The Art of Letting Go
Ahead of her Club exhibition this month, ceramist Mieko Yuki explains how relinquishing control is at the core of creativity.
A text is an object in and of itself, with its own life, its own meaningful possibilities and its own potential for impact.”
That declaration on the website of New York City’s Stella Adler Studio of Acting presents a dichotomy former student Mieko Yuki acutely understands in her career as an accomplished ceramist. At the heart of any creative work, there is only so much the artist can control.
“When I’m making [a sculpture], I’m not thinking I’m going to make any expression,” says Yuki, who will exhibit her works at the Frederick Harris Gallery this month. “But when it comes out of the kiln and I look at it for the first time, I understand what its heart is like.”
If an absence of intent is necessary for the artist, it is endemic to the child. The daughter of a postwar diplomat, Yuki spent much of her childhood moving between Sweden, Turkey, Sri Lanka and the UK. No matter where the family landed, she recalls a familiar scene: her mother planted in front of a painter’s canvas, enraptured by her own creations.
“I felt that she was so happy that she had her own world,” Yuki, 76, says. “A person who has his or her own world must be very satisfied.”
Though certain art would be a driving force in her life, Yuki could not control just how and when it would happen. A brief spell as a ballerina with London’s Royal Ballet School convinced her as a teenager that while dance was not her forte, the stage might be where she truly belonged.
As a young woman in Tokyo, she secured an apprenticeship with the Toei Company, which led to roles in small stage and screen productions and a permanent placement in a troupe alongside Hiroshi Akutagawa, son of the famous writer.
In 1968, Yuki traveled to New York City for a year at Stella Adler’s method acting crucible, where Elia Kazan and other titans of 20th-century cinema drilled students in the principle of authenticity above all else.
“Their expressions always impressed me,” Yuki says of her castmates. “I thought, ‘Oh! That expression, we should really pause it.’ I’m not so concerned about the shape or the color [of my ceramics], but more the expression.”
Backstage at a Hibiya theater one night in the early ’80s, that obsession to capture the perfect expression became more engrossing than the acting itself.
Since her character appeared only in the play’s opening scene and denouement, Yuki found herself with time to fill throughout the production’s long run. Most nights, she would study her script. But when her son left behind a favorite pile of clay, Yuki found herself molding the figures of her onstage parents, faces tense with frozen passion.
“It really looked exactly like them on stage,” Yuki says. “I showed it to them and they said, ‘Oh please give it to us!’”
After experimenting with more malleable papier-mâché figures, Yuki returned to clay in 1986. With the added durability of clay comes a bargain between art and artist.
When Yuki is at her potter’s wheel, surrounded by the finished figures that line the shelves and windowsills of her cozy Akasaka apartment, she has all the freedom in the world to detail her sculptures. But no piece is complete until she fires up the kiln and relinquishes control over her creations as they find their own fates.
“When it comes out of the kiln, it’s the first time I meet the sculpture,” Yuki explains. “Maybe I was thinking of making a boy who’s very nice to his mother, but when he comes out of the kiln, his eyes are very cold. It tells me different things.”
Words: Owen Ziegler
Image: Kayo Yamawaki
Gallery Reception: Mieko Yuki
March 19 | 6:30–7:30pm
