In the fall of 2022, I was invited by the Korean Ceramic Art Association (KCAA) to participate in their International Wood Fire Workshop, held at the Korean Ceramics Foundation, Yeoju Ceramic Cultural Center, in the Gyeonggi Province of Korea. On this impressive campus, there are classroom studios for ceramics and glass, studios for resident artists, a six-chambered wood-fired kiln, sales galleries, and a major museum-quality exhibition space. I accepted the invitation and traveled to South Korea from November 12th to the 19th to participate in this wood-firing ceramic experience and cultural interchange.
The workshop format was a little different from similar conferences I had contributed to in the US. International participants paid their own airfare, and the KCAA covered the rest of the expenses. We were instructed to bring a finished ceramic piece for inclusion in an exhibition and then donate the artwork to the association’s permanent collection. We were also directed to bring one bisque piece to be fired in the wood kiln.
While the kiln was firing, all the invited international clay artists, along with twelve to fifteen KCAA members, were given access to a large, well-equipped studio and asked to make their own work. During the kiln cooldown, we traveled in vans across Korea to Gyeongju to visit the Gyeongju National Museum. This museum houses artwork from the Silla dynasty, a period that unified the Korean peninsula into a single kingdom (57 BC – 935 AD). The next day, we visited the studio of Korean master onggi potter Heon-gyu Kim (Heongyu Kim) and traveled to the Bulguksa Buddhist Temple complex, a UNESCO World Heritage site. After the temple visit, we returned to Yeoju for the kiln unloading and closing ceremonies.
This weeklong whirlwind experience was transformative for me, not just professionally but also personally. The 2022 conference brought together a large group of highly skilled and accomplished ceramic artists from all over the planet. Within this format, we shared meals, laughed a lot, made art together, and became friends in a very short span of time.
In June 2024, I was invited back to South Korea for the 2024 International Wood Fire Workshop. This time it was for nine days instead of seven, with more activities and more international and Korean ceramic artists than in the previous workshop. Since my first trip, I have been following the activities of the KCAA and saw that they were not just holding these workshops in Korea but also in China and Thailand. I also noticed that other countries, such as Thailand and Turkey, are creating similar international exchanges on their own. After my two experiences in Korea, I decided that this new kind of ceramic exchange, which was being replicated elsewhere in Asia, would be worth writing about.
