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Simon Manoha | Episode 798

Simon Manoha works on all his pieces and carves them by hand with no use of wheel. Simon works with clays that he collects from nature. Simon’s glazes are minerals collected and crushed by his hands. Simon fires in a woodkiln for 7 days. All Simon’s pieces are food safe and water tight.

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Simon, I am curious how you see yourself. Do you see yourself as an artist or do you see yourself as an artist?

(laughter) I was thinking about that just today. Not about me but about the vision and the difference between an artisan and  craftmanship because there is different vision. In Japanese there is no different word for art or for artisan. It’s the same word. And it says something about the way we see art. I think that the difference is wrong. The most important things maybe it will be the way you make your discipline. You can make a bowl as an art. And you can also make a sculpture like an artisan. There are many potters just doing bowls and teapots or something like that and it’s just piece of art. It’s how you do it that is the important thing. For me, I don’t know because it is time to time difficult to define yourself as an artist because it is really an emphasis.  The world is too much now for me. I love that world but they say, Oh you are an artist. Yes, okay. Thanks. But me I don’t say I am an artist, just for the world. But the way I work is something more, yes, like art.

What is your morning routine like?

Just the morning?

Yes. 

(laughter) I don’t think that I have a routine because the clay don’t have one. Because every season is different, and in winter I don’t make the temperature high and in the summer I don’t have a way to make the temperature cooler, so sometime you make your pot and it is weeks before I can fire it and sometimes it is in just one or two days. So I live with the clay. I make it the morning, the afternoon, the night, every time. But there is a common point of my day. In the morning I hollow my piece and in the night I create.  I never create with the sunlight. Just the night.

Have you always been a night time creator?

Yeah. Every time. When I was playing music I was living by night. But not now. With ceramics you have many things to do and there are many things physically that you have to do, dig the clay, many things, cutting wood, I don’t know.

What do you listen to in the studio when you are making?

I really love many kinds of music. Free jazz, contemporary jazz. Sometimes rock from the 80s and the 60s. And world music, traditional world music, African and every country. Not modern just instrument and the sound of the strings.

What is your favorite tool to use in the studio?

My studio is really simple. There is a small wood. I find it in the forest. There is an old piece of metal maybe from an old car, I don’t know what and small rocks and that’s all. To make the form there is my hands and my legs. For small pots it’s just my hands. (laughter) But for big pots and big sculpture all my body works on it.

Contact

Estsy: ksimonmanoha

Instagram: @simon_manoha