artist residency in japan
In Spring of 2025, I spent six weeks living and creating ceramics on an artist residency in rural Japan. I documented the experience via a series of video diaries on my youtube channel here.
It is hard to find words to explain the fullness, heart and joy of this experience, but here I can try.
After a three hour journey from Tokyo, meeting up with the eight other artists along the way, I arrived at a three level Japanese house overlooking a valley and mountains, awestruck by a garden lined with cherry blossom trees in full bloom.
You’d think that experiencing the cherry blossoms would become normal for local townspeople who have lived here and experienced the season each year of their lives, but their excitement and appreciation for the small white, pink and peach coloured flowers made me wonder whether somehow it was their very first time. “You are so lucky to be here during cherry blossom season”, I’d hear on repeat each day, and I truly felt that I was.
My room was on the third level of the house, lined with a tatami mat floor, a futon bed, sliding doors, a rice lamp on the ceiling, and a small table in the corner. Most importantly, it opened up to a balcony overlooking cherry blossom and bamboo trees. I felt at home and at peace instantly. My first sleep on the futon bed was one of the best sleeps I’ve ever had.
The town was small, but it had everything I could ever need. Home to the kindest people and most delicious food, its heart beats alongside mine even now that I am back home in Australia.
My method of transportation for the residency was my trusty old pink bicycle - which I aptly named ‘dot’ due to since it was adorned with hand painted small yellow polka dots. With a soba noodle restaurant, a ramen restaurant, a sushi restaurant, and a katsu curry restaurant, as well as a coffee shop, an onsen and a 7/11 all within a close radius, I didn’t need to go far - nor did I want to. I still dream of the meals I ate each day. My food experiences here were deeply rooted in mindfulness, seasonality, and a respect for both the ingredients and the act of eating itself. Local eateries and meals prepared by friends were grounded in kindness, love, presence and balance. Meals became a love language, a vessel of connection and appreciation for food and each other.
The kindness of the town residents inspired me. “I’m your Japanese grandma”, a woman named Kiyomi would say to me when she dropped me homemade onigiri and matcha flavoured cake. Come to think of it, many other people picked up on my love of matcha. I mentioned once, to one person that I love it, and for the duration of the residency I was regularly brought matcha flavoured desserts from kind people I had only met once or twice. A woman who owned the local mochi store noticed that I often ordered the strawberry sweet mochi, and proceeded to name me ‘ichigo’ (meaning strawberry in Japanese) whenever I came by. It reminds me how nice it is to remember small details that someone tells you, no matter how insignificant - it makes them feel seen.
The residency had recently purchased an old sake brewery to convert into art studios, and our artist group was the first to use the studios since their renovation.
The pieces I made were deeply grounded in the nature around me, inspired heavily by my experiences on my morning walks along the water’s edge. I used stones to sculpt clay as a replacement for pottery tools, and imprinted the pieces with remnants of fruits, rocks and other found objects. Each piece was inspired by my encounters, from butterflies to tulips to stacked stones. The works were bound together by notions of circularity and connection to the earth and each other. Made from clay and water, sculpted by hands, becoming permanent through fire.
Between sculpting clay, connecting with locals, biking around, eating, swimming at water holes, teaching school children ceramics, learning zen meditation with a monk, and bathing at the onsen, the days went slow and fast.
The ceramics were fired in an anagama, which is a Japanese wood-fired kiln known for producing some of the most organic and unpredictable ceramics. It is one of the oldest methods of ceramic firing, involving wood being continuously stoked into the fire for days. It is a labour intensive and ritualistic process resulting in ash melting into a glaze over the pieces. This is a vastly different pottery making process to what I am used to back home in Australia, where I fire with an electric kiln and rely heavily on hand painted small details on my pieces. Here, the ceramic forms themselves took on identities of their own during their creation.
Much of the creative process was left to nature and entirely out of my hands, where I was forced to embrace imperfection, impermanence, and the beauty of natural processes. As I learnt to surrender, to be patient and to collaborate with the elements, the result was some of my favourite pieces that I have ever made. Objects that are truly one of a kind and that cannot not be replicated.
