Ko Yamazaki: The Last Cardboard Box
I made a black cardboard box. My imagination of after moving the house, you always have one cardboard box. Never open stays one corner of the house, and you feel heavy to open it. You can just open and clean. That's all you have to do, and you never do it.
Speaker 1:With the stone, it's massive and heavy. Think that's my expression of my feeling of heaviness.
Speaker 2:So today, Mike Axon and
Speaker 3:I are back in Studio Pescarella, where we've
Speaker 2:come to chat with the Japanese artist, Ko Yamazaki. Pescarella is just outside Pietro Santa and hosts a number of sculptors and is well known for the welcome it gives to artists from all over the world. We find Ko polishing one of his pieces in the bright sunshine at his outside workspace. On his cavaletti are some rounded sculptures of yin and yang and a spiral work in white marble. We know Ko is originally from Kyoto and came via Paris to work in Pietro Santa in 1992.
Speaker 2:He dusts himself off, and we ask him to introduce himself.
Speaker 1:Hello. My name is Cole Yamazaki. I'm from Kyoto, Japan, and living working in Petrol Center since '92. And I work mostly stone, but sometimes I do work wood, clay, plaster.
Speaker 3:What brought you here?
Speaker 1:My father spent time working in the marble in Colorado
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:In the beginning of eighties, I think. And he mentioned about here, I left Japan when I was 17 and went to Paris to study. But I didn't know if I really want to do art. I was more focused on painting, but I didn't like staying in a room and just drawing. I was getting bold.
Speaker 3:So your father suggested you might like to visit Pietro Santa Carrara and look at the marble. What happened then?
Speaker 1:It broke my mind. Just loved it. It was too strong. I couldn't decide to come here till 92.
Speaker 3:Can you tell us where you were born and a little bit about your childhood?
Speaker 1:I was born in Kyoto, and parents are high school teacher. My mother is the history teacher, and my dad is the art teacher. And, they are both busy, and I was kind of left over at my grandmom's house. So, I kind of grew up with her. My mother was activist and feminist, so I had a kind of a strange education from her.
Speaker 3:What were the activities at the time? Can you recall what camp protests she was involved in?
Speaker 1:Well, she was always protesting for many things to to the government, and she was part of the communist too. So when I was 10, she told me I could go to Russia, camping in Pyongyang for two weeks for free. And I didn't really understand what was meaning of Russia, the Soviet Union. And I just said, well, that sounds nice. I go there.
Speaker 1:So, she was happy because she doesn't need to take care of me for the whole summer. And then I went there, I came back in Japan, and I was so proud of myself and telling my friends I was in Russia. And then next day, no one talks to me anymore. Like, starts telling me, like, you spy.
Speaker 3:Wow. That must have made quite an impression.
Speaker 1:That was really shocking. And then next day I start going to my mother's school at the library, study about the communist system and trying to understand why people are ignoring me and getting scared of me, and and that was a, yeah, good timing for me to interest the the politics situation.
Speaker 4:Can we hear a little bit about what it was like when you were in the Soviet Union?
Speaker 1:Oh, it's just camping, big camping place with thousand kids aged zero to 18 or 17. Altogether, huge camping place. We went by boat to near Rajostok. I call it Nachotoka. So it's only thirty six hours by boat.
Speaker 4:And were you with other Japanese kids?
Speaker 1:We were about 20 kids. All sort of, you know, communists. I was the youngest, 10 years old. The oldest was, I think, 18. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Quickly, we become friends.
Speaker 3:And were the other children mainly Russian or other nationalities as well?
Speaker 1:Only Russians.
Speaker 3:So what age were you when you left school?
Speaker 1:When I left school was kind of tricky because at 17, I did the backpack traveling and stopped going to school. And I found the university in Paris, if you graduate the high school, I could go to the university over there. So I quickly went back to Japan and told my teacher, I accepted the Sorbonne, so you have to graduate me.
Speaker 3:Were there any other family in Paris at that time or was it
Speaker 1:No, just by myself. It was kind of extreme because I didn't my parents aren't wealthy people, so my mom could only afford a little bit support for me. But since I was under 20, I needed some guardian for me. And, this guy had apartment in San Clemente Plei, and I needed to stay at his building, which the lent was so high. And after I'm paying my lent, I don't have much money to spend my food or anything.
Speaker 1:So, you know, basically poor student life. But it was lots of fun going out and meeting lots of French people, including French, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Africans, and the cosmopolitan feeling. That was really nice for me.
