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Asahi So | Episode 848
Asahi So is a Sydney-based ceramic artist specializing in sculptural pieces that combine wire with ceramic components, and in wheel-thrown functional ware. Having initially trained and worked as a florist, Asahi love of flowers has been carried over into his current work, with a focus often placed on creating vessels for flowers and foliage.
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What kind of tools are you using for looping? Is it a bare-handed thing or a tool thing?
Yeah, it is a largely bare-handed thing. I don’t use anything like a needle or a crochet hook. To join one length of wire onto the next I do use pliers and I do use pliers a little bit in the shaping of the forms as well. I would say it is probably ninety percent just my hands.
Is it a specialty tool, like a jeweler’s plier or are they just normal pliers from the hardware store?
I would say they are a little bit specialty, they are a small scale jewelry plier but not so super, super microscale ones at all. Just ones I found at a jewelry shop and they have lasted me maybe five or six years now.
When you are weaving or attaching to your ceramic pieces so you ever have breakage at those points?
Very luckily not. I’ve yet to experience any breakage when I have been touching the wire to the ceramic but I have had instances where I have pierced holes in a piece and then glazed it and the glaze has run into the holes which has obviously mean that the piece can’t be used because I can’t loop the wire onto it.
When you are throwing on the wheel do you see the finished product in mind?
Yeah, absolutely. I do. I think I am conscious of proportions in particular because when I start a piece I just want to make sure that the proportion of wire to ceramic isn’t exactly fifty-fifty because that would be a bit boring. I am always conscious that the wire has to be dominating or the clay has to be dominating. So I do have that in mind when I am throwing the ceramic bases on the wheel.
When you say not fifty-fifty is there like a perfect balance, like one-third, that you strive to obtain?
Not consciously I think but as I mentioned one material has to be the more dominate one I suppose, maybe sort of two-thirds, one-third I think. That would probably be the ideal. But it’s not something that I consciously strive to obtain.
What was your resource for learning how to do looping?
I have actually been messaged by quite a few people through Instagram asking me whether there are any resources to learn looping and there are actually, I have Youtubed it myself and there are a couple of videos. If you search for knotless netting then you will find some videos. They are good videos but I don’t think they are particularly helpful in teaching you the practice but if you search there are definitely videos out there that you can use as reference material.
What is the facial expression that you see most often when people see your work for the first time?
I am not sure that I have really consciously tried to observe people when they look at my work. I guess I haven’t really had the chance to do that particularly often. But I guess when I show my work to friends or other pottery people I think the look on their faces is maybe surprise, I think, and then the first question I often get asked is: How did you do that? and also, How long did that take? So I guess, yeah, maybe surprise. Surprise or incongruity . That’s a good question, I will have to observe people looking at my work in the future.
Book
To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara
Contact
Instagram: @morningsun_s