By Aleina Edwards
ATLA, a contemporary gallery with a reverence for the history of craft, opened its new space in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles at the beginning of the year. The joint endeavor of artist and curator Jenny Hata Blumenfield and her husband, Ryu Takahashi, ATLA takes an intersectional approach to ceramics, which is so often siloed into discussions of craft and material, or exclusively elevated into fine art. The gallery synthesizes work from the East and West, highlighting the influence Japanese craft has had on California ceramics for decades.
With The Aesthetics of Everyday Objects: The Plate, the couple continues the conversation they started with their first “everyday” show in 2024, which focused on the cup. Hata Blumenfield sees these familiar forms as the perfect prompts for a particularly tricky question when it comes to ceramics: what is it? From young ceramicist to auction house employee to gallerist, Hata Blumenfield has tangled with issues of form, function, and value for her entire career; now, through curation and community-building, she has found a way to address it head-on.
Jenny, could you tell me where this new iteration of ATLA sits in the lineage of your work, and what it means to open this space? It seems like you’re creating something that doesn’t really exist yet—how would you articulate it?
I’ve long worked on different sides of the art space. When I finished school, where I did pursue ceramics, there were only two people in the graduating class. Post-college, I went to New York and got an internship at Christie’s and worked in the Post-War and Contemporary Art department, which at the time was thriving. I was invited to stay on and work under Laura Paulson, and it was such a formative period of my life. I had just come out of this utopian school environment where you didn’t actually have to think about how to sustain your art practice. My favorite question at that time, because ceramics was so associated with craft, was, “So what do you do? You make pots and pans and things?” The other question that was very of the time was “What are you going to do with that?” They were both very realistic questions, but when you’re young and naive and optimistic, also kind of soul-crushing. I felt—and still do—that ceramics was as expressive as anything, and faced with that question, I realized I thought of the material in a completely different way than other people. Working in the secondary art market, I was in this almost dystopian environment, where the perceived value of ceramics is quite low, yet $100 million dollar paintings, or even $50 and $20 million paintings, are flying left and right. So I left and went to the gallery world.
I ended up working for this young gallerist named Daniel Reich—he was a brilliant, brilliant writer, and he found so many great artists, like Paul P. and Henry Taylor. He clearly had a lot of talent and an eye, but he was stuck in a tragic place, and he couldn’t make the gallery function financially. But he lived in the Chelsea Hotel, curated the work in his bathroom, his bedroom. I was introduced to the New York art scene through this alternative lens.
I’ve always gravitated towards alternative spaces, and I think that’s why I gravitated towards ceramics. In high school, I liked punk and metal and materials and music and culture that were just not of the moment; they were always in these little subcultures. So, after I worked in the gallery world, I got a job at Greenwich Pottery, an institution—that’s been around for over a hundred years in New York. Frank Stella lived across the street, and Jackson Pollock famously was the janitor of the building. While I was there, I got a job with Simone Leigh, and she had a small studio in this large warehouse in Williamsburg. It was 2012, and I met Peter Lane there, and Michele Quan—this was one of the few places that had a gas kiln, and you could do salt firing in the middle of Williamsburg.
This sounds like a completely utopic shift for you.
It felt like such a sacred space, a well-kept secret nobody knew about.
All about community, and word-of-mouth?
That’s the charm of the ceramics space—it is very community-oriented. There were a lot of meaningful exchanges there about personal relationships, not just the work. During that time, I mostly focused on the studio side of the ceramic world, working behind the scenes on fabrication. When I was starting to think about leaving New York, I worked for a bit at a ceramic interior design gallery in lower Manhattan, with a showroom. The owner designed all of his own ceramic lamps, stools, and fireplace surrounds, and he invited different artists to include work in the showroom. Then I got into a residency at Anderson Ranch, in Colorado. When I then moved back to LA and got settled, COVID hit, and all the shows that I was working towards were affected—because at that time, I was still a very active, practicing artist. But I’ve always had other jobs.
That’s the nature of the beast, right?
It’s an important part of the functioning of the beast. You have to find other means and methods to sustain this practice. Although, arguably, ceramics might be the cheaper material to pursue because it’s all about labor.
This brings up questions about how we value this labor. It seems like it must vary from situation to situation, so it’s more nebulous.
There’s also a hierarchy in how people value labor in relation to craft and contemporary art. How do you put a price on something where the labor isn’t seen? A lot of ceramic young ceramic artists investigate labor in their own practice. But what I’m drawn to, in conjunction with that, is the labor that’s not seen, and how that ties into this larger idea of “the unknown craftsman,” which comes from a text by Yanagi Sōetsu. This is all deeply tied to the history of material, which isn’t really about the individual, even with Japanese artists. It’s more an investigation of thoughts and questions—at least, that’s what I’ve noticed. And so it is interesting when people dissect this question of labor, because labor in relation to this material is often unseen, and it’s important not to see the amount of time and labor invested in a certain sculpture. For instance, this artist, Yoshikazu Tanaka. When you look at this work, it’s almost impossible to calculate how much time it took, in terms of research and development, to get to this place of making such a simple form, which feels so obvious. But in studio pottery, you can almost calculate that, like the market price is something based loosely on how much time you spend on it.
