Edible

NORTHERN CLAY CENTER PRESENTS

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CURATED BY OLIVIA COMSTOCK

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© 2024 Northern Clay Center. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

For information, write to: Northern Clay Center 2424 Franklin Avenue East Minneapolis, MN 55406

www.northernclaycenter.org

Manufactured in the United States

First edition, 2024 International Standard Book Number 978-1-932706-67-4

Unless otherwise noted, all dimensions: height precedes width precedes depth.

This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.

Additional funding for this exhibition comes from Prospect Creek Foundation and Windgate Foundation.

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INTRODUCTION BY OLIVIA COMSTOCK

Much like a one-pound block of clay can become an infinite variety of creative forms, a one-hour conversation contains several simultaneous stories. The following pages contain five interviews with the five exhibiting artists Ling Chun, Jennifer Ling Datchuk, Cathy Lu, Anika Hsiung Schneider, and Jacqueline Tse. These emerged from an extended collaborative process that started with a video call with each artist. I form the conversation first through the questions I choose and then further shape the story by editing down a transcript that may be three or four times as long as the finished piece. Every one of those edits is a decision about what to include and what to carve away.

The form of the interview centers each artist’s voice and personal experiences rather than my interpretation. This feels important to me, as a white curator for a show featuring all Asian American artists. The viewer can confront the art and make their own interpretation with the artists’ stories swirling in their head. I am just here to open doors and ask questions.

Even though there is only one version of each interview printed in the catalogue, it is by no means the one true account. These versions gesture at the multiplicity of a conversation. You can imagine beyond these pages full, stumbling, and imperfect discussions. Or, imagine the same interview edited by the artist instead. What choices would they make? How would they craft their own story differently?

Most of my time on this project has been spent in relation communicating with artists over email and in video calls. Because this is only my second curatorial experience, I am learning that curating is largely a social and relational endeavor. It depends on creating respectful relationships with the people I am collaborating with. For me, this has meant feeling present instead of overpreparing, staying in process instead of focusing only on a finished goal, and shifting in response to any feedback I get instead of clinging to an initial idea. Like curating, artmaking and living are also relational endeavors from learning how to make art to existing in our social ecosystems of interdependent needs.

Liberation too is relational. While the term Asian American could be understood as an umbrella phrase, that reading flattens the fact that it encompasses a diaspora of many different countries of origin, each with their own distinct histories, languages, cultures, art, and food. Instead, I evoke “Asian American” in this exhibition as a social and political grouping for solidarity. This definition was coined in 1968 by Yuji Ichioka and his partner Emma Gee, who founded the Asian American Political Alliance while student activists at The University of California, Berkeley. Their goal was to bring previously separated groups together to understand their intertwined histories and collaborate toward collective liberation. The label has certainly been critiqued, primarily for centering East Asians over South, Southeast, Central, and West Asians. That critique can be extended to this exhibition. Because of the somewhat chance-based nature of availability in choosing a small group of artists all making work around the relatively narrow theme of food, this exhibition includes only East Asian artists. Therefore, only a slice of what is meant by Asian American is represented in this exhibition. In turn, this allows for greater attention to the interconnected specificity of the experiences that are shared here.

The five interviews with artists Ling Chun, Jennifer Ling Datchuk, Cathy Lu, Anika Hsiung Schneider, and Jacqueline Tse illustrate that there is no singular Asian American or East Asian American narrative.

Their experiences are various, including immigrating to the United States as an adult, growing up the child of immigrants, living in different parts of the United States with access to different communities, being half Asian, and of course incorporating food and food culture into their work visually in distinctive ways.

In addition to the interviews, I asked each artist to submit a “recipe” component. “Recipe” here is in quotes because not every contribution looks like what one finds in a white American cookbook with standardized quantities and specific instructions. Asking for this submission prompted conversations between me and the artists about what sharing a recipe means to them and how it differed from my expectations stories of grandmas who have everything in their heads, eyeballing amounts and throwing meals together that granddaughters then try to recreate from memory without any passed down written reference. While the pieces in the exhibition relate to food in various ways through the kitchen, family, beauty and desire, power, color, and the body the “recipe” is a way to share a meal more literally and perhaps have food in common.

