Shared journeys: Josh Green details the experience of a Chinese/US symposium in Jingdezhen.

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A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.--Lao Tzu

A CROSS-CULTURAL EXCHANGE INVOLVING ARTISTS, educators and students took place in the south-central city of Jingdezhen, China's porcelain capitol for six days in October 2009. SHARED JOURNEYS: Chinese/American Ceramic Art and Education was the result of partnership efforts involving The National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA), the Jingdezhen Ceramics Institute (JCI) and West Virginia University (WVU). The relationship between WVU and JCI began in the mid 1990s when renowned Chinese ceramic historian Yao Yong Yi paid a visit to the WVU ceramic studio while visiting his son who was enrolled in medical school there. A friendship was forged with WVU ceramics professor Bob Anderson. Yao began a research residency in the Morgantown ceramics department during which he worked to replicate ancient Chinese glazes using materials readily available to the American potter. Soon after, Bob Anderson conducted a reciprocal residency at Yao's university in Shanghai during which he shared his knowledge about American salt glazed wares.

It was during this visit that Anderson became more aware of the significance of the JCI as China's only higher education institution entirely devoted to ceramic science, history, industry, research and artistic development. By 1996, a WVU/JCI partnership had emerged in the form of a six week summer residency program combining classroom, studio and travel. Concurrent with the One Thousand Years of Jingdezhen Porcelain exhibition in 2004, the JCI/WVU partnership entered a new phase when WVU acquired a compound of buildings on the older JCI campus. With additional support from the Henry Luce, Spencer and other Foundations, WVU developed staffing and facilities plans that support year-round programming including semester-long residencies for undergraduate and graduate students as well as independent artists and visiting professors. Over 300 ceramists have since experienced deep educational immersion in Chinese culture and pedagogy through the WVU/JCI International Ceramics Studios.

The approximately 60 American symposium participants departed San Francisco early in the morning of October 21 and following a brief layover in Hong Kong, arrived in Shanghai the next day where most spent three days before moving on to Jingdezhen. The hub of China's imperial court porcelain production since the Jingde Period (1004-1007), Jingdezhen remains a bustling centre of ceramic art, research, industry and education. At the time of the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907), present day Jingdezhen was known as Changnan, "south of the Chang River". Although craftsmen had been producing ceramics in the area as early as in the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220), it was Song Dynasty ruler Emperor Zhenzong whose reigning title was Ching-te or Jingde, who renamed it 'Ching-to-zheri in 1004 AD. It was around this time that Jingdezhen had become established as the major centre of porcelain production for the imperial court. If Westerners know about Jingdezhen it is largely through its poetic immortalization as King-tetching in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem Keramos:

   Above the town of King-te-tching,
   A burning town, or seeming so,
   Three thousand furnaces that glow
   Incessantly, and fill the air
   With smoke uprising, gyre on gyre,
   And painted by the lurid glare,
   Of jets and flashes of red fire.

Like Dorothy entering Oz for the first time and with wide-eyed wonder proclaiming, "I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore," ceramics enthusiasts learn they are arriving at a new level of awareness of the art form as soon as they arrive in Jingdezhen. Approaching the city from different directions, one invariably encounters a large public sculpture representing a kiln's flame. Ceramic articles in various stages of production can be seen in transport around the city via any number of conveyances representative of three centuries of technological advancement. The contemporaneous strata of ceramic, cultural and technological history that today so readily surface within Jingdezhen's visual culture are not likely to long persist. Given China's rapid emergence as an economic superpower the inevitability of progress seems both palpable and probable. If Jingdezhen's complex tactile history is to resist complete submersion beneath a hard and slick veneer of the now that is rapidly encroaching upon larger urban centres in China, it will be in large part due to the passionate commitment to tradition embodied in the region's ceramics.

