Kazuya Ishida Spiral vase [螺奏器], Claysalis, Bizen gem

ONLINE LECTURE AND DEMONSTRATION

Bizen ware artist, Kazuya Ishida

7:00 - 8:15 pm, Wednesday, August 26, 2026 (PDT)
Zoom Webinar
 

RSVP HERE
Free, RSVP Required
This program will not be recorded

Bizen ware artist Kazuya Ishida, who continues to preserve the rich tradition of Bizen ware while expanding its possibilities and sharing its unique appeal with audiences around the world, will present a lecture and demonstration live from his studio.

Kazuya Ishida is one of the participating artists in the currently ongoing KINETIC STILLNESS: Sculptural Ceramics, on view through 9/19, 2026 at the Japan Foundation, Los Angeles.

This is an online lecture presented via Zoom Webinar. The link to join will be sent closer to the program date.

ARTIST 

Kazuya ISHIDA

Kazuya Ishida was born into a family of potters in Bizen Japan. Bizen is one of the six ‘ancient kilns’ and is famous for its traditional unglazed high temperature-fired bizen-style pottery. He uses wood-fired noborigama (multiple chamber climbing kiln) and anagama (single chamber climbing kiln). He trained with Jun Isezaki (a Living National Treasure in Bizen) for four years, followed by time spent in the UK learning different styles of pottery, before he established his own studio in Bizen. Invited into the Anagama Project run by University of Oxford, he has been a lead resident potter teaching kiln making, firing and pottery making, while lecturing about his craft. He makes sculptures and vases featuring his distinctive spiralling marks, created with a technique inspired by a teenage love for breakdancing. In using limited materials (specifically, natural clay and natural ash glazes) in line with the Bizen tradition, he explores the rhythms and patterns of Nature. The contemporary forms of his work are a reflection of the primordial, rippled textures and patterns of the ocean bed, tectonic shifts of a cliff face, and the marks that ebbing tides have left on rock pools, pebbles and seashells.

Related Exhibition

KINETIC STILLNESS: Sculptural Ceramics (on view through September 19)