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Catalog introduction by Susan Peterson.
Jun Kaneko has been doing some of the most exciting clay work in the world consistently since 1962 when he came from Japan to the United States.
Jun was a painter in Japan before putting his hands on clay in this country. Now his ceramic surfaces are usually brilliantly patterned in rainbow hues or more formally resolved in black and white, which possibly harks back to a yin-yang undercurrent from his original culture. A fabric designer also, and a colorist on the two-dimensional plane, he is at the same time aware of the volume inside a three dimensional form including its relationship to the outside shape. His forms are full of air. Even the flattest ones have the feeling of wind blowing.
I have known Jun and watched his growth since he arrived in Los Angeles 30 years ago. Early works were relatively small bowls, plates, and round vessels covered with spirals, squiggles, and lines in monochrome cobalt blue on a light ground. Then came a period of tri-legged forms, of large hollow knot-forms, painted in various pinks, yellows, and blues, in two to three foot scale, sometimes grouped together in installations. The size of the sculptures increased as his technique accommodated, and eventually he was making some of the largest forms that have ever been executed in fired clay.
Simultaneously as the form of the work evolved, Jun was building his own kilns and contended with the arduous process of firing big pieces, and perfecting decorative treatments that were a test of the firing method, of the atmosphere, of the chemistry, and of the art.
It is unusual for an artist to have roots as well as feet in two cultures, but Jun does have that. He exhibits on both sides of the Pacific Ocean and in Europe.
An artist who never stops thinking, Jun constantly explores and expands the possibilities of his materials. He carefully compounds varieties of different clay mixtures and exploits exacting combinations of metallic coloring oxides. He revels in the enormous difficulties involved in fabrication. Ceramics has a world of potentials, more demanding than for any other art medium. For Jun these are never ending challenges. He relishes the new, he wants to conquer the untried.
Susan Peterson, Professor of Ceramics
Hunter College, New York City
Author: The Craft and Art of Clay
Lucy M. Lewis: American Indian Potter The Living Tradition of Maria Martinez 5hoji Hamada: A Potters Way and Work
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