Kjell Hahn

during the firing chiaki divided half the troops to work on the kiln and half to help him paint a set for an upcoming flamenco performance in tokyo. i had very little to do with painting it but got to see the performance at the Ginza Donchou Theater.　I’ve seen three of chiaki’s flamenco shows so far and this was the best; both the dancers and the set.
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watching the show and seeing how everything came together got me thinking about his ability to fire the kiln without ever touching a pot. he has a knack for working in chaos and getting the people around him to sort it all out for him. His set of canvas with leaves stomped into the paint, veneer haphazardly nailed together, aluminum foil and string got plenty of ridicule from the stage grips that had to set it up, but none of that came across in the audience. impressive.
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Heres a picture fuyuko took of the set-up. I like the director’s computer with a desktop image of him looking into a mirror at 4 other images of himself. I never would have guessed that a successful person in the art world would be a narcissist.

kiln all ready to go. still a lot of work to do but its a relief to have the pots in there. probably will be around 20 people helping out during the firing so it should go pretty smoothly.
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a few weeks back.. maybe its been a month now, chiaki took part in a city-wide jazz festival in Yokohama. fuyuko and mome sewed together a giant canvas for the stage backdrop at Kanai Hall. all the onishi kids went down to enjoy the music and help Chiaki do a live painting performance /collaboration with the band. I tried to get the actual music from the show from a friend but have been waiting so long I just used some other jazz music for the soundtrack…
the applause of the audience before chiaki came on stage actually made me a little nervous. its gotta be hard to concentrate on a painting with 1000+ eyeballs on your back the whole time.
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so, this is the first video i’ve taken with the canon 7D…. hopefully ill get better over time.

going to yokohama today and tomorrow to assist chiaki with 7 other people. he’s doing a live painting at a jazz festival there. fuyuko and mome made the 100 foot long canvas last week. hopefully we dont have to work the whole time and walk around the festival a bit.
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an unrelated video from several years back:

kjell hahn overtaken by the spirt of erez sitzer’s terrible amazanga art devoted an entire CD and series of videos to the experience.
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Music by kjell hahn, part of a collaborative tribute to erez’s terrible art.
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check out erez’s sacred site, www.amazanga.com

some of the pieces i made at the raku firing workshop…

took some time, but i finally got the photography room in pretty much working order. here are images from the raku ceramics workshop we put on at the end of september.
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i decided to post the images of my pots separately since the wordpress image gallery isnt the best interface in the world.

new camera came. canon 7D. got to use it for the first time yesterday.. the 100% viewfinder and auto focus are worth half the price of the camera. it was about a thousand times easier to photograph pots and artwork with. the interface is just light-years beyond my 5 year-old rebel. wish i could had the money to get a full frame sensor though..
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also talked to john dix. he wrote an article about the last sasayama firing for Ceramics Monthly. It will be published in the November issue. I think there is one mention of me, but only to say something like “my assistant kjell burned his hand badly catching the pot” .. i guess every story needs a fool.
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last night i set up and used the photography studio for the first time. sent off photos to a japanese site that interviewed me a few months back. Still need to make several adjustments but its much better than anything i had before.
ill put up more photos from the raku firing and the pieces that came out soon.

kjell hahn raku teabowl

overall it went very well. from noon on we heated up the kiln and were able to fire groups of 6 or 7 pots every 20 minutes until sundown. Im not the biggest fan of Raku but it was a good learning experience. with an anagama you only get to try glazing techniques two or three times a year but with raku you can glaze something and have the pot in your hand in half an hour, then try again.

Kjell Hahn Birthday. Happy me day

Akira Yonebayashi Firing Raku Kiln

kiln set up. using a kerosene burner borrowed from Waseda high school.
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did the bisque fire yesterday.
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it was fairly warm so i went swimming in the river. felt good at the time, but caught a cold and feel terrible now. nice planning on my part for the firing.
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kjell hahn setting up raku kiln

bisque firing in a few days. making the last couple pots for the fire.
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Im looking forward to the firing.. Even though Neba’s Oni Castle exploded we had a great time. He has a lot of experience with raku, so we’ll actually have something to show for our work this time.
Also, it will be nice to be away from school. (five days off next week)
getting stabbed with pencils, called baldy, getting water thrown in my face and being in a general environment of hopelessness just doesnt do it for me. Not all the kids are bad, and even some of the troublemakers are a lot of fun… but i get the feeling that broken homes and teenage parents do not produce healthy members of society.
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almost all the performances and artworks from Oni Ten.
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AND they were only a few days late, but i finally got my George Zupp and Justin Graham’s Oni Ten submissions. great work.. would have been nice to have it in the show though.
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thought i should write why i made oni ten. oni ten isnt just about trying to get people’s artwork and get people to come to my studio. I think the exhibition could actually provide a useful service that other venues dont.
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Clearly Oni Ten is not meant to be a traditional exhibition space. even if I wanted to put on a regular exhibition we’d never be able to compete with even the most boring galleries in the heart of Tokyo; we’re just to far away. my studio in the countryside has the advantage of being disconnected, so that the works we display don’t have to appeal to anyone. the participating artists don’t need to appeal to customers, to gallery owners or the restrictions of contest rules. we have the freedom and chance to work outside of our typical comfort zone, to experiment with unfamiliar media and not have to place so much emphasis on the outcome. I like to think of it as something like an art laboratory, mixing together as many elements as we can to see what might come out. people can figure out what to do with the results later. my intent in this approach is not necessarily to produce polished work, but to widen each individual artist’s visual vocabulary through experimentation and bouncing ideas off one another. of course artists experiment in their own studios, but too often those works never fall under peer or public scrutiny. my hope is that in an Oni Ten-like setting our peers can critique and interact with the works in a neutral environment and that the group can make something larger than the sum of its parts.
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i really believe there is potential to produce a lot of exciting work here, as long as people make an honest effort and do their part. this is not an exhibition about me, and i couldnt do it alone even if i wanted to. we did very well for the first exhibition, but the second exhibition is going to require a lot more out of other people.
I especially appreciate the help i got from Neba, Nozomi and Fuyuko.. when things were falling apart, each of you guys did what you could to help. If you three weren’t around i wouldnt be willing to try this again next year.

Gregg Lewis’ short film
“A Boring Evening”

“Rojin to Mago”
a segment from Yoshida Shigeki, Chiaki Horikoshi (and many others) film
“Yoshida Otokichi no sekai” or “The world of Yoshida Otokichi”