Ceramics is my main creative medium and the Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park is the most well-established and historied residency center relating to ceramics in Asia. Many art masters and senior classmates at my alma mater have also completed their residency at the Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park. After hearing them recounting their experience, I also fantasized that one day I would get to join a residency program. I am glad to have the opportunity to work in the Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park for three months.

There are three types of resident artists at the Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park: “workshop artist” applications are submitted by the artists themselves; and two types of resident “guest artist” with one being invited by the Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park and the “guest artist through open invitation” with limited vacant availability to be selected by a committee.

Facilities include:
Staff support, library, audiovisual lab, classroom, two shared workshops, clay storage room, drying room, plaster room, glazing room, storage room
Dormitory: Single room and bathroom, shared kitchen/dining room/saloon, laundry room
Kilns: Gas kiln, electronic kiln, firewood kiln
The Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park has a full range of kiln sizes for artists to choose from. Of note, there is a 5.2m³ gas kiln that offers more creative freedom for artists as that size is rarely available in private workshops.

Furthermore, the internal kiln temperature is fully recorded at the Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park which is something I have never seen in Taiwan. Most electric kilns in Taiwan will go all the way after the temperature is set at the beginning. If the firing process is interrupted (power trip etc.) or the set temperature is not reached, the actual firing temperature in the kiln remains unknown. At the Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park, the firing process is recorded on paper by a computer. I think this is very helpful for experimental creations because the exact temperature is yet to be determined and I can control the precise temperature between each attempt.

In addition, there is a diverse range of locally produced materials for the historied ceramics industry in the Shigaraki region. This is undoubtedly very exciting for me as a person from Taiwan, which relies on imported materials. In Shigaraki, I found plenty of practical tools large and small for firing or making ceramics, e.g. alumina film which can save the trouble of glaze sticking to the boron nitride ceramic plate, as well as adhesives specific for clay or unglazed pottery. There are also many galleries of ceramic works in the Shigaraki region, providing local artists with a space to display and sell their products. It was really pleasing to visit these galleries in my spare time.

When first arriving at the Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park, you will meet with the staff to discuss the creative needs and assistance provided during your residency. Afterwards, the staff will take you to the local clay shop to buy materials and glazes. There is a long history of ceramics in the Shigaraki region with around forty or fifty types of locally produced clay in the shop suitable for different temperatures, colors, and characteristics. This is very different from my experience in Taiwan. In Taiwan, basically we have only two or three types of clay to choose from, or we could opt for clay imported from America. However, this meant that we would often have to wait for over half a year before our orders could be delivered.

During my residency, I mainly wanted to try working with the clay and glaze series three. I wanted to experiment with the combination of local clay and glaze using unorthodox methods. I was excited to discover what may result from the variations in clay temperature with different glaze characteristics.
Basically, during the first month and a half of my residency, I did not produce any satisfactory results. The glaze is the main subject of the series three, and therefore, mastering the glaze is key to the creation. Glaze shops in Shigaraki would stock various types of crystalline glaze rarely available in Taiwan. Thus, I chose many different crystalline glazes and crackle glazes at the beginning. After several failures, I began to think that this might not be due to the firing temperature and firing time, but rather the problem comes from my different creative methods. For ceramics, the glaze is a layer of color applied on the surface, but for me it is the main body and the work itself. Others may only apply a thin layer of crackle glaze or crystalline glaze onto the clay to achieve the desired effect due to a difference in thermal properties when firing at high temperatures. For me, the glaze is a solid mass and will not act against the clay (I used powder clay) and can shrink along with it – naturally this cannot produce the crackle and crystalline effects I had initially desired. Then I tried another glaze with a transparent glass-like and slightly cold-crackled texture. The translucent blue color showed different shades of blue due to the thickness of the glaze, and a deep fascinating blue like the sea appeared in my final product. However, I also encountered other problems during the production. When the first piece was produced, the glaze contained quartz, so the temperature dropped too fast after firing and that caused the glaze to crack. However, the second one was fine after adjusting for the cooling rate.

After that, I successively experimented with several different types of glazes. Something interesting happened when a Korean fellow artist and I together used an electric kiln. For some reason, the temperature was set to 1230 but the firing temperature landed at around 1180 degrees. The glaze did not properly set and produced an unintentional result just like my firing experiments in Taiwan. At the end of my three months of artist-in-residency at the Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park, I published the total of five works as proof of working at the workshop.