Today Jingdezhen remains an established world leader in porcelain production. Although minor in size by China's standards, Jingdezhen's population rivals that of many American mid-sized cities. Traversing every type of road from narrow alleyways to broad avenues one can find evidence of the persistence of ceramics production and commerce. Within the city area lie arrays of neighbourhoods in which dozens of workshops where pots, tiles, tools and materials are available. Ceramics so saturate the environment of Jingdezhen that it is important to point out in writing an overview of the Shared Journeys symposium that many participants actually experienced two programs: one formal, which can be readily recounted through the official conference schedule; and the other informal, which was often absorbed with the help of scraps of paper bearing mandarin script for phrases like underglaze decal shop, tool maker, or giant slab makers and their roughly corresponding locations. Sub-groups proved to be an optimal strategy for creating this unofficial aspect of the conference. The most truly fortunate of these were oftentimes composed of students from US undergraduate and graduate programs who forged connections with the enthusiastic and generous student translators from the symposium's host, the Jingdezhen Ceramics Institute. Others relied on friendly cab drivers good not only at deciphering these notes and navigating to sometimes obscure neighbourhoods but also at delivering expressive directional hand gestures once a general location had been reached. The destinations of such adventures sometimes precipitated conflicting responses of wonder. An entire family would work together rolling out enormous porcelain slabs by hand, glazing and firing them. Each family member had his or her own specialty as the clay was wedged by one, rolled out by others and so on. They were working in piles of porcelain dust, in homes whose front doors were garage doors making their workshops and homes three walled structures.

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The Shared Journeys symposium's formal proceedings included lectures, demonstrations and panel discussions--a familiar format to anyone who had previously attended one of NCECA's national conferences. Henry Miller wrote, "One's destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things." Symposium participant, Mandy Stigant a graduate student from Utah State University, Logan, commented that she felt that her fellow travellers shared a sense that "ceramics was our lens for viewing the world". The proceedings' focus on intercultural immersion and pedagogical exchange between Western and Eastern attitudes and philosophies provided opportunities to examine culturally influenced biases and aspirations that can emerge from common interests in ceramics practice and education. A series of presentations by distinguished ceramic educators from America and China revealed some of the differing perspectives on teaching philosophies, learning goals, curriculum frameworks and program structures. Perhaps in a sign of more recent globalization's effect on mass culture and notions of self-identity, in somewhat of a contrast, a round table discussion involving exchanges between Chinese and American students seemed to reveal more similarities than differences.

Through Elaine Henrys lecture on approaches to ceramics education in the US and China and a series of follow-up talks by educators from each culture, we learned that there are some paradigmatic shifts and resulting gaps represented in our different hemispheres' ideas about education. In a statement about contemporary ceramic work from Jingdezhen installed at WVU in 2006, curator Robert Bridges stated that "the work of artists at this famous institution reflects a sense of reinvented ceramics history". While this insight might not seem entirely foreign to American artists, perhaps because we have so little of our own history from which to draw, its implications on creative process can be quite different. A variety of styles and programmatic priorities were apparent in the programs presented by Chinese educators including He Bingqin, Zhou Jian Er, Lu PinChang and these stemmed primarily from their different positions in the vast realm of ceramics ranging from history to industry and fine art. The Chinese educators did share in common a sense of creative innovation that was far more historically and traditionally grounded than their Western counterparts.

Eastern and Western pedagogical philosophies give evidence to some notable contrasts. Cultivating the principal of harmony and retaining a commitment to tradition are twin foundational pillars on which the Chinese perspective on education is constructed. While in Western art education, we think of harmony as a principal of design, America's cultural construct is built upon a mosaic of different cultural influences, oftentimes held in tension between the polarities of individuality and assimilation. In traditional Chinese culture, harmony is a foundational concept, essential in relationships between individuals and nations as well as humanity's relationship with nature. In Zhou Yi (a book of prehistoric Chinese diagrams that discloses the changes in the course of nature), it is written, "If two people are of the same mind, their strength can break iron." The Analects of Confucius relates to us that, "The ultimate goal of etiquette is the achievement of harmony." Confucianism's essence can be distilled to the word Jen to which the nearest conceptual equivalent is 'social virtue'. With ceramic production persisting as a major force in the Chinese economy, several presenters admonished the audience on the urgency of increasing the quality and success rates of production, responding to the call for more ecologically sound practices.

