Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Collected Meanings: Japanese Pottery (repost)
Collected
Meanings:
Japanese Pottery and Travel
Stories
Dick Lehman
Goshen College Visual Arts
Gallery
Goshen, Indiana
12 July, 2010
My first reaction
to this exhibit was one of curious pleasure mixed with acute apprehension. Asian ceramics always tweak my interest. My aunt Ruby FitzGerald (FitzRu) studied pottery
under a Japanese Master (one of the first Western women to do so), and I have
always freely lost myself in the Asian ceramics collections of the Art
Institute Chicago and the Minneapolis Art Institute. On the other hand -- of what real use is an
Asian ceramics collection?
I need not have
worried. Dick Lehman is both an expert
in the field of ceramics and an accomplished collector. Collected Meanings explores decades of
collecting and travel experiences in Japan as both a record of an on-going
cultural exchange between the United States and Japan, and as an educational
introduction to the variety of methods, textures, finishes, and shapes
historically common to Japanese ceramics.
One might begin
Lehman’s tour in one of two ways. One
might rush right into the cases of ceramics and begin exploring, or one might
choose to engage the well placed magazine articles and travel memoirs posted
along the wall.
