Johanna DeMaine has an international reputation as a ceramic artist and, for almost thirty years, has created luminous works of lasting creative quality from her modest studio gallery in Landsborough, at the foot of the Blackall Range.
Ever the student of old and new ceramic skills, Johanna has just returned from a four week workshop at China’s Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute. She was awarded a rare study grant to China’s premier university for ceramics, to study the ancient technique of overglaze enamelling. She has returned enthused with ideas that will take her in new creative directions, and she spoke to the Hinterland Times about her trip.
Jingdezhen is ceramic city with decorated porcelain lamp-posts
Johanna’s constant search for new sources of inspiration has led her to study ceramic techniques throughout the world. These studies have taken her to Delft, Royal Copenhagen and Stoke-on-Trent, and to participate in workshops at Meissen and Royal Monaco. A prestigious Churchill Fellowship took her to Europe in 2001 to study lustre glazes.
Johanna’s ceramic vessels combine an eye for modern design with a timeless classical quality of form and visual lustre. It is no surprise that one of Johanna’s vessels was presented to Her Majesty the Queen during her 2000 royal tour and why, in 2004, a magnificent work entitled Rebirth featuring a butterfly was presented by the Governor-General of Australia as his personal wedding gift to Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark and Mary Donaldson.
Jingdezhen City, in the north-east of Jiangxi Province is known as China’s Porcelain Capital. Johanna was housed in the international section of the university and, while facilities were basic, she could at least switch on her laptop and Skype her family in Australia.
The long communal kiln is a feature of ancient Chinese ceramic tradition
This town of 1.5 million people has produced pottery for 1700 years, and its history can be seen everywhere in the city. Even the traffic lights and the lamp-posts are made from porcelain, says Johanna. They have weekly antique ceramics markets in the city and no ceramic piece is wasted. One amusing example is the creation of little walls, made up of lots of old rejected ceramic pieces, as a parody of the Great Wall.
As we all know there are fundamental changes going on in China, no more so than in ceramic arts. The Chinese ceramic tradition is for the firing of work in huge communal kilns. No-one has ownership of individual pieces – one person throws the clay, another shapes a pot, another glazes, another fires and another paints designs.
It all comes together at the communal kiln but no single person owns or signs the work. Even the renowned porcelain works of the imperial Ming and Tang dynasties were made in this communal way. That situation is changing says Johanna with new graduates eager to set up their own studios and launch careers as individual artists where they see both fame and fortune.
Johanna stands beside a small wall that is a wonderful mix of ceramic odds and ends.
“What’s still impressive are the high levels of skill of those involved in ceramics,” says Johanna. “So the porcelain painters are extremely skilled, the carvers are skilled, the glazers are skilled. But when you put them altogether and get one person to complete the whole work, you don’t get the same level of skill. It’s changing but it will take time.”
Johanna went to Jingdezhen to learn the traditional Chinese techniques of overglaze enamelling-decorating or painting over the top of the fired glaze. The work is then refired at lower temperatures to produce beautifully controlled designs in rich enamel colours.
Johanna was taught by a professor, following the traditions of tracing ancient motifs, mixing colours and how to hold a paint brush, Chinese-style.
a young Chinese potter uses the unusual standing posture to throw a pot
“I’m not very good with a paint brush,” says Johanna with a smile. “So I had to get used to holding a brush with a steady hand so that it holds the volume of paint within it.
“At the moment my decorative surfaces are limited to using lustre and gold, sand-blasting, and raised enamel dotting. I wanted to get back to the grass roots Chinese ceramicists, and use the brush in a painterly way. I have now been able to teach myself how to apply broad areas of overglaze enamel colour.
Johanna DeMaine’s painstaking attention to technique and design tradition reflects her first career as a high school teacher in languages, economics and geography. Not only has she brought back from China several enamels, some of the oils and many different brushes, but she is researching the techniques she has been shown.
“The Chinese are very secretive about the techniques they are prepared to give away,” she says with a smile. “I was told things that I haven’t seen in print. Now I am researching some ancient Chinese texts to see if what I have been shown matches up with the theory.”
We can expect, in the future, some exciting new ceramic art directions from Johanna DeMaine who always returns to the inspiration of the Sunshine Coast hinterland and the Glasshouse Mountains. Her latest exhibition is called, All that is Sublime and is at Art on Cairncross, Cairncross Corner, Maleny from August 7-29.
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