Finally, a huge thank you to all five of the artists for their time, patience, and collaboration on this project.

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READING LIST

ASIAN AMERICAN MOVEMENT

ASIAN AMERICAN SOLIDARITY

Serve the People: Making Asian America in the Long Sixties by

Karen L. Ishizuka

The Making of Asian America: A History by Erika Lee

The Asian American Movement by William Wei

Black, Brown, Yellow, and Left: Radical Activism in Los Angeles by Laura Pulido

Race for Citizenship: Black Orientalism and Asian Uplift from Pre-Emancipation to Neoliberal American by Helen Heran Jun

Bengali Harlem and the Lost Histories of South Asian America by

Vivek Bald

Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting: Afro-Asian Connections and the Myth of Cultural Purity by

Vijay Prashad

INTERVIEWS

INTERVIEW WITH LING CHUN

Olivia Comstock (OC): You were born in Hong Kong and came to the United States for a foreign exchange program when you were 17. As someone who has existed in two different cultures, how do you use the concept of liminality, or a state of being in between, to understand your identity and your art?

Ling Chun (LC): I am constantly aware that I’m stepping between two identities. Language is a big part of the feeling of liminality for me. My mother tongue is Cantonese, but I learned art in English. There’s always a gap between the two. How do I translate emotions that originated in Cantonese into English and my art?

Liminality is a big question I am still answering. I’m making the work I’m making because things are constantly shifting. However, I’ve gotten comfortable being in an in-between space that is a space where I belong.

OC: How do you try to express liminality visually in your art practice?

LC: There is no way to make a representational image to depict liminality, but ceramics is the best way to represent the state of flux. I’m Asian American, but I’m also a Hong Konger I’m not fully Hong Konger, but not fully American. I’m both at the same time.

Clay and glaze use the exact same ingredients, just in different proportions. Shifting the numbers allows the material to be either clay, glaze, or in between those two.

I don’t need stereotypical imagery to represent that in-between stage because the feeling is always shifting, so I try to present the feeling through the material itself. When I’m glazing and building my work, it’s all about what state of mind I have when I make the sculpture.

OC: Can you talk a more about how you explore the space between glaze and clay?

LC: I formulate a material that is not fully

clay, but not fully glaze, so I can use glaze in a three-dimensional way. I ask myself what other stages of glaze there could be? What if the glaze is solid? What if it is fully fired? What if I add water? What if the glaze is clay texture; how would that work with the sculpture? And then, what other stages of myself could there be?

I am also fascinated by what has the essence of glaze without using glaze. That is why I use hair in my work it is the extension of glaze and pulls out color.

All this relates to my relationship to immigrants in the US. How do I blend into the culture when I look different? How do I create a new identity for myself and speak my own narrative rather than the one people make for me?

OC: What is the relationship between food, cultural identity, and authenticity for you?

LC: In my early work, I searched for the idea of authenticity. The first few years in the US, I was an observer, and Americans often see my cultural identity through food. The need to apply the word “authentic” to a restaurant to prove it is “real” fascinated me. The Chinese food in the US is what I call authentic Chinese American food. My early work explored the history of these foods. My personal story was also able to come through. I referenced making dumplings with my mom, which is a part of my identity, and the way that my family functions.

I also worked at the Wing Luke Museum and led food tours about Chinese migrant labor workers. Making or finding food that reminded them of what home tasted like was a way to deal with homesickness. The space between the Chinese labor worker in the 1850s to American favorite, Panda Express, intrigues me.

OC: Your MFA work explored porcelain silhouettes of stereotypically Chinese food. How have you incorporated food as forms and titles in your ceramics practice so far?

LC: Early on, my work dealt with cultural

identity and Chinese American food. When I was making that work, I saw myself as a Chinese student studying in the US, but at the time I didn’t identify as an immigrant from Hong Kong or as Asian American.

