by Eva Dameron
Daily Lobo
There is a wealth of history wrapped up in porcelain.
UNM's porcelain class has led to the foundation of the Arita Porcelain Association.
About 30 years ago, UNM professor Jim Srubek started the class.
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He learned the 400-year-old method of throwing porcelain from Sensei Manji Inoue in Arita, Japan. He became so good at it the Japanese government bestowed Srubek with the title Living National Treasure.
Classes and association meetings are held in Room 110 in Masley Hall.
Student Matt Rowe, president of the Arita Porcelain Association, said the method teaches students the value of tradition - something that doesn't necessarily go hand-in-hand with American values.
"Let's try to be very individual and creative and robust, and these kinds of values that we really hold as very high in America," Rowe said. "Individuality, self-reliance, uniqueness and inventiveness - those are the things that we really like here. And that's good to a certain extent, but it's missing something. It's missing this idea of tradition and history and a real solid foundation."
Porcelain instructor Kathy Cyman said she focuses her teaching on the porcelain-throwing methodology she has used since she started teaching the class after Srubek retired about six years ago.
"He allowed students to integrate more of their own processes into the methodology," Cyman said. "When I first took the class, I said I wanted to learn it just as it was taught in Japan. One of the main aspects is the wheel spins clockwise (in Japan), and in the U.S., the wheel spins the other way. Jim would allow students to turn the other wheel the other way if it got too difficult, but I wanted to learn it this way."
Rowe said making and using handmade vessels and dishes produces a change in humanity. He said using manufactured products distances us from the human experience.
"Everything in my cupboard is handmade - something that I've made or one of my friends has made, and I feel guilty for not doing my dishes," he said. "Because I'm like, this is beautiful work, and it's growing mold on it. That's gross."
He said using handmade plates would better his diet.
"Would you take a McDonald's hamburger and put it down on some beautiful piece of Italian pottery?" Rowe said. "Would you put it on a paper plate? So, actually, it can change the individual on a fundamental level."
Rowe said porcelain is a finite resource, and Japan has almost run out of it.
"It's a social, it's a political and it's a technological issue all wrapped up into throwing a bowl," he said.
He said making something is a political statement, even if it's not the person's intention, because it rejects the idea of mass production.
"If you're making art, that's a political statement," he said. "If you're knitting socks for your family, you're making a political statement, because you're rejecting that which is manufactured, that which is churned out and shows up in the aisles of Wal-Mart."
Rowe said porcelain's methods back up Friedrich Nietzsche's teachings.
"Nietzsche talked about how we're the most free when we're put within certain restraints," he said. "That's kind of what the Arita tradition does. It puts these restraints on how you're making it, and once you learn, all of a sudden, there's this whole new pathway. And then all the sudden, the creativity starts flowing."
