Kjell Hahn

here are a mix of most of the sculptures from chiaki horikoshi’s anagama kiln here in Gunma and the ones that came out of john dix’s anagama kiln in Tamba sasayama.
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i know the firings were a long time ago, but i just got my hands on the pots.
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ill be in Tokyo this weekend for the end of my exhibition.
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opening party done and done.
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a strange night. hard to quantify how successful it was though. on one level things couldnt have gone better. a ton of people came including a photographer and interviewer from a tokyo artist magazine and a gallery owner friend. ive met with the gallery owner a couple of times now and will be helping her start up a new gallery in Harajuku in June. Everyone who came couldnt have been nicer. they dressed up, brought piles of flowers, wine, fancy japanese sweets, and presents too. I had worried that only a few people would come, but they packed the place from wall to wall. I got to meet with people I hadnt seen for months and even some classmates from Jimmy’s school in Nagoya came. if you are reading this and came to the show THANK YOU!!!
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I could have done better in the sales department, but there was some positive movement there. and that kind of led to the one big hiccup that ended up putting a stink on the whole little party. the dude who owned the place pretty much blew up at the end of the night and told me at the after party dinner in a loud enough voice for everyone to hear that my friends were basically losers and i didnt need them if they didn’t care enough to buy something. I didnt know what to say to that… it isnt his main business and the publicity was great but that didnt stop him from yelling “fuck them” and “fuck it” a good 20 times during the course of the evening.
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I dont really know what led to that. The events of the day were: first he showed up 4 hours late for our meeting in the morning w/o explanation. maybe he had some problem somewhere. whatever it was, before he showed up a photographer and reporter were there waiting. he apparently knew about them coming but for some reason he didnt want me to talk to them and told me nothing about it. i kind of tried to listen into their conversation in the next room, wondering if they came for his shop or for me… and they had come for my work. The woman had all these printouts from my site and really wanted to talk to me. why wasnt i informed about this fact? i guess he assumed my work would be more interesting with the added mystery. we eventually did an interview but i couldnt concentrate because the whole thing didnt make any sense. anyway, once people started coming he just got more and more uptight, so that it was really obvious that something was bothering him– it was a difficult to enjoy the event with that distraction. apparently he really believed that we would be unloading thousands of dollars of paintings that night and when we wernt millionaires after 3 hours the dude was red with frustration. I cant make sense of it, but that was pretty uncomfortable.
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aside from the childish outbursts I’m content with the work in the show, and glad everyone could get together. thank you thank you thank you everyone.
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anyway. the next exhibition has been decided for August in my new studio… an Oni-themed collaboration of madness like the Tom Thumb Gallery back from the Truman days. good times buddy, look out.

i have about a million last touches to get everything ready for the show. there might be enough time to finish just in time for the opening. updating my blog just isnt going to make the cut this week.

1)got hit by a car on my bicycle. somehow the bicycle won, but my back isnt very happy. the 21 year old construction worker who hit me was crying and almost fainted. i didnt have the heart to call the police and try to screw the guy out of the little money he has.

2)fuyuko and jamie senselessly murdered a carp the other day, then dumped the body in a river.

3)my landlord will fork over all the cash for materials to repair the new studio.

4)im spending all of my free time getting ready for the tokyo exhibition. making frames, drawing, organizing contacts and whatnot.

jamie dwyer learning to be a man

kiln closed.
just getting ready for my show now.

“baby horse”
oil pastel and

aside from cutting my hand horribly on a metal band, the firing is going fairly well. apparently if things are chaotic enough everything kind of evens out.

at the bottom of the mountain the studio has been moving along quite nicely. jamie and i worked all day framing paintings in the woodshop and the painting studio is almost up and running.

firing continues. they have a lot of wet pots in there and have kept the temp low for the first 24 hrs. so there isnt much to report… now that everything has started im less concerned about the results. if it works out, great- and if not, i’ll have a pretty good idea of what not to do.
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anyway, after my shift at the kiln today i came down the mountain and worked on the studio. there was some water damage on the ceiling and when i pulled back the wood paneling it revealed these beautiful wooden beams made from entire trees. i got so excited i ended up tearing out the entire upstairs ceiling and all the walls. ill post pictures soon..

spring sketch
oil pastel, graphite on paper
2009

we start firing the kiln in a few hours.
I dont want to name people but the loading was messed up pretty bad, so I dont have high expectations for this firing. without going into details, I’m afraid its just not going to be worth putting much energy into. There will be a ton of people up here from tokyo, so we’ll have a good time but it will be a miracle if the pots come out well. At least I’m not paying for it.
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I was thinking of staying up in this tree in protest but ended up coming down when someone brought some food.