All bilingual learners at some point realize we no longer need to translate our native language into English. I realized I didn’t have to think in Cantonese before I spoke English. The translating just stopped. With that switch, I was no longer an observer, now I am part of the culture. What identity do I have now?

OC: How do the shifts in your language or identity get incorporated into your art?

LC: If I’m no longer the observer, then I am no longer just presenting what I see. Now, I can create what I feel and create who I am. My work suddenly became more colorful.

When I was the observer, I felt limited by what I was allowed to make. I only used porcelain, black, and gold.

When I could create my own destiny and my own identity, that opened a new spectrum of colors and forms. I’m no longer contained in one story that other people told about who I am. I’m allowed to write my own narrative. My work became abstract, colorful, and mixed media.

Abstraction is also a way to speak to the idea of liminality and being in between. When you translate one language to another language, there is always something missing. That space in between is where my work lies.

OC: Your pieces are so vibrantly colorful and full of texture. How is your playfulness with glaze, color, and materials connected to your use of abstraction and references to food?

LC: I want to make noise. The goal is for people to pay attention. I want to pull people in to look closer. Colors are an easy way to do that. In the past, as a BIPOC artist, that attention has been lacking. I reference food because I am interested in what brings

Ling Chun, RED MOONJAR WITH FLYING WORDS, 2023 Ceramics, glazes-bits, brass, 12" x 12" x 8"

people together. I grew up in a language where everyone’s at the dinner table. When you’re looking at the pieces, this all makes sense! The words don’t really get at it.

With my new work, I am thinking a lot about belonging and home by returning to representational work and using places where I find home in the US as my starting point. For instance, the International District in Seattle is where I spend time whenever I want a touch of home. The buildings and restaurant signs really resonate with me.

I have been an immigrant in the US for half my life now. If I live here longer, do I lose my identity as a Hong Konger? Or do I gain something else? How do I balance that? These are all complex questions I’m targeting little by little.

INTERVIEW WITH JENNIFER LING DATCHUK

Olivia M Comstock (OC): One side of your family is immigrant Chinese, and the other side is Polish or Russian and Irish. Where do you orient yourself and your own identity among and beyond this background?

Jennifer Ling Datchuk (JLD): I make from the place of being from a third culture, where I never felt I was fully Chinese or fully white. The cultural traditions on each side are both important, but most of my time was spent with my Chinese family. Those traditions are the ones I most identify with because they were everyday cultural practices instilled in me.

In some ways, I exist as an impostor, because I’m never fully one thing. I’m always “and,” “half,” or “both.” I exist in the multiplication and division of my own identity.

I think of that constant question, “What are you?” That question treats me as an object that needs to be authenticated. My Chinese cousins live with the question, “Where are you from?” They are treated as perpetual foreigners in the United States.

OC: Has this third culture experience of existing in between made you see the United States differently?

JLD: Growing up, there were no forms of representation in mainstream culture where I could fully understand what it meant to be half or biracial. This was preinternet. I remember reading a magazine with Keanu Reeves in it. The caption was, “Keanu Reeves is half Chinese, Hawaiian, Dutch, and Canadian.” It was the first time I saw someone with multiple identities in mainstream culture. For a second, I felt seen.

Even though I grew up in a Chinese household in Brooklyn, in middle school I moved to Ohio. The Asian diaspora experience in the Midwest is so different from the coastal Asian experience. Public celebrations are pushed into an even more private sphere.

OC: How do your personal orientations materialize in your ceramic work? How are you thinking about the viewer? What are you trying to get across to them?

JLD: Just putting an object on a pedestal left out so much context. I look outside the field of ceramics to consider how to create objects that embody experiences. What parts of the past can I make present? What parts of the personal can I make political? Whenever I think about a form, object, and installation, I consider all these metaphors and translations within the practice. I often use reflective surfaces like mirrored acrylic or gold disco ball tiles on my work to reflect moments of visibility back to the viewer.

