10.4 x 7.8 inches, 64 pages, paperback
Edited with foreword by Jen Sudul Edwards and Lisa Melandri
Introduction by Jen Sudul Edwards
Text by Angelik Vizcarrondo-Laboy
Published by the Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis and the Mint Museum
Agents of Clay, the first solo exhibition of work by the Japanese ceramicist Shinichi Sawada, is co-presented by the Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis and the Mint Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina. Sawada began creating ceramics in 2000 at Nakayoshi Fukushikai as part of a government program to help physically challenged and neuro-divergent individuals find employment and sustain independent and productive lives. For the last two decades, supported by ceramics facilitator Masaharu Iketani, Sawada has worked to produce alluring, mesmerizing figures: often hybrid creatures densely patterned with chopstick-traced lines, and painstakingly applied bumps, horns, and “scales.” This publication features approximately 20 of Sawada’s sculptures, creating an unbelievable array of forms and features that echo elements of outsider art history while also offering the opportunity to explore the millennia-old tradition of the Shigaraki kilns where Sawada works.
