Artist Statement
Using Kintsugi my work brings new life and attention to the imperfect or broken. Kintsugi, the art of golden joinery, is a five-hundred-year-old Japanese method of restoring damaged ceramics using special tree sap dusted with gold powder to highlight (rather than hide) restorations. Kintsugi celebrates imperfection, impermanence, and incompleteness by creating the beautifully broken.
Kintsugi came into my life a year after moving to Canada. I received a mysterious email from a local potter stating, “I am sorry that I missed your Kintsugi workshop and I want you to put me on the list for the next workshop.” Mysterious because I had never done Kintsugi before, but in these words, I saw a doorway towards healing. I had long known of Kintsugi but until then I was not broken enough to fully understand the beauty and philosophy. Now I was so broken, the bottom of my life because my turbulent marriage of 21 years had just ended. With decades of ceramic restoration experience, I knew I could master Kintsugi. I urgently immersed myself in mastering the old traditional techniques materials and philosophy behind this ancient Japanese art. One year after receiving the mistaken email, I hosted a workshop and exhibition of my Kintsugi work. I was no longer crying every day and light began entering my life, filling my emotional breaks with gold. This is how I became a Kintsugi artist and started to overcome my sufferings.
My artwork aims to open people and to encourage self-acceptance, to help heal ourselves and the world. Suffering and flaws are integral parts of our identity, elements that shape our history and uniqueness. By beautifully magnifying imperfections in objects, my work allows us to accept fragility and imperfection in ourselves and in life. With skill and love, I create traditionally based, yet contemporary, Kintsugi art forms. My work respects the traditional materials and aesthetics of Kintsugi but also uses creative innovations to expand conventional Kintsugi ideas towards all cultures and eras while pushing the boundaries of techniques and materials with an approach uninhibited, instinctive, and inspirational. By celebrating imperfection and impermanence in life I explore what it means to be beautifully broken.