Presenters, Val Gushing and Linda Arbuckle spoke about the academic approach to the ceramic arts as one in which the primary challenge was to achieve a sense of balance between the development of technical command over the materials and process in pursuit of individual expression.

Considering that America's ceramics history is less than 1000 years old while China's exceeds 5000, it is perhaps not so surprising that history exudes comparatively little pressure on the development of artists within the academic system. A presentation by Towa Native American Artist Clarence Cruz provided an occasion to consider that America has a rich and deep indigenous history that corresponds historically with that of China. Although this tradition remains somewhat obscure beyond the enclaves of native peoples throughout the North American continent, they share a belief that aesthetic considerations are inseparable from spiritual and ethical ones. While many of these values are increasingly embraced in a larger audience that has become sensitized to the threats of environmental degradation, the visibility of artists dedicated to practice focused by such environmentally interdependent guidelines is far from pervasive.

While dedication to traditional cultural values and the honour of contributing to the society at large held central status in the Chinese ceramics education system, with ceramics industries responsible for $650 million level in the nation's 2008 economy, it is as impossible to underestimate the force that it continues to represent in the culture's contemporary mainstream. Moreover aspirations for advancement of product quality and operating efficiency are genuine factors in the national economy. In contrast, US levels of industrial ceramics production have long been in decline along with other forms of manufacturing. The divorcement between American industry and American arts now appears a foregone conclusion. While the realms of social criticism and activism have become increasingly pronounced in recent artistic, photographic and media practice, few American ceramics programs tackle such issues as explicit components of their curricula. Moreover, the social expression of Western artists typically assumes the position of the confrontational provocateur working in oppositional posture to the mainstream culture. With a few exceptions, not many of these efforts could be readily aimed at pursuing the value of harmony. In the West, social expression in works of art typically falls into the category of shock or complaint rather than integrating into the socioeconomic fabric of the nation.

The JCI/ WVU International Ceramics Studios consist of a highly functional and hospitable compound of buildings on the old JCI campus. Ongoing demonstrations by traditional and contemporary artists and artisans made this a beehive of activity throughout the symposium. Chinese artists included Jing Yao An, a Tianbao potter who created large-scale coil built storage jars; Zhou Yun Qi and Yang Bing, master Qing Hua (cobalt blue) decorators; porcelain thrower, Zhan Shao Lin and trimmer, Dai Guang Yu; Li Shengke, a Yaozuare potter and her daughter, Li Zhuling, a carver, both from Chen Lu; and, Sheng Yu Hua, a traditional brush Sheng Ji maker with a workshop in Jingdezhen. The effects of such demonstrators on American sensibilities were to inspire both awe and a sense of reflection on one's own position as an artist. Jessica Orlowski, a graduate student at Georgia State University in Atlanta, commented that "watching such amazing craftsmen who are relegated to producing only the designs presented to them made me feel very fortunate to be so free in my studio practice, to pursue any ideas that I choose and to be more of the conceptual artist than the craftsman."

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American ceramic artists Peter Beasecker and Beth Cavener Stichter also were creatively engaged in the shared workshop environment. Particularly intriguing was the fact that Cavener Stichter used the dark, rough stoneware of the Tianbao region while Beasecker worked with the buttery-yellow porcelain of Jingdezhen. The traditional approach to Jingdezhen's porcelain is to throw it relatively thickly and quickly, with refinement of form and wall-thickness being realized in the trimming which takes place nearing the bone dry state. In contrast, Beasecker's thrown forms exploited the fleshy undulations of form and tactile manipulation that have come to embody contemporary proclivity to draw out rhythmically expressive iterations from within the wheel's mechanical concentricity. Building atop an armature of metal pipe and more delicate lengths of bamboo, Cavener Stichter's viscerally sculptural rabbits emerged from anatomical under-workings resulting in a surface vividly energized with evidence of manual gesture.

