Plate (ban) 2010

This is Tabuchi Tarō’s Plate, made in Japan, but it could have been made a million years ago. Just by looking at its surface, there’s no telling when it was created. The artist must have coaxed the clay into being, shifting, emerging through trial, error, and intuition. I sympathize with the artist, as it's not hard to imagine what it might have been like to make this. How did they feel when they cracked the plate, or perhaps it cracked during the firing process? The glaze resembles the subtle tones of a stormy sky, or a rugged, ancient landscape, with a range of greys that blend and bleed into each other. Look closely and you'll see a golden repair. Instead of trying to disguise the break, the artist chose to celebrate it, like a scar earned from a life fully lived. Artists are always in an ongoing conversation, exchanging ideas across time, inspiring one another’s creativity. This plate embraces ambiguity and uncertainty, allowing for multiple interpretations and meaning over any one fixed reading.