I think about perceived value quite a lot, especially with how I got to curating. I felt a bit uninspired in my own studio, because I started ceramics with the idea of being in community, and the more I started to show and focus on my own work, it meant that I had less and less of an opportunity to convene in a space. I lost my connection to the material, which I’ve been working in since I was 13, so it wasn’t something that I thought I could lose. It was a strange confrontation of loss, because when you think of yourself as a creative and an artist, and you lose the very thing that ties you to that material—what are you?
How did curating begin to alleviate that?
[In 2022] I had the opportunity to take over a vacant space in Santa Monica [and open Blumenfield Projects], and I got really, really excited about the type of show I wanted to see, which was different from what I was often seeing: some variation on the magic of clay emerging from the earth. [British ceramicist] Alison Britton has long been writing about the material from this dual perspective of artist and writer, insider, and yet, outsider. And she basically says everything has been recycled—even in the last 10 years, with ceramics becoming more in vogue, we’re still having the same conversations that existed decades ago, and it hasn’t really evolved as much as I would like it to.
Do you have a working thesis as to why that might be? Why are we getting stopped out at the same place?
Personally I think the ceramic field has very distinct binaries: craft exists in one capacity, and contemporary art exists in the other. People on the contemporary art side are often trying to elevate the conversation of craft, to recontextualize ceramics amongst paintings and other mediums, whereas the true followers of craft have maintained this purist ideology, and as such, it’s stayed in place.
Is that the sort of resistance that you think keeps this repetition happening?
There’s no dialogue happening between the sides.
What does an integrated conversation look like?
I’ve long wanted to experience the in-between, largely because I have also experienced life in between both of these spaces. My own practice is about that as well. It’s a representation of my outlook, rather than who I am. It’s how I choose to experience life, and I often want to see more of an in-between expression, one that talks about the nuances that have long existed in between those spaces, because I don’t really think there’s a very strong binary. That’s why for me, it feels very punk. The artistic principles of punk—not just being subversive.
This space has come together largely because of the conversations I have with my husband, Ryu Takahashi. Blumenfield Projects was solely focused on ceramics, but when Ryu and I decided to merge two years ago, ATLA came together. He grew up between Tokyo and New York, and works in the music industry. He really wanted to focus on Japan and high craft, but the minute you say “high craft,” people shudder—it’s so loaded. It also immediately, in my mind, exists at the bottom of a hierarchy. This really coincided with what I wanted to do in relation to ceramics, and our space in Echo Park was the starting point of introducing these two interests, and trying to find or further strengthen what that conversation is. There’s long been conversation across the Pacific between American ceramic artists and Japanese artists. The GI Bill fits into that conversation—in the ’70s, studying artists wanted to pursue painting, but couldn’t get into the painting classes, so they were finding themselves in ceramic classes. That really helped to further the study of Japanese ceramics. Peter Voulkus is a byproduct of that, and Edward Eberle, who’s in this show, is also loosely tied to that part of history.
This seems important to do in California—to tie this conversation to place specifically.
Yes, that’s been very important to us, too, because when we were thinking about how to really grow this idea, we started by doing pop-ups. Then we moved towards a space we collaborated on with a publisher, Atelier Editions, [in Echo Park]. When that came up, we were just programming the space twice a quarter. And it did feel like it was fitting a particular need for a larger conversation between craft, ceramics, contemporary art, and further highlighting these embedded hierarchies and biases. For instance, this show—this is a plate show. When I started telling people I’m curating a plate show, it was incredible. Some people were so excited; some people were like, what’s the point of doing that? It was similar to that old question, “What are you going to do with that?”
I’d ask ceramic artists and curators and people who work in the space about a sculptor—or somebody working in clay who maybe doesn’t identify as a potter—making a cool plate, and I couldn’t find a lot of answers. But the more we talked, the more they started to understand it wasn’t really meant to be just a plate. It’s really a blank canvas.
I’ve heard artists say certain forms, like a pot or a plate, can just be the armature for an idea. The object is familiar, which allows you in.
Exactly. And the exciting part about art is when it ignites your imagination. With this show, and so many of the shows we’re going to put together, I hope to further ignite that excitement, that child-like bliss, or that light bulb that turns on. Like, oh, wow—that’s what you’re thinking about when you’re thinking about a plate. Most everything is hung on the wall because I wanted to change how you thought about the plates. There’s not a singular use, and it plays into this duality of perspective.
So why do you think the IKEA plate is exciting?
