About the Potter
The Beginning
I was introduced to the world of art/ceramics accidentally. While attending Loma Linda University, I had a roommate who was an art major and he suggested I take some art classes when I was looking for some general course to fill. I took an intro to craft class. I immediately felt the joy and pleasure of working with clay and I knew that this was the medium that I would pursue in life. Shortly after this exposure, I had a chance to go to Japan and Korea on a year-long self-study.
When I was growing up, we were always with people of all different cultures and backgrounds. My father and mother met in China. My father went to China from Korea to study medicine and my mother went to China to be with her father who was in exile. I was born in Seoul, Korea, but immigrated to US when I was 10 years old. This globe trotting and living everywhere has affected my views of life and art. I can dialog in three different cultures and languages, and for the last 12 years I have worked in Thailand as a missionary. My work is truly international in scope and I have tried to draw from many different experiences and backgrounds I have accumulated over the years.
Influences
In the mid 70's I visited internationally acclaimed potters Otto and Vivika Heino and developed a mentoring relationship with them. They introduced me to Mitch Wilder, the director of Amon Carter Museum in Forth Worth, Texas and I was offered a job teaching pottery at the Museum of Science and History.
I also carried on a correspondence with Beatrice Wood, the famous potter artist known for her beautiful low fire and luster glazes. When I met her initially she took me to her personal collection room of her work. There I saw some of the most beautiful colors ever. She told me that she didn't show this to everybody.
On Esthetics
What I try in my pottery is the natural look. The clay, the glaze and everything comes from the earth and the pots you make should reflect it. Many years ago I lived a period of time with my grandmother until she died at 97, and when I first showed so much interest in clay, she chuckled and told me a story about the potters in Korea. She said I must have had an ancestral background with these potters. She told me that the potters in Korea lived in the mountains and did not mix with the general population. They wore bells on their clothes and when they come down to town, they rang these bells. The people would come and trade their goods with the potters and they would go back up to the mountains. These potters, living so close to the nature and the land, almost became one with the earth and their surroundings. They would not create something apart from their natural surroundings. There is a great beauty in this, as it was not the purpose to create beautiful objects, but rather they just created and it was beautiful and in harmony with their surroundings.
The great 16th century Japanese tea masters were quick to recognize this; they saw the beauty in these everyday objects these potters made and switched from the more decorative Chinese ware, and in doing so they elevated the status of these objects and potters. Many were brought over to Japan forcibly and gave a powerful boost of the Ceramic industry in Japan. In this sense, my objects and surroundings are similar to those old Korean potters, and I'm trying to reflect the beauty of life and nature that exists around me in my own creative process.
Robert Lee