at his first exhibition at Utsushiki in February 2022.


How can we explain the surprise and strange sense of satisfaction we felt when we saw Heki-san encouraging visitors to "try playing around with it" while he was in the gallery? Perhaps what lies behind his words is a sense of distance from the pure earth, the way we find the fascinating pebbles rolling along the riverbank, or the beauty of the veins of a fallen leaf that makes us reach out to touch it without any ulterior motives.

In this first interview with him, we talked about his work, which he hesitates to call a potter or a form of expression, up to the present day. Please take a look with the signs of spring in the air!

How I started working with soil

First of all, how did you end up in a life that involves earth?

Heki: I was originally a very vague child who didn't know what I wanted to do. I always did kendo and went to high school and college without thinking about my future. Then, when I became a college student, I finally started to think, "I can't just get a job and end up as a salaryman."

Wow.

Heki: So, I wandered around during my university days. I had some interest in manufacturing and admired artisans, so I wandered around bamboo and glasswork studios. That's when I encountered pottery and wanted to try making pottery.

Have you loved making things since you were a child?

Heki: I think I liked it. But I thought that people who went to art school or were involved in art were somehow special, and I never thought I would go there. There were seniors who went to art school, but I wasn't interested at all. My faculty was just a business faculty (laughs). So after graduating from university, I started studying ceramics at a vocational school.

After that, did you go straight for a career as a potter?

Heki: After graduating from vocational school, I was an apprentice for four years. At the time, I also felt like I was there as a "job". As I continued making pottery from morning to night, somewhere in my heart I felt, "This isn't how it should be," or "I shouldn't make it like this," but I continued making pottery as a job.

What was it that made you feel uncomfortable?

Heki: It was a workshop that focused on making beautiful things quickly and in large quantities. As I experienced the way they did things and sold them, I started to think, "Maybe I can't do it." But even though I thought that, after three or four years I got used to it and could do it the way my master did as a matter of course. So when I tried to make something of my own, I ended up doing the same thing as my master. My hands had memorized it. Even though I felt like, "I want to proceed in a different way," I found myself only being able to do things the same way as my master.

Oh, that's a shock.

Heki: It was a complete mess. I was in such a shock. I couldn't overcome the barrier between being able to master the basics and expressing my own style, and I started to feel a kind of loathing towards the things I made. I no longer enjoyed making things, and even thought I couldn't make pottery in particular. I felt like I'd given up. I didn't like what I made at all, and I didn't know where to take it. I entered a time when I had nowhere to go, where I could do it, but I couldn't make my own things. I couldn't make pottery, which is the route to success for an artist, and I started to hate it. This was just before I turned 30.

From being given to being grabbed

And then why "Tsuchiya"?

Hioki: Kaneri (Kaneri Ceramics Limited Company) is my wife's family home, and it was a chance encounter. So we decided to try making soil from scratch. So at first, we didn't really know anything about what soil making was.

However, if you have studied pottery, you probably know something about clay.

Heki: Not at all. "Clay is something that is given to you," has always been. Especially at school, you are given clay and told to use it. You improve your skills and study, but the material is something that is given to you, not something that you go out and grab. If you do that for a long time, it becomes natural, and you no longer question it or feel anything strange about it.

Wow! It's surprising to learn that clay making and pottery are so separate things.

Heki: So it was a continuous process of seeing things for the first time. The site where the clay is made, and the raw clay. Basically, Tsuchiya blends raw clay to make clay products in order to always provide a stable supply of high quality products, but until then I had only received the finished clay, so I had no idea how the clay was made or what the blueprint was.

From that point on, I learned more and more about it.

Heki: Even if an artist comes to me for advice or makes a request, I can't react without knowledge. I can't say "I don't know," so I started researching materials so I could give them proper advice. Even with the same clay, the problems that arise can change depending on the pottery method, so I wanted to gain as much experience as possible and understand it.

So you make pottery solely for the purpose of researching and experimenting with clay?

Heki: Yes. I feel like I am showing it to the artists. I want them to see how it is used and how it looks, so I don't have a specific taste, and I also have some pieces that are not very elaborate. If I had to say, I think that my artistry is seen as "continuing to fire."

Speaking of your artistic individuality, many of your works seem to evoke antiques and natural objects. Is that intentional?

Heki: It's not intentional, but rather it comes out when you bring out the goodness of the material. I think that anyone can make it, so rather than putting in the artist's personality, I have a strong desire to "see the phenomenon that the material has". Many of my works are in the shape of vessels, but that's not so much about making vessels as it is about "seeing phenomena and things through the shape of the vessel". If you do that, the time axis will automatically be transcended.

"They're doing something outrageous."

When did the idea of ​​"seeing the phenomena inherent in materials" begin?

Heki: It was when I started working with soil after joining Kaneri. I didn't even know where the raw soil came from, but I started to understand when I went to the mountains to witness the extraction of raw materials.

Is there any particularly memorable incident?

Heki: There was a time when we were looking after an old house that was over 100 years old, where old diaries, military uniforms, and gas masks would come out of the closet. At first, I just thought it was amazing, but as I continued to visit, I gradually began to feel a presence in the house, and I could clearly see the footprints and handprints of people who had definitely been living here for a long time.

yes.

Heki: Then one day, we burned floorboards that had fallen apart due to termite damage. We thought we might as well do an open fire since we were already making a fire. That was the first time I felt that burning and trapping carbon wasn't just trapping the remains of plants, but also trapping the time of the house.

Please tell me more.

Heki: When I was watching the smoke from the wood that was burned in the area where people lived entering the pottery, I thought, "This is something incredible." Potters don't just take care of the end of things, they also fix memories, fix time, that's what they do. I had a strong realization that I was making pottery within such a large cycle, and the meaning of the material for me changed again.

You mentioned being in charge of the end of things, but what does that mean?

Heki: There is a site on a certain mountain of raw materials where they are digging up the remains of a long-standing cemetery. People in the past were buried in the ground, so they definitely gave birth to other people. I think that the bones of my ancestors and others are in this soil. It was only when I went to the mountain that I realized that clay is made by maturing things that have passed away, such as humans, animals, and plants, for a long period of time. Soil is not just soil, it is sediment. At the time, I thought, "They're doing something incredible."

Finally, please tell us what your future plans are.

Heki: I don't have any particular desire to do this or that. As long as I have the material, I think I'll create something that captures that phenomenon. My main focus is on being a clay shop, experimenting with clay and showing it to artists and acting as a bridge. I'm just selling my work (laughs).

thank you

Hioki: Thank you very much.

After our conversation, Hioki told us during the interview that "I've decided to only do what I like." He makes his own pottery in his spare time after working at Kaneri from morning till night, and believes that if it's not fun, he can just quit, or if there's nothing else to do. The irrational curiosity and deep gaze of someone who has once felt a deep dislike for his own actions and the things he creates seem to reveal to us something more important than what meets the eye.

Perhaps this is also why we shine a spotlight on the unique characteristics and fascinating aspects of the raw clay before it is blended into a product.

I believe I will continue to be attracted to Hioki's craftsmanship, which does not simply reproduce the same things over and over again in response to demand, but rather captures the phenomena that arise from the earth in front of him, moment by moment.

Interviewer and writer: Noserumi