The first book to tell the stories of some of the most revered living Japanese ceramists of the century, tracing the evolution of modern and contemporary craft and art in Japan, and the artists’ considerable influence, which far transcends national borders. Listening to Clay: Conversations with Contemporary Japanese Ceramic Artists is the first book to present conversations with some of the most important living Japanese ceramic artists. Tracing the evolution of modern and contemporary craft and art in Japan, this groundbreaking volume highlights sixteen individuals whose unparalleled skill and creative brilliance have lent them an influence that far transcends national borders. Despite forging illustrious careers and earning international recognition for their work, these sixteen artists have been little known in terms of their personal stories. Ranging in age from sixty-three to ninety-three, they embody the diverse experiences of several generations who have been active and successful from the late 1940s to the present day, a period of massive change. Now, sharing their stories for the first time in Listening to Clay, they not only describe their distinctive processes, inspirations, and relationships with clay, but together trace a seismic cultural shift through a field in which centuries-old but exclusionary potting traditions opened to new practitioners and kinds of practices. Listening to Clay includes conversations with artists born into pottery-making families, as well as with some of the first women admitted to the ceramics department of Tokyo University of the Arts, telling a larger story about ingenuity and trailblazing that has shaped contemporary art in Japan and around the world. Each artist is represented by an entry including a brief introduction, a portrait, selected examples of their work, and an intimate interview conducted by the authors over several in-person visits from 2004 to 2019. At the core of each story is the artist’s personal relationship to clay, often described as a collaboration with the material rather than an imposing of intention. The oldest artist interviewed, Hayashi Yasuo, enlisted in the army during WWII at age fifteen and trained as a kamikaze pilot. He was born into a family that had fired ceramics in cooperative kilns for generations, but he rejected traditional modes and went on to be the first artist in Japan to make truly abstract ceramic sculpture. In the late 1960s, another artist, Mishima Kimiyo, developed a technique of silkscreening on clay and began making ceramic newspapers to comment on the proliferation of the media. She became fascinated with trash, recreating it out of clay, and worked in relative obscurity for decades until she had a major exhibition in Tokyo in 2015. Featuring a preface by curator, writer, and historian Glenn Adamson, and a foreword by Monika Bincsik, the Associate Curator for Japanese Decorative Arts at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Listening to Clay has been a project more than fifteen years in the making for authors Alice and Halsey North, respected and knowledgeable collectors and patrons of contemporary Japanese ceramics, and Louise Allison Cort, Curator Emerita of Ceramics, National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution. The book also includes conversations with five important dealers of contemporary Japanese ceramics who have played and are playing a critical role in introducing the work of these artists to the world, several detailed appendices, and a glossary of terms, relevant people, and relationships. Listening to Clay is a long-overdue and insightful book that, for the first time, spotlights some of Japan’s most celebrated contemporary ceramic artists through personal, idiosyncratic accounts of their day-to-day lives, giving special access to their creative process and artistic development.

“A diabolically creepy hybrid of horror and psychological suspense that thrills as much as it unsettles. You’ll keep turning the pages even as your hands shake.”—Riley Sager, New York Times best-selling author of Home Before Dark A pulse-pounding, true-crime-based horror novel inspired by the McMartin preschool trial and Satanic Panic of the ’80s. Richard doesn’t have a past. For him, there is only the present: a new marriage, a first chance at fatherhood, and a quiet life as an art teacher in Virginia. Then the body of a ritualistically murdered rabbit appears on his school’s playground, along with a birthday card for him. But Richard hasn’t celebrated his birthday since he was known as Sean . . . In the 1980s, Sean was five years old when his mother unwittingly led him to tell a lie about his teacher. When school administrators, cops, and therapists questioned him, he told another. And another. And another. Each was more outlandish than the last—and fueled a moral panic that engulfed the nation and destroyed the lives of everyone around him. Now, thirty years later, someone is here to tell Richard that they know what Sean did. But who would even know that these two are one and the same? Whisper Down the Lane is a tense and compulsively readable exploration of a world primed by paranoia to believe the unbelievable.

Twins Clay and Will Byars have different lives after Clay is in a traffic accident and suffers a stroke.

Using clay in therapy taps into the most fundamental of human experiences - touch. This book is a comprehensive step-by-step training manual that covers all aspects of 'Work at the Clay Field', a sensorimotor-based art therapy technique. The book discusses the setting and processes of the approach, provides an overview of the core stages of Gestalt Formation and the Nine Situations model within this context, and demonstrates how this unique focus on the sense of touch and the movement of the hands is particularly effective for trauma healing in adults and children. The intense tactile experience of working with clay allows the therapist to work through early attachment issues, developmental setbacks and traumatic events with the client in a primarily nonverbal way using a body-focused approach. The kinaesthetic motor action of the hands combined with sensory perception can lead to a profound sense of resolution with lasting therapeutic benefits. With photographs and informative case studies throughout, this book will be a valuable resource for art therapists and mental health professionals, and will also be of interest to complementary therapists and bodyworkers.

Steve Goodman wrote “Good mornin’ America, how are ya” into the nation’s consciousness, becoming one of the most respected singer/songwriters of the 1970s and early 80s. With warmth and wit, he charmed better-known peers, top critics, and countless fans. Yet this 5-foot-2 troubadour nearly lost his chance at adult life. Diagnosed with leukemia at age 20, Goodman kept it a secret for 16 years as he sang for a generation that assumed it would live forever. This biography scrutinizes a theme that Goodman knew all too well: when death is imminent, we grasp that life is about connecting with others. Goodman’s childhood, the untold full story of “City of New Orleans,” his launching by the unlikely duo of Kris Kristofferson and Paul Anka, his teaming with “wild and crazy” Steve Martin for more than 200 shows, his landmark recordings and two Grammy awards all get extensive attention in this biography. The book delves into his personal and professional life, drawing on over 850 original interviews with Goodman’s family, childhood and adult friends, and a diversity of celebrities. “From the cradle to the crypt, it’s a mighty short trip,” Goodman wrote in a song shortly before his 1984 death. This biography verifies that the universality of his work — hilarious, political, romantic, or all three rolled into one — resonates deeply in today’s musical firmament.

"Galleries and shops across the United States are filled with American Indian art. Especially popular is the striking pottery handmade by the Pueblo Indians of the Southwest. Talking with the Clay tells the story of this pottery from the uniquely personal view of the potters themselves. Stephen Trimble interviewed sixty artisans in the pottery-making Pueblo villages, from Taos, New Mexico, to the Hopi reservation in Arizona. Their eloquence fills this book. They speak of 'picking clay' as they would pick flowers, and of the enormous amount of work (fully half their time) necessary to prepare the clay for building their pots. Coil by coil they create jars, bowls, and figurines, and then sand, polish, and paint them. Firing is done outside in a dung-fueled 'kiln' built from scratch for each firing. Trimble shows how Pueblo pottery embodies all the beliefs and values that are central to Pueblo culture. Yet what defines a Pueblo pot is not strictly a matter of tradition, for, as Grace Medicine Flower says of her Santa Clara miniatures, 'Now they call this contemporary; years from now they may call it traditional.' Instead, a Pueblo pot is defined more than anything by the way it feels, and this book captures that feeling in both words and photographs. Talking with the Clay is a joyous, fascinating, and moving book filled with information and insight." -- Back cover