- When I was a kid, I used to go out in the rain and go play in the mud, and some people are repulsed or don't feel that, but I did.

I was like, "Ooh, this is fun."

It's very tactile.

You're really touching it in the middle of the clay.

My name is John Hasegawa.

I teach at Mt.

Hood Community College.

I teach ceramics classes and I'm also a ceramic artist.

Okay, so it's ready.

There, I was kinda double majoring in two very unlike things, math and philosophy, and I heard that ceramics was supposed to be a really fun class, and at that point in my life, I really needed something fun.

And then I realized about the time I was graduating, I think I'm graduating with the wrong thing, and then that's when I turned around and went back to get an art degree, mainly in ceramics.

I was getting all these deep questions in philosophy class and math classes.

Art was exactly opposite for me.

It's just about making these things.

Through the process, and as I've matured and grown up, I've now realized that it is a discovery process about myself.

(knife scrapes) Everything can be an influence.

Where you live, who you talk to, what you watch on TV, what movies you're going to.

You'll see it in the patterns I'm putting on the cups.

I am very much referring back to these mathematical tile books.

So, I look back at those patterns and those things, and I try to bring that back onto my surfaces.

When I was growing up, I was always surrounded by Japanese pottery, and my mom was always a collector of Japanese pottery, and so I was very influenced by all that.

(inquisitive marimba music) And it's very interesting, 'cause when I show my pots to a Japanese person, they're not very Japanese, but when I show pots to other people, it does look pretty Asian.

So, I consider my pots Japanese American pots.

(inquisitive marimba music) I have always thought I could make teacups and that would be really Asian.

They drink tea.

And so I would make tea cup, and I would realize, "You know, John, you don't really drink tea."

Coffee?

I got coffee.

I drink coffee all day.

I understand what kinda coffee cup I like.

I understand how big it is, how much weight, how a handle, a coffee cup handle should be.

I use the Japanese patterns on the outside, taking patterns from a lot of Japanese textiles, for example.

And I'm putting that layer on the outside.

So, in that sense, I'm designing it with a Japanese aesthetic, but it's in a very, what I consider a very Western thing with coffee.

(ceramic patters) My best day is, often is the days I'm working in the studio, but I also love teaching a lot.

Like, my whole life, I've really loved interacting with people and helping them learn new things, and helping them grow as a person.

Don't worry.

Make noise.

Yeah!

(mallet thuds) Sandwich them, hold them together, and then flip the whole thing over.

Hello, everyone.

So today, we're gonna make some slab cups.

I got into YouTube because pandemic happened, no in-person classes, so I was desperate.

I really was missing teaching.

And so I thought, "Well, I guess I can do ceramics online."

I had my phone on the tripod and I just logged into Zoom and I was pointing down, and once I had that figured out, I brought in another camera.

See how it's raised up a little bit?

So, all these things could be all tied together where they can have two simultaneous views.

I can move the camera to where the student could see it.

Wow.

So now, we flip this guy over.

Right now, it looks like this, right?

You can see, let's go from here.

You can see that's the profile of it if I cut this in half.

So, this is a lot like the way how you would trim a bowl or something.

After about a year of doing that over Zoom, I thought, "Well, these videos are good enough to put on YouTube now," and that was the start of my little ceramics YouTube channel.

(laughs) I would love it if this baby was, like, dead flat, so- - John has a very beginner-friendly approach.

He's so high energy and so fun to teaching.

It's hard not to just kind of wanna be friends with the guy.

- [John] So, this one looks better.

- What?

Yeah.

- Like, right, ooh, this is actually a little wet still.

It's even sticky.

The most important thing for me as a artist was being part of the Ireicho project.

(drums boom) So, Ireicho project is a book of names that has all the 125,000 names of all the people that were in the internment camps during World War II, the Japanese.

I went to visit Camp Amache, which is where my mother's family was held during World War II.

That's in Southeast Colorado, and we took my two boys there to go visit with my mom and my uncle, and we stood on the spot where they were interred at camp.

- We believe there were 75 different camps run by the U.S. Army.

We had John create these ceramic pieces that would highlight the specific soil samples of all of these 75 sites.

And he made ceramic tiles, and we embedded those into the book.

I think John kind of instinctively knew, like, the power of the soil, just not only as a technique and as a ceramicist, but in terms of imbuing the pieces with the philosophy of what the overall book and what it was trying to do.

I think he got that so well.

- Going to camp changed how I felt about camp.

It wasn't this abstract place.

I got to stand there, to feel the earth, and got to see and smell it and everything.

So, I took the soil and I was putting different amounts of clay and firing them to see how it looked, and I would take that little tile and polish it so that it looks like it's glazed, like the way they polish granite countertops, but then each little fleck of soil still exposed, so when you're touching the tile surface, you're actually touching the soil from all 75 sites.

But the soil that was coming from the 75 sites is the most precious stuff I own.

Even just touching it is like an honor.

Just having it here and even being included in the project.

It was a little bit stressful, right, being in charge of this really sacred stuff, and that I didn't know if it was gonna work.

How I would get from a pile of soil to something that had all the meaning and significance that the project deserved.

- We now proclaim the Ireicho as a national monument to the wartime incarceration by opening the cover of the sacred book of names to reveal a ceramic artifact made of the soil from 75 camps.

(monks chant) (monks chant) (guests chatter) (guests chatter) - And then putting on a stamp that you're honoring your ancestors, and that's all about what I kind of believe in.

That's why we went to camp.

As a remembrance, to honor what my mother went through, and then also to take my children there, so someday they can be part of the chain that passes on the knowledge of where their ancestors were held in internment camp.

The Ireicho project has really changed how I think about myself and my art.

I'm a potter at my heart.

I make things that I want people to enjoy drinking out of, eating out of.

So, I try to build as much joy and pleasure in every single step.

If there's a better way to make it, I'm not that interested in the better.

I'm more interested in the way of making it that brings me more happiness, right?

So, I don't care if it's slower.

I just care that it brings me more joy.

(solemn piano music) (no audio) (no audio)