Detailed List of Retreats
Shibuie - When Beauty Happens Accidentally: Sumie and Raku – Japanese brush painting and pottery
Shibuie - When Beauty Happens Accidentally: Sumie and Raku - Japanese brush painting and pottery
Shibuie is the ancient Japanese concept of Accidental Beauty in which the artist is just one ingredient in a number of dynamic interacting natural processes, the outcome of which is delightfully unpredictable, but strangely beautiful - not ego-driven or deliberate. Ingrid will teach the classical Japanese brush painting techniques (Sumie) as these are applied to traditional subjects, such as landscape, bamboo and flower studies - as well as contemporary subjects. We will use the genuine, traditional materials: solid pine-soot ink, a hollowed-out slate to liquefy it, a deer-hair bamboo-stemmed brush and absorbent mulberry paper. Tools will be provided, but sets can be purchased (R850) from the BRC. Each retreatant will receive a bisque-fired tea bowl to sumie-decorate and glaze. Jess will then fire up the kiln after which we will watch the magic as the pots emerge from their ordeal of having been subjected to 1000ºC heat, smothered in sawdust and immersed in cold water. The pots will emerge triumphantly from the scorching heat!
Antony Shapiro made his first ceramic at thirteen. Forty- three years later, he is a multiple award- winning potter recognised as one of the leading potters in South Africa. Over his four-decade-long career, he has become well known as a prolific creator and maker, retailer and gallerist, curator and teacher. His firm belief that ‘makers must make’ is essential to his love of pottery. In 1988 Anthony started as an apprentice with the pottery doyenne, Kim Sacks, while simultaneously learning the art of hand-building with Charmaine Renzon. During his apprenticeship, Kim asked Anthony to teach her classes when she travelled. Immediately he fell in love with the process of teaching others to make, and his passion evolved into a love of the space teaching created, the community it formed and the joy he experienced with his students. In 1989, he took up a position as the pottery teacher at Earnest Ullman Recreation Centre in Johannesburg. Within months he had transformed the Studio into a hive of activity, home to over seventy students. Throughout this time, he maintained his dedication to his own making. For Anthony, making is a way of being in the world and a calling and a vocation. His work has been sold in some of the most exclusive retailers locally and internationally.