While the hand was undeniably behind all of this work, US and Chinese artists embodied distinctly different approaches in their processes. The US artists' handling of materials resulted in forms whose surfaces were carriers of phenomenological signs and traces, while the Chinese artists approached process as a classical matter, the ultimate goal of which is to continually work towards previously established ideals of form. That the same materials, similar tools and processes were all affected by human intelligence and manual force to result in objects of such visual and philosophical distinctiveness is a profound matter to ponder. Such distinctions indicate that problems of art are, to a great extent, a matter of cultural context. Moreover, in seeking to deepen one's understanding of another culture by studying its art, one is bound to confront gaps in understanding between one's own culture and the object of study. Is it possible that a new critical role for art in the 21st century may be in exploring these cultural gaps? With the observable disintegration of the environment and the recent dissolution of international financial systems, the media and popular culture have acknowledged that we are living in a state of emergency. While threats to the economy and environment may recently be ascending to central positions in global consciousness, it may also be time to become more cognizant of those that are cultural in nature. The rise of globalization, oftentimes seen as a liability in the US due to overseas job loss and the perception that foreign economic interests compete with our own, is embraced in China where a seemingly unbridled manufacturing economy shows few signs of slowing down. One has to wonder how China will preserve its own cultural heritage as this trajectory of development continues. The threats for China's cultural heritage will be two fold but both will have to do with one of Western art's most vivid preoccupations--the need for the new. Visits to factories, historic and contemporary work sites contributed important dimensions to the Shared Journeys symposium. Some of these, including the historic pottery museum on Jingdezhen's outskirts, were well suited to both ceramics enthusiasts as well as more casual tourists. Ambling along paths embedded with stone, brick and ceramic shard, one could navigate through workshops where artisans were still garbed and creating pottery in the style and technology of the Song Dynasty. Perhaps the most startling field experience was a visit to the Franz Porcelain Collection s massive factory. The company's web site states that Chinese pottery has always been an important part of Oriental culture--and with Franz Porcelain it is evident that this story will continue in the 21st century. Indeed, Franz is a setting that embodies all of the spectacular pictorialism and foreboding of an Andreas Gursky photograph in which the individual identities of human figures seem virtually eclipsed within the scale of industrial production. While these works are handmade, one has to appreciate the distinction that thousands of hands are simultaneously and sequentially engaged in distinct tasks within the creation of the product. The aesthetic sensibility of the works produced here could perhaps be best described by the phrase, 'over the top', which although derived from roots in World War I era trench warfare has come to represent notions of extravagance and technical virtuosity.

In contrast to this visit was a bus tour that travelled into the countryside south of Jingdezhen to the scenic area of Yellow Mountain and the ancient village of Yaoli that lies along a river at its foot. Nearby is Tianbo--sky treasure--the home to a spectacular Dragon Kiln 64 metres in length. First built some 300 years ago at a site near its present location, the kiln was reconstructed and expanded in 1974 to a hillside more accessible from a newly built road. This marvel of structure and thermal engineering is still filled and fired every other month with stoneware jars built up in a centuries old tradition of paddled and thrown coils. Here one can stand in the presence of history that persists in part through the ongoing support of the Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute. About a half-hour away by bus in Yaoli, there is another dimension of historical reconstruction. A park where waterwheel driven hammer mills are still used in the process of creating dunzi, a porcelain and glaze ingredient composed of crushed china stone feldspar or petunze. In such places, the history is tactile and sense of the industry is inextricably connected to the earth--each of its elements, water, mineral and fire--possessing its own secrets, rhythms and properties.