OC: Your work is often installation and immersive. What stories do installations allow you to tell that go beyond just the ceramic pieces?

JLD: I am always trying to figure out the moments in a space to feel love and support for myself and my community. What can we do to help each other navigate spaces and how can we share affirmations to help each other along the way? A good example is the red synthetic hair curtain from Later, Longer, Fewer in 2021. I used the hair curtain to create thresholds for viewers to cross. I think about metaphorical thresholds, especially between girlhood to womanhood. I also think of a woman walking into an all-male space, or a person of color walking into an all-white space. Those are some of the stories I want to tell in these installations.

OC: What is the relationship between food and cultural identity for you?

JLD: Food has always been a love language. As a young girl, I asked my mother why she couldn’t act more American. I wanted her to say, “I’m proud of you,” or “I love you.” Instead, she expressed her love through food. At the same time, I was told, “You’re too skinny,” or “You’re too fat.”

Living and growing up in middle America, we found comforts of home by driving, sometimes an hour, to the one dim sum place or Chinese bakery where we could eat a pork bun. I really miss that taste of the comfort of home when I am far away from it.

When I lived in San Antonio, I met a friend named Jennifer Hwa Dobbertin, and I’m Jennifer Ling Datchuk. We met because

Jennifer Ling Datchuk, Take Out Kid, 2024 Porcelain, gold luster, Hong Kong 'rural worker bags', wood, 50" x 20" x 40"

we kept getting confused for one another because she was also half Taiwanese, half white. She is a chef, so every week we would cook a recipe that our mothers and grandmothers never taught us. We jokingly referred to it as our own version of The Joy Luck Club. Being able to cook the foods we grew up with was so important to our cultural identity and sense of belonging. After that, she opened the restaurant Best Quality Daughter in San Antonio, Texas that fuses Asian cuisine with regional Tex-Mex. I got to do all the artwork.

OC: You played with depictions of food in your 2023 exhibition Eat Bitterness at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, primarily through fruits and pits. The title refers to the Chinese idiom meaning to swallow suffering. Did this idiom follow your pieces here to Northern Clay Center?

JLD: To swallow suffering means to endure hardships without communicating your feelings. I grew up with this, but I also think many women navigate it in their daily lives. In some ways, it’s become a larger statement within all my work.

I am angry at the world we live in now. I’m angry that, as women, we haven’t been able to overcome more. There are so many cultural, social, and political systems that keep holding us back.

Fruit is most desirable when it is ripest. That ripeness is also a metaphor for women’s experiences in aging. When we’re freshly picked, we’re at our most desirable. Then, we cut the fruit in half, and we start to age and dry out. It mirrors conversations I have with women over forty or fifty who have become less visible. They still want to be consumed and desired. And then that pit! It shows our resilience. We can keep growing. For the exhibition at Northern Clay Center, I am still exploring these ideas.

OC: Your previous work, such as Truth Before Flowers from 2019 and Dark and Lovely from 2014, explores womanhood, the whiteness of Western beauty standards, and the spread of those standards. How are the aesthetics of food connected to these beauty standards?

JLD: Asian aesthetics crisscross the world. The beauty standards promote whiteness; there’s colorism everywhere. Korean beauty is a big part of that the glassy, milky skin. In contrast, during the COVID-19 pandemic and the Trump presidency, there’s also fear and xenophobia in response to Asian bodies in public spaces. At the same time, our food is celebrated. What does it mean to be loved and feared at the same time?

INTERVIEW WITH CATHY LU

Olivia Comstock (OC): You were born in the United States and grew up in Miami, Florida, but your parents are from Taiwan. How did growing up in Miami affect your understanding of American culture and your family’s culture?

Cathy Lu (CL): Our neighborhood in Miami was predominantly Cuban. There were also Haitian and Nicaraguan immigrants in the area. Miami, with its immigrant community, was my version of America. I didn’t understand white, mainstream America. I would watch TV and see one version of America. Living my life was another version, and then at home it was also totally different. I didn’t really know that many other Asian people.

