Join us Thursday, 19 September 2024 at 11:30AM EDT for a conversation with:
Miraku Kamei XV, Pucker Gallery Artist
Hisaaki Kamei, Pucker Gallery Artist
Michael Yonan, Professor of Art History and Alan Templeton Endowed Chair in the History of European Art, UC Davis
Andrew Maske, Professor of Museum Studies and Director of Gordon L. Grosscup Museum, Wayne State University
Caroline Staller, Gallery Associate
Mugi Hanao, Friend and Translator
Bernard Pucker, Gallery Director
We are thrilled to share a conversation with Pucker Gallery artists Miraku Kamei XV and Hisaaki Kamei. From our perspective, their new work is the finest to date and beautifully extends their visual vocabulary.
The exhibition Knowledge, Purpose, Skill is on view at Pucker Gallery through 13 October 2024.
About our panelists:
Miraku Kamei XV was born Masahisa Kamei in 1960, the eldest son of Miraku Kamei XIV, master potter of Takatori-yaki (Takatori ware). Takatori-yaki started at Kuroda Clan’s kiln and has been created for tea ceremonies for 400 years. Based on tea master Enshu Kobori’s kirei sabi(bright sabi), each generation has inherited from previous masters several techniques, including symmetrical shapes, thin structures, and gradation using seven different traditional glazes. Each master has moved forward creating his own pottery. He completed his university degree in Ceramics at Kyoto Saga University of Arts and took the title of the fifteenth generation in 2001. Mr. Kamei has been carrying on the tradition of Takatori-yaki for more than thirty years. In addition to exhibiting and promoting Takatori-yaki around Japan, he is an active teacher, training students in ceramics at a number of institutions around his home city of Fukuoka. He is also president of the Fukuoka/Hakata branch of the Japan Ceramics Association and a member of numerous arts organizations. In 2016, Kamei received the award of Contemporary Master Craftsman, designated to a craftsman with excellent skills from Fukuoka, Japan.
Hisaaki Kamei is the first-born son of Miraku Kamei XV. Hisaaki Kamei received a B.A. at the School of Business at Hosei University and graduated from the Forming Department, Kyoto Prefecture Pottery School. He is a Board Member of the Japan-France Tea Ceremony Association and has recently lectured in Cameroon and France.
Michael Yonan is a scholar of early modern European art, with special interest in the arts of eighteenth-century Austria, Germany, and Scandinavia. He is also interested broadly in the decorative arts, rococo design, material culture theory, and art historical methodology and historiography. He has received fellowships from the Getty Research Institute, the Mellon Foundation, the Kress Foundation, the Fulbright Program, and the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, Uppsala. In 2019 he was visiting guest professor at the Institute for Culture and Aesthetics, Stockholm University, Sweden. Recently he participated in the research project Powerful Presences: The Sculptural Portrait, organized by the University of Copenhagen and Thorvaldsens Museum, Denmark. For Bloomsbury Academic Press he edits the book series The Material Culture of Art and Design.
Andrew Maske received his doctorate in Japanese Art History from Oxford University. He teaches courses concentrating on the art of East Asia (China, Korea, and Japan). As a curator of Japanese art between 1999 and 2005, he developed the exhibition Geisha: Beyond the Painted Smile and served as editor and primary author of the critically acclaimed volume by the same name. This exhibition explored Japanese geisha both as the subject of artwork and as performing artists themselves from the eighteenth century to the present day. Dr. Maske also played a major role in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 2003 catalogue, Turning Point: Oribe and the Arts of Sixteenth Century Japan, which examined the revolution in Japanese aesthetics that began in the late sixteenth century. He has published articles and reviews in Archaeometry, Journal of Japanese Studies, Orientations, and Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan. During the seven years he lived in Japan, Dr. Maske studied numerous aspects of Japanese art and culture, practicing chanoyu (tea ceremony), Japanese dance, and music by way of the shamisen. In 2006-2007 he was awarded a Fulbright research fellowship to study the development of contemporary ceramics in China.
Caroline Staller is a ceramic sculptor and educator. She attended New Mexico State University in 2011 and graduated in 2015 with degrees in Fine Art and Biology with a Biochemistry minor. She completed her MFA in Ceramics from the University of Missouri in 2021 where she studied under artists Bede Clarke and Joseph Pintz. Her small-scale tableaus and carvings of horses are peaceful and reflective with a focus on the beauty she sees in ‘simple’ objects both made by hand and found, which is reminiscent of her childhood exploring the desert on horseback and finding unique objects aged by the harsh elements. She has taught ceramic sculpture to both adults and children around Missouri and Massachusetts, including at Harvard Ceramics. Caroline currently works at her home studio as well as Pucker Gallery coordinating WebinART events as well as visiting ceramicist workshops around Boston, MA.
Bernie Pucker is the director of Pucker Gallery, which he founded with his wife, Sue, on Boston's historic Newbury Street in 1967. Pucker Gallery represents over fifty artists from around the world, presenting approximately ten exhibitions annually, often paired with artist talks, virtual “WebinARTs,” and Gallery receptions. Bernie is currently a Board Member at the Japan Society, Boston, and the Jewish Publication Society. He also serves on the Leadership Council for Facing History and Ourselves as well as the Artistic Advisory Board for the Terezin Music Foundation. Previously, he has served as President of Solomon Schechter Day School, President of the Newbury Street League, and Board Member for the Friends of Copley Square and The Unity Project, among others. Bernie received his MA in Modern Jewish History from Brandeis University and his BA in History and English Literature from Columbia College.