Exhibit showcases art as a way of life

When he switched from head of the ceramics department at San Francisco State University to professor emeritus after 40 years, David Kuraoka suddenly had some time to devote to a new project. He decided to make cups.

The ceramics artist had established his career by crafting big abstract shapes, often with no practical purpose. He had made only a few cups as a student earning his master’s degree at San Jose State University but had taught cup making in San Francisco for decades, and thought he might discover something new by focusing on the activity himself. “I have thrown a lot of clay in my career, a lot of big clay,” he said. “In my retirement I was working half time. I had all of this skill as a thrower, so I thought I owed it to the world to make some cups.”

In between, Kuraoka has been continuing his signature style of work — curvy and complex pieces in ceramics and bronze. A broad sampling will be exhibited in a show opening today and continuing through Feb. 29 at Gallery ‘Iolani at Windward Community College; another collection will be displayed at Honolulu Museum of Art at First Hawaiian Center in March.

The Gallery ‘Iolani show will feature mostly smaller to midsize pieces surrounding a colorful column made of clay rings. Curator Toni Martin said she was drawn to Kuraoka’s use of color, such as in the column, as well as his surface treatments and distinctive designs. The First Hawaiian Center show will include several of Kuraoka’s larger pieces.

Much of his creative energy during the past five years, though, has been devoted to his cups.

Although he has lived most of his life in San Francisco, Kuraoka has always kept close his connections to the Garden Isle, where he grew up and where has settled back to as his professor emeritus duties wind down. Instead of slowing his pace, the 69-year-old set up shop and maintains a rigorous daily routine that begins at 5 a.m., when prepares his studio until breakfast. Except for a few breaks each day for meals and chores, he works on his art until nightfall. He and his wife, Carol, live across the street from one of the most beautiful beaches in the world, a prime spot for snorkeling, but Kuraoka said he only rarely gets to the ocean and hasn’t been on a surfboard since high school.

He has become much more interested in the self-discovery possibilities of making art, with his cup project as an example of this simple but generative process.

“I thought I could master it in a couple of hundred cups,” he said. “Yet I’d never made a cup with a personality. I’d never made a cup with a soul.”

His initial research included buying cups from the best cup-makers in the world, reading books about cups and searching the Internet and social media for images. “I look at every cup differently now,” he said. “They are very intimate. They touch someone’s lips. For a long time it was difficult to deal with me because I was so focused on cups, I wasn’t interested in anything else.”

Once he figured out a process that pleased him, Kuraoka said, he made 100 cups in a month. He spent three months a year making cups and then added to those 300 the next year, and so on, until he had made 1,000 that he wanted to keep.

“The world didn’t need more cups,” he said. “But we’re not just talking about cups. We’re talking about life. It was very personal.”

In September, Kuraoka finally finished the cup project and took them to the Big Island to fire and finish. At this point he has no plans to show or sell them or even to make another cup again.

“Art gives us new ways to look at things all of the time,” he said. “You might see something one way and then finally see it another way. A lot of time, I was just working and that happened. That explanation makes it seem so insignificant, but every once in a while, there was a little bit of insight.”