Speaker 3:And then your father suggested you might like it here. You came down.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So he lent the apartment, huge apartment like this, the former airplane factory, and that was really cool. And so I spent nine months over there with him and start working at Bronze Foundry and also delivery job for galleries, and it was really fun. And I told my dad, I probably like more sculpture than painting. And he says, well, I just do it.
Speaker 1:So, I start doing sculpture. I just found a studio near Pietrasanta.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Sean used to work, and Neil used to work. John Greer was there too. So, that's how I met Neil and other people, then slowly started making friends.
Speaker 3:So, from then forwards, you've been back and forth between Pietro Santa and No.
Speaker 1:Actually, for five years, I didn't really go anywhere. Stayed here mostly. Just kept making sculptures.
Speaker 4:So what was your first piece of marble like?
Speaker 1:I didn't know what to carve. I wanted to do something abstract, but I don't have the education to start with, and I don't have any models. And so I just said, well, let's carve my hand. And how was that? Were you happy with your hand?
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah. I made two hands because one was stolen.
Speaker 3:That's a weird concept, isn't it, to have your own hand stolen?
Speaker 1:Yeah. I put it on the table, Glasgow, and next day someone interested buying my sculpture. And the morning I went, it's all gone. So I said, well, I make another one.
Speaker 4:Were there some big influences in particular where you said, oh my god, this is it?
Speaker 1:Lots of influence. Like, concept of Jean Blair really helped me doing the figurative work. And other people like Margo Sawyer, she is now boss of Austin University sculpture department. With her, we did big installation work. She taught me lots about conceptual art, about installation.
Speaker 4:Do you have any idea when you get a stone what the sculpture's gonna be?
Speaker 1:The interesting part about stone is you are limited by size, so you kind of make a limit. How do you shape your sculpture because of the stone size and then color.
Speaker 4:Also, are some ideas that I imagine are influenced by you being from Japan. This idea of actually taking stone and forming it in a way that looks like paper, they're quite beautiful.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah, I did the whole series of books and cardboard and anything with the paper products because I used to love reading books. I still do reading a lot, but not like before. But now, with a smartphone, etcetera, less reading and kind of feeling nostalgic about. And I don't wanna this culture to be disappeared physically.
Speaker 1:Stone could stay long.
Speaker 3:That's beautiful, because we are beginning to forget how to write letters, and a lot of people are reading less. And when you're in Kyoto, what material do you work in there?
Speaker 1:I do wood and clay and casting with plaster.
Speaker 4:Oh, so that's a whole thing because you don't work in marble in Kyoto.
Speaker 1:It's possible, but it since it's so good here.
Speaker 4:So what else are you thinking about? What's exciting for you right now?
Speaker 1:There's one sculpture I just finished, a kind of yin yang yang shape. During the COVID time, didn't have any motivation because you don't go out, you walk in your house. So I have to do something, and I start researching what's my motivation, why I do sculpture. So I start writing everything and start making funny drawings about touching sensibility. If we touch something, we get much more information.
Speaker 1:The softness feels nice and hardness maybe feels cold. I thought if I could get the conclusion, I would tell someone this could be the better method to make a form.
Speaker 3:I wonder whether you can think of a couple of pieces that you've worked on in your career that were special for you and why?
Speaker 1:Maybe the cardboard box. I made a black cardboard box. My imagination of after moving the house, you always have one cardboard box. Never open stays one corner of the house. And, you feel heavy to open it.
Speaker 1:You can just open and clean. That's all you have to do, and you never do it. With the stone, it's massive and heavy, and I think that's my expression for my feeling of heaviness, but kind of joke too.
Speaker 3:Can you tell us a little more about the books? I'm really interested in that series.
Speaker 1:Yeah. One book that I made, open book, using natural broken surface, naturally broken cave madre, that's what Italian calls. So, you kind of see the history of the geography. So, I call it Geograph Book. Because all the Al Qajani tells you, when you're young, read the stone, talk to stone, and they can carve it, like, very nicely, quickly, and they seem like understand everything.
Speaker 2:So thanks to Ko. You can see his work on his website, koyamazaki.com, or on Instagram at ko.yamazaki. As always, there are photographs of the work we discussed on our website, materiallyspeaking.com, and on Instagram at materially speaking podcast. If you enjoy materially speaking, please join our community. Sign up to our email newsletter.
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