The North-West Ceramics Foundation is pleased to announce Sadashi Inuzuka, as featured speaker at a free public lecture Tuesday, Nov.2, 2015, at 7:30 pm. The presentation will be held in Room 245 in the North Building of Emily Carr University of Art + Design (1399 Johnston Street, Granville Island, Vancouver). All are welcome and encouraged to attend.

Sadashi Inuzuka was born and raised in Kyoto, Japan. He immigrated to Canada and completed undergraduate studies at the Emily Carr College of Art. He received his MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, MI. In 1996, he began teaching at the University of Michigan, eventually holding the position of Arthur F. Thurnau Professor at the Penny W. Stamps School of Art and Design. He has participated in numerous residencies and exhibited his large-scale installations integrating ceramics and mixed media in Canada, USA, Australia, Japan, Denmark and elsewhere. He is the recipient of numerous awards and grants, including the Canada Council for the Arts, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and the Pollack/Krasner Foundation. He left his position at the University of Michigan in 2014 to live and work on Cortes Island, British Columbia.

His experience as a sight-impaired person stimulated his interest in working with others who are blind or otherwise disabled. At the University of Michigan, he developed a series of workshops for K-12 students and a curriculum based on working with children, adults or seniors with physical and/or cognitive disabilities. His large-scale installations explore his “relationship to the larger world and the fragile balance of society and the environment.” He works with materials as varied as porcelain, earthenware, glass, iron and bread, materials that represent the earth’s varied resources and suggest qualities such as strength, fragility and translucence. Even bread dough has its place: in addition to its attractiveness and history, bread introduces ideas about agriculture, sustainability and the distribution of resources. As curator Susan Jeffries has written, “His work helps us to develop a sensibility to the intricacy and beauty of art and the natural world. It creates a desire to find a harmony within ourselves and within our various cultures, which will provide a way forward.”

About his work, he has written:
Since 1981, when I discovered ceramics as a student at Emily Carr College of Art, clay has been an essential part of my life. From working with clay, I grew up as an artist and matured as a human being. It has guided me and always given me direction. It is a restless, changing material, and so too my life has kept changing along with it.

In his talk, Sadashi will discuss his thirty-five years working in clay, where it took him and where he is going from here. The lecture will be held Tuesday, November 3, 2015, NB 245 at 7:30 pm. The lecture is free and open to the public, and we look forward to seeing you there. For more on his work and thoughts about art, please see his website at sadashiinuzuka.com