Utopia

Birds and animals, grass and trees, fishes, insects, people, all creatures in this world are the ones whose lives have been given from the life planet “Earth”. On the primitive earth, creatures were equally fulfilling their lives. Since I cannot overlook the current human’s arrogance that forgetting that the earth is not just human being’s, killing things inconvenient to humans, and starting the monopoly of the earth, I drew this picture with dreaming the utopia when all the lives were equal.

How the ceramic relief “Utopia” was born:
Ceramic relief “Utopia” in Fukushima Airport by Fumiko Hori’s original painting and supervision was produced at CREARE Atami-Yugawara Studio. Ceramic relief has a great appeal to finish a powerful work which shadows and glaze colors create by making use of Japan ancient pottery traditional techniques and adding bold unevenness on that. It was decided for this work to be produced with ceramic relief to reproduce Ms. Hori’s colorful and energetic style of painting.
Whereas painting is a planar work, mural with ceramic relief can be said to be a comprehensive art that incorporates not only the painting character but also all the characters of sculpture and craft work.
In order to express the original painting by Ms. Hori with ceramic relief, “translation” work as shaping to be applied on clay is indispensable. Unlike ordinary pottery, ceramic relief requires the special soil quality and the manufacturing technique.
The important thing in making ceramics relief is how beautiful coloring of baked glaze comes out. In addition, the staff at CREARE Studio tried to express its texture including colors rather than colors themselves, and something like a feeling that makes people “want to touch it”.
As a result, interacting with soil, shaping, glazing and firing technology, a deep taste that fascinats the viewers was born in “Utopia”. To express the spirit in the work, what kind of shaping or glazing would be applied? Ms. Hori and the staff at the studio studied for almost half a year and replaced the colors and shapes of the original painting with Japanese pottery (ceramic relief), and a gentle and warm space appeared at Fukushima Airport.