Fusing Cultural Tradition

摘要

In the work discussed here I have witnessed a fusion between the Asian heritage of ceramic artists and their expression of American culture. Patrick Shia Crabb and Keiko Fukazawa view shards as potent symbols. Working with juvenile prison inmates, Fukazawa breaks her twenty-seven inch wide bisqued platters so she and her students can decorate the fragments. The return of the pieces into a new whole, as in White Poppy, becomes a hopeful metaphor for the class. The incarcerated youngsters' surface images reflect their pop culture, blending with the artist's use of symbols familiar to traditional Japanese culture. In Asian culture, the colour red denotes happiness. Fukazawa's bright red, eight foot tall Double Happiness pillar also refers to Communist China and, paradoxically, China's ancient red temple columns. Along with Good Luck, an out-of-scale wedding cake, the two sculptures support a repetitious pattern of 'welcome kitty', an Asian commercial image of a cat placed outside of shops to entice customers. One layer of the wedding cake supports a confusion of gold objects. Both sculptures subtly imply the materialism of society and the irony of the exploitation of those workers who produce the goods for an over-consuming public.