Jingdezhen remains an important ceramic centre of the highest order due to the fact that its rich history has proved a fertile medium for the realization new entrepreneurial visions. Carolyn Cheng established The Pottery Workshop in Jingdezhen "to provide an opportunity for artists from all over the world to come and be in a semi comfort zone and to be able to work and look at Jingdezhen ceramics production". Her vision is that Jingdezhen's remarkable commitment to craft and the artisans who practice it provide a unique window of exploration for artists from throughout the world. In addition to generous, well-lit work spaces and gallery, the Pottery Workshop offers unexpected but important gestures of conviviality including a cafe in which a dark, European-style espresso provides lubrication for creative conversation. Friday evening lectures and Saturday Morning Markets hosted on the grounds also provide a platform for informal exchange. Just beyond the outskirts of Jingdezhen in another direction, the city's bustle of industry and traffic quickly thins out and the road narrows on the approach to the Sanbao Ceramic Institute. Founded in the mid 1990s by Jianseng 'Jackson Li with the assistance and advice from his Alfred University mentor, Wayne Higby, Sanbao has emerged as a visually rich oasis for the ceramics community. Although the purpose of supporting and hosting residencies by visiting ceramic artists from other parts of the world is similar to that of the Pottery Workshop, each entity fills a unique niche. Sanbao is idyllic with gardens, traditional buildings and coy-filled ponds but its commitment to the creation of new-expressive works is evidenced in a massively eclectic sculptural ceramic wall near the compound's entrance. Li's recent ventures include development of ceramic history-related tours and directing the film, Tao Yao: Pottery and Dragon Kiln, which was screened during the Shared Journeys symposium and recently honoured by UNESCO.

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When asked about the challenges that she faced in establishing the Pottery Workshop, Cheng somewhat cryptically and ironically describes the environment as the Wild West. One of the most powerfully resonant themes of the Shared Journeys symposium was captured during a cab ride conversation through the streets of Shanghai when artist Holly Hanessian made a distinction between the handmade and the hands-on. While in every US History course, Henry Ford is credited with the invention of the assembly line--a system in which a product is created through sequential and efficient addition of parts--it is also true that the history of Chinese ceramics is formed out of a legacy of handcrafted industry dependent on many skilled workers each responsible for a differentiated step in the process. Following the experience of Shared Journeys in Jingdezhen, many of the American participants may, like this writer, find themselves considering anew the extent to which industrial and fine art ceramic production were historically bound and remain influential on one another in the present. Also open for re-examination is the extent to which our somewhat romanticized ideas about the stature of the individual artist's hand in craft-related and other art objects are bound to notions of value and authenticity. Even the most precious artefacts and admired contemporary ceramic works created in the context of Chinese ceramics have resulted from an organization of different individuals' skills and labour.

When one of our student translators was asked why Chinese students were motivated to study so hard, she ventured, "Because if one does not do well in school, the only life available will be a very hard one." Will the view points expressed today by Chinese art students, educators and artists retain resonance as the hard life recedes, even for those who do not reach the pinnacles of the academic and business worlds? As monetary wealth continues to develop for most Chinese workers, it is difficult to imagine that today's youth will identify traditional ceramics with as deep a sense of feeling, when the possibility of new cars, fashion or electronic gadgets are gleaming in hand's reach. Similarly, as younger Chinese artists continue to gain greater access to a global art market continually seeking new voices of expression, one may well wonder how classical Chinese cultural practices will continue to attract those with great talent and commitment.

Historically, export and import of products, ideas, beliefs and values across national and cultural borders have expanded the variety and vitality of ceramic forms and decoration. Our current moment, however, is characterized by speed of transmission and massiveness of scale only imaginable in mythology. As the tidal forces of globalization result in inevitable erosion of traditional cultural practices, artists must be particularly cognizant of tendencies towards standardization. Walking the streets of a sizable city anywhere in the world, it is apparent that the mass circulation of items, images and faces from the realms of fashion, music, design, sport and film has already become more or less interchangeable. As both folk and elite cultures fall victim to the persistent currents of popular taste and commerce, art can act as an instrument to navigate and preserve whatever unique domains remain. Even as we admire and learn from creative traditions, imagination compels us to look forward and visualize things to come. Among art's most critical roles in this age will be the celebration and recontextualization of anomalies and differences.

