Work by Professor Juliane Shibata ’01 featured in Generations exhibit
In Boliou East Gallery last fall, the Carleton community appreciated the exhibition “Generations,” which featured work from art professor Juliane Shibata ’01.
In Boliou East Gallery from Sept. 26 through Oct. 28, the Carleton community appreciated the exhibition “Generations.” The exhibition featured Linda Christianson, a Minnesota-based woodfire potter and ceramic artist; Juliane Shibata ’01, visiting assistant professor of art at Carleton and local ceramic artist; and Gavin Young ’21, a studio art alum and the current educational associate for the studio art department. This piece will focus on Shibata’s contributions.
Shibata is an accomplished artist with internationally-shown and award-winning work. She is most celebrated for her ceramic art, which often employs repeating patterns—a visual theme prevalent in her exhibition at Carleton.
“Repeating patterns are central to both my functional and sculptural work,” Shibata wrote in her artist statement. “I think about patterns in two ways: as ornamental, operating cross-culturally and throughout history, adding decorative beauty to our surroundings; and as time-based, reflected in seasons, daily routines and evanescent moments which are experienced more than seen. Both are part of our everyday landscape.”
Shibata’s first two large installations in “Generations” were based on a pattern called “shippo,” which holds special meaning in Buddhism, as it represents the Seven Treasures: gold, silver, lapis lazuli, crystal, agate, red pearl and carnelian. Above all, the pattern is representative of never-ending harmony and peace, symbolized by infinite linked circles. Depending on how the viewer interprets the overlapping portions of the pattern, it can appear as diamonds—found in the negative space—or flowers and petals—found in the overlapping shapes.
Shibata chose to build her two shippo-inspired installations out of clay, with each forming a shippo pattern on the wall. Rather than creating overlapping circles of material for each, she sculpted only the overlapping portions—porcelain ovoid tiles she called “petals”—which connected together to make the pattern. Each clay petal was handmade and hand-painted with different designs. The brush strokes and delicate line work were very visible from close-up, inspiring viewers to imagine Shibata painstakingly painting each petal with care and precision.
The paintings on each ovoid tile were “inspired by textile patterns, in particular those used in Japanese kimonos and European and American fabrics,” Shibata said. “Each tile is painted with patterns found on Japanese and Western textiles along with Byzantine, Egyptian and South Asian motifs that share a resemblance to shippo.”
Shibata titled her two shippo representations “Shippo: East” and “Shippo: West,” arranging and painting each set of tiles in unique ways in order for the pieces to build upon each other while also functioning as separate works of art. “Shippo: East” was designed to emphasize the roundness of shippo, with its completely round border emphasizing its interlocking circles. The other, while made up of the same petal shapes, was aligned so the petals poked out and emphasized the edges of the pattern. When seen side-by-side, although both were built around the same pattern, the installations evoked opposing energies.
The designs painted and glazes used on each petal also differed between each other and between the installations. In “Shippo: West,” tile designs ranged from an intricate, colorful vase of flowers on a white background to bold, black and white chevron. Even petals with mirroring designs or the same background color had unique features to set them apart, using repetitions of dots, flowers or abstract white lines to create wholly unique tiles that still contributed to the larger, harmonious shippo pattern. “Shippo: East,” in contrast, had more obvious consistency between each petal. Multiple of the petals, for example, were painted white with blue flowers, although Shibata added unique elements with pops of other colored flowers on certain tiles, such as salmon and bright pink, which tied together the tiles into a unified color scheme.
“Shippo: East and Shippo: West explore how ornamental patterns are used, adapted and evolve over time,” Shibata said, “and how viewers’ own perceptions and backgrounds influence how they see and interpret the motifs.”
In addition to her larger installations, Shibata also crafted a collection of cloud tiles. The floating clouds were created from porcelain, clay slip, underglaze, underglaze pencil and luster. Together, the materials formed a muted pastel storm of rose pink, dark blue and green, all upon cream backgrounds. Each cloud was an individual piece of artwork as well as part of the collective whole, similar to the tiles used in Shippo: East and Shippo: West. Some were decorated with shippo, one had splashes of pink and silver metallic flowers, and another had delicate stems with red dots. The minimalist depictions of nature kept viewers’ focused on the pattern of leaves and dots rather than the intricacy of any individual flower, allowing the clouds to more easily blend with other, more abstractly patterned clouds. This provided viewers the opportunity to take in all the clouds as a single, cohesive collection as well as individual pieces.
Also in Shibata’s section of “Generations” were vases and cups. The cups were decorated and colored similarly to the cloud tiles with delicate, mostly abstract flowers and patterned backgrounds with shippo in pink, blue and green. The vases, made of porcelain slip and underglaze, used rich blue and black glazes in contrast to the rest of the mostly pastel pieces. One notable vase was exclusively covered in the shippo pattern, connecting it to the wider theme.
In viewing Shibata’s installations, it was clear that her focus on pattern was by no means superficial. While appreciating their decorative beauty, Shibata also used the exhibition to explore the themes her patterns invoked when in harmony with each other, as well as the feelings those themes created for her viewers, who were integral to understanding Shibata’s artistic purpose.