Because it’s the most recognized and accessible plate that I think everyone has had at some point in their life, especially when they’re moving around, before they’re ready to invest in something.
It says something about who that person is, and what phase of life they’re in, right? It has a larger cultural significance.
What you’re talking about the cultural significance is what I’m really excited about. I’ve also noticed in recent years the way ceramics has really penetrated mainstream culture. I was just looking at the Bank of America business site, and it had images of small business owners in their pottery studios, which I’ve never seen before. It’s a little scary, too, because the accessibility makes it almost seem like the material is a lot easier than it actually is. I don’t create any type of distinction between how much time somebody spends with the material, but I find it interesting it’s that popularized, to where there’s less of an interest in really investigating the material.
What comes after the plate show?
It’s a solo show with Yoshikazu Tanaka. Last year I was in Japan, and we did 21 studio visits. It was an abundance, but I mention the number because there’s so much talent in Japan that hasn’t had an opportunity to be seen internationally. And when we did these visits, we met Yoshikazu Tanaka. His studio was filled to the brim with all this work and experimentation, all of these series he clearly had spent years investigating and bringing to life. His material is so interesting because a lot of people come in and assume these are found rocks that he embeds into the work, but they’re recycled shards of old sculptures. And the glazes he uses are old sculptures ground down into a powder. These are thematic considerations, too—the work is really about the cyclical reuse of material, and nature, and how these are very intertwined.
How has it been inaugurating this space, especially right after the LA wildfires?
Since ceramics is very community-oriented, it makes sense to exist here, on that level. We’re a five-minute walk from Barnsdall Park. We’re close to all of these amenities—restaurants, bars. On this little block, there are a few Lebanese business owners who have been here for 20 years. That is, to me, what LA used to represent, where so many cultures and individuals and offerings can exist in one block. It doesn’t have to be this overly curated experience. It just exists.
Spaces like this feel very needed now, though it’s interesting, because many feel the art space is experiencing a recession. So many small galleries are closing, yet I’m very excited to forge forward, and we have a lot of support, and we have a lot of great artists who we’re working with. In moments that feel rather hopeless, more and more beauty can exist in response.
Born and raised in Los Angeles, Aleina Edwards is the Director of Craig Krull Gallery in Santa Monica, and she writes about contemporary art in California and the American Southwest. Find more of her work at aleinagraceedwards.com
The Aesthetics of Everyday Objects: The Plate was on view at ATLA, Los Angeles, between February 1 and March 9, 2025. The exhibition included works by Amy Bessone, Sandow Birk, Jenny Hata Blumenfield, Nicole Cherubini, Francesca DiMattio, Edward S. Eberle, Stanley Edmondson, Nicki Green, Matt Merkel Hess, Roxanne Jackson, Trevor King, Susanna Kim Koetter, Joshua Miller, Bruno Nakano, Akihide Nakao, Elyse Pignolet, Yoshikazu Tanaka, Shoshi Watanabe, Matt Wedel.
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Captions
- Akihide Nakao, Bullseye Plate, 2024, Glazed ceramic, 16 x 16 x 1.5. Photo by Nice Day Photography, courtesy of ATLA.
- Trevor King, Composition with One Pinch Pot and Four Plates, 2023, stoneware, epoxy, pigment, soil, 17 x 16.5 x 4.5 in. Photo by Nice Day Photography, courtesy of ATLA.
- Francesca DiMattio, (Untitled) 18th Century French Sevres Plate, 2024, glazed porcelain with sgraffito decoration, 9 x 9 x 2.5 in. Photo by Nice Day Photography, courtesy of ATLA.
- Amy Bessone, If Snakes Are Good (green), 2018, Glazed ceramics, 12 x 12 x 4 in. Photo by Nice Day Photography, courtesy of ATLA.
- Joshua Miller, MB in Greens and Orange, 2024, Glazed ceramic, 15 x 15 x 1.5 in. Photo by Nice Day Photography, courtesy of ATLA.
- Nicki Green, Cleave Vessel (Seder Plate), 2025, Glazed earthenware, 8.25 x 8.25 x 2 in. Photo by Nice Day Photography, courtesy of ATLA.
- Nicole Cherubini, Medusa Love, 2025, Glazed stoneware, 19 x 16 x 2 in. Photo by Nice Day Photography, courtesy of ATLA.
- Roxanne Jackson, Crab Dinner, 2024, Ceramic, glaze, underglaze, 22.5 x 3 x 15 in. Photo by Nice Day Photography, courtesy of ATLA.
- Susanna Kim Koetter, After Paul Thek (The Face of God), 2023, Glazed stoneware, 13.5 x 13.5 x 2 in. Photo by Nice Day Photography, courtesy of ATLA.
- Matt Wedel, Mythology Plate, 2019, Majolica on Terracotta, 9 x 9 x 2 in. Photo courtesy of L.A. Louver.