The triumvirate of West Virginia University, Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute and the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts that made The Shared Journeys symposium possible deserves recognition for their shared commitment. NCECA's past President Robert Harrison had the vision to recognize that with the support of highly competent collaborators, the organization could accelerate its capacity to more fully engage its membership by helping to position their shared art form within a global context. In Zhou Jinar', President of the Jindezhen Ceramic Institute, he found a masterful administrator as willing to cultivate open discourse on inter-cultural and pedagogical issues as he was enthusiastic to share his program's rich repository of knowledge, traditions and creativity. The realization of this vision required the sustained diplomacy and diligent planning of NCECA Board Program Chair, Joe Molinaro, and JCI's Foreign Affairs Department representative, Alan Zhong.

Many of the beliefs to which Western culture subscribes--that the problems of art are purely aesthetic, that art will not likely change or influence the world--are ones that logically lead to a phenomenon that Arthur C. Danto has described as "the disenfranchisement of art." Contemporary artists' acceptance of a morally neutral position and art-for-arts-sake rationale may, according to Danto, relegate their works to a marginalised position in society. Such insights indicate that ceramic objects, whether conceived primarily artistic or utilitarian, possess a special potency by virtue of their presence in everyday life. Their persistence in time and connection with a sense of place, evokes our appreciation and sometimes inspires deeper investigations of material, process, form and surface. Shoji Satake, an Associate Professor of Ceramics at West Virginia University has led several groups of students to Jingdzhen and other parts of China. He remarks that the experience "opens their eyes and minds to what has been and is still happening in ceramics on the other side of the world. Students come back transformed in the way they think about their work and even in the way they touch their materials." Indeed, even during a brief visit in Jingdezhen, one comes face to face with a striking irony of refined aesthetics sensibilities that have for so long transcended the realities of life on the ground. Rather than clever and blithe, this variety of irony has weight. History's collision with present day reality results in the kind of impact that can alter one's world-view. One hopes that ceramic art's future will be richer for this persistent tension between invention and tradition. If on occasion the format of symposium presentations may have come up short of delivering the promise of open exchange of ideas, upon greater reflection, it is only to be expected that increasingly subtle, dynamic and poignant communication will naturally unfold over time provided that the key participants sustain their efforts. Toward this end, plans are already being laid for a 2010 convening of Chinese and American ceramic artists, educators and students that will take place at the Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Tennessee.

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One hopes that ceramic art's future will be richer for this persistent tension between invention and tradition. If on occasion the format of symposium presentations may have come up short of delivering the promise of open exchange of ideas, upon greater reflection, it is only to be expected that increasingly subtle, dynamic and poignant communication will naturally unfold over time provided drat tire key participants sustain their efforts.

Eastern and Western pedagogical philosophies give evidence to some notable contrasts. Cultivating the principal of harmony and retaining a commitment to tradition are twin foundational pillars on which the Chinese perspective on education is constructed. While in Western art education, we think of harmony as a principal of design, America's cultural construct is built upon a mosaic of different cultural influences, oftentimes held in tension between the polarities of individuality and assimilation.

A cross-cultural exchange involving artists, educators and students took place in the south-central city of Jingdezhen, China's porcelain capitol for six days in October 2009. SHARED JOURNEYS: Chinese/American Ceramic Art and Education was the result of partnership efforts involving The National Council on Education far the Ceramic Arts (NCECA), the Jingdezhen Ceramics Institute (JCI) and West Virginia University (WVU).

Joshua Green is an educator, writer and artist. He studied ceramics at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, US and works at Manchester Craftsmen s Guild in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania US.

All photos by Glen Blakely.