Forged by Nature: How Maine Shapes This Artist’s Pottery

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Kelly McEvers: Hanako Nakazato says, when she was a kid, she didn’t want to work in pottery. Hanako Nakazato: I grew up in Karatsu, which is known for history of pottery. So when I was younger, I wasn’t interested in pottery. It was too close to home.

Kelly: Karatsu is in southern Japan. It’s been a hub of pottery making for hundreds of years. Hanako comes from a family of renowned potters. So, at first, she wanted to try something different.

But, after she moved to the United States at 16, slowly that started to change. Hanako: As I spent many years away from home, I started to appreciate my own cultural heritage. Kelly: It started with food, sort of. Hanako: I love food, and I realized the Japanese dining experience is very unique.

Not just the ingredients, but the table setting is very unique—the presentation of the food—and pottery plays a big role in that. Kelly: So, Hanako knew what she had to do next. Hanako: I wanted to create a tool to enjoy food, and that was the start. European style, everything is unified, and it’s very clean.

But if you go to a Japanese restaurant, repetition is often avoided. So, you would have different kinds of pottery on the table. It’s not just white things and the round things. You might start seeing something white or clean, but then next might be something in wood or bamboo or metal or glass.

Texture is different, material might be different. Kelly: To Hanako, there was something beautiful about all these different variations. Something that to her had a deeper meaning. Hanako: We mix all different kinds of materials and shapes and heights, and it’s creating something balanced or unified out of chaotic situations.

Kelly: Since 2010, Hanako has been living and practicing in both Japan and in rural Midcoast Maine. She says Maine’s environment is like the Japanese diningware she came to love. Varied, messy even, but also cohesive and balanced. Craggy, rocky hills next to placid blue lakes, dense forests near the wide open ocean.

It’s all there, she says, and it all inspires Hanako and other artists like her. Hanako: Maine has the beauty and inspires people, artistic people, to create something beautiful. To be independent and to create your own beautiful life because of the beautiful nature. That’s what I appreciate, Maine.

I’m Kelly McEvers, and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world’s strange, incredible, and wondrous places. This episode was produced in partnership with the Maine Office of Tourism. It’s Maine week on the show, so every day we are introducing you to someone from that great state. People who live and work and get inspired by Maine’s rugged beauty.

Today is all about the pottery of Hanako Nakazato and the philosophy she brings to it. It’s a philosophy that perfectly unites the two places she spends her time: Karatsu, Japan, and the 2000-person town of Union, Maine. Two places that inspire artists with their sense of community and the beauty of nature. This is an edited transcript of the Atlas Obscura Podcast: a celebration of the world’s strange, incredible, and wondrous places.

Find the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps. Hanako: Maine, it’s not New York City. You see a lot of greens, sometimes I see turkeys in traffic. Yeah, we’re living in the countryside of mid-coast Maine.

I love it. Kelly: If you know much about Maine, you know it can be quiet and peaceful, but you also probably know that it gets pretty rugged. Being in rural Maine is a physical experience, and that resonates with Hanako. Because, so is throwing pottery on a wheel.

Hanako: I used to be a serious athlete, and I like to understand the world in a physical way. And pottery is very—it requires a certain level of aestheticism. Kelly: You can see that in the way Hanako makes work. She starts by taking a big piece of clay and tossing it onto a table over and over, kneading it to soften it up.

Then … Hanako: You put the chunk of clay on the wheelhead. Kelly: Then she pounds the sides of that chunk, centering it and guiding it upward as she does. On the top portion of the spinning mound of clay, she begins to shape a bowl or a cup. Then she uses a traditional tool that’s used in Karatsu.

Hanako: A special rib, special tool, throwing tool, called gyubera. Kelly: The gyubera kind of looks like a cow’s tongue. She uses it to press the walls of the cup or bowl against her outside hand and shape the pottery. Then she slices the bowl off the top of the spinning mound and begins forging another one from the clay that remains.

And another and another. In her home studio with white walls and floor-to-ceiling windows that look out over the main wilderness, Hanako does this work almost like meditation as the light shifts outside.

Hanako: I’m a production potter, so I can make a couple hundred pieces a day. If I decide to make a cup, I make 50, or hundreds of them. Just to get in a flow. I love working in a flow, because I let go of myself and just work on the wheel, spinning, and it’s all physical.

You’re not even thinking. I usually listen to house music and it’s all about the rhythm and then just doing the repetition. Kelly: Hanako says the key is letting her mind get out of the way. Hanako: That’s when the true beauty comes out.

Pottery as a clay, as a material, it’s very responsive to the touch or the movement, and you have to work with intuition, you have to use senses. You can’t really think too hard. Kelly: Hanako wants her art to be used: bowls, plates, cups, and carafts, but there’s always something unique about each one. An unexpected angle, a sloping edge.

And since moving to Maine, the local landscape has found its way into her work too. Hanako: I often find my shape is influenced by what I see in nature. I love being in Maine because it has the ocean, the blueberry field, and the woods, and light. Light is magical here.

I used to make black or white or something monotone pottery because I was more into creating shapes. But since I moved to Maine, I started making something more colorful or blue. And I think I was influenced by Maine, ocean or sky, or dark night. Yeah, definitely have a different color palette since I lived in Maine.

Kelly: Hanako’s style is rooted in Japan too. One of her guiding philosophies to lead with your heart and your body rather than your mind doesn’t just show up in her process. It’s embedded in the name of her studio, Mono Hanako. Hanako: “Mono” means “thing” in Japanese.

“Pottery” in Japanese is called “yakimono.” “Yaki” is “fired,” “mono” is “thing.” But I want my pottery to be versatile. If you call this a mug, it limits the usage function as a drinking vessel, maybe just for coffee or tea. But if you call it a thing, you could use it for soup, or you could use it for ice cream, dessert bowl, or you could put, you know, a bouquet of herbs.

So it will open up the other possibilities of usage. So I want to call my pottery a thing, rather than giving a special name like a soup bowl or a dessert bowl or you know, ramen bowl. Because beyond that, people cannot really think about it. You know, oh, you have to use for ramen only.

The pottery might be the same, but if you put different things, this will look differently. And I like the continuous change. Kelly: Trying to avoid the limiting confines of your thinking mind, staying away from perfection, celebrating and embracing variety, like the variety found in the tableware in a traditional Japanese meal.

All this is baked into Hanukkah’s philosophy, not just in art, but in life. Hanako: I think there is a Zen influence. Perfection is often avoided in Zen philosophy. Kelly: And in Maine, that variety, that ruggedness, that beautiful imperfection is all around her.

Hanako: Nature is not trying to be perfect. It just—it’s there. Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps. This episode was produced by Katie Thornton.

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