OC: What contradictions are contained within the phrase “Asian American” for you?

CL: I used to wonder what is Asian America? There are all these different Asian countries. We all speak different languages and have different cultures. Now, I think of Asian American as a political term and basis for solidarity. It is a way to connect with people of the diaspora.

OC: What caused that shift for you?

CL: There was a time where the only ceramic shows I was in were Asian: Asian American Heritage month, Asian American, or Chinese American. I was never included in other exhibits. My work is very tied into identity, but exploring identity shouldn’t be so niche. Now I don’t care. It’s not about how other people categorize me. I have ownership over who I am in community with.

OC: For A-B Projects, you hosted a discussion around the relationship between our objects, our cultures, and ourselves. How do you problematize the concept of an “authentic object”?

CL: I want to shout out Nicole Seisler from A-B Projects because she’s so amazing in creating community and raising complicated topics.

Depending on where I am, people view me differently. As an Asian American, there’s

Cathy Lu, Peach with Peach Pits and Joss Sticks, 2022 Stoneware, glaze, joss sticks, 22" x 34" x 24"

pressure to perform an Asian identity. The phrase “Asian American” can feel like a lesser version of an Asian. I’m from the culture, but I’m not living whatever traditions people think about.

When I go to the Asian Art Museum, I see all the beautiful vases. They are so like vases sold in Chinatown. The museum object is authentic, while the ten-dollar Chinatown vase is inauthentic, but was probably made with similar methods and materials by

the same group of people. The sale of the Chinatown vase goes directly to an Asian family, but who knows how the object in the museum was procured. It’s the same object, but the context changes the value.

Another example is celadon. The glaze started as an imitation for jade in Eastern Asia. Jade is what’s precious, but we made our own version in ceramic because it’s cheaper. At the same time, it becomes celadon, which people love all on its own. This is how I feel about Asian American culture. We have customs that we’ve brought, but now we’re in a different setting. We create our own things that become their own culture.

OC: What is the relationship between food, culture, community, and belonging for you?

CL: Food was the main way my parents passed culture down. In the nineties, there was more emphasis on assimilation, and fewer conscious discussions about culture, but we always went to the Chinese grocery store to get the produce that my parents grew up eating. Food still is that touch point for me to maintain a relationship to my culture.

OC: Fruits are forms that you continually return to in your ceramic work. How did you develop an interest in fruit?

CL: Fruit is very important in Chinese and Taiwanese culture. My mom was always cutting fruit for us. Fruit is such a luxury and serving fruit is an act of care. That was embedded in me. Fruit entered my visual work after grad school. I was always shopping at Asian grocery stores and buying various fruits, so I decided to make plaster molds and cast fruit.

Fruit became a way for me to think about how different cultural groups assimilate to the US. We could get Chinese produce at Asian markets and Cuban produce at Cuban markets, but at the main markets, we couldn’t get either.

I became aware, especially for Asian Americans, of this idea of being foreign or exotic. I really started to see that in the way we are like produce too.

OC: How does that show up in which fruits you feature in your work?

CL: What makes something Asian? I didn’t grow up in Taiwan. I don’t speak Chinese fluently, yet I’m still Asian. Picking fruits is a way for me say that oranges are just as Asian as Bittermelon. Napa cabbage is just as Asian as apples. They’re all sold in the same Asian-owned supermarket.

OC: Fruit is often a symbol for certain expectations of femininity. How do you play with these symbolic connections in your work?

CL: I try to capitalize on the beauty of fruit, but I also make it a bit repulsive at the same time. Fruit is freaky! For woman, immigrants, and people of color, there’s an expectation of easy femininity, to be beautiful and pleasing, to show that you’re not taking up too much space. That’s why I make fruits attractive but also repulsive. That tension speaks to the experience of being desirable as a woman, but also of not wanting the attention.

OC: At San Francisco Art Institute, you explored sculpture and non-ceramic materials, like fabric, wood, and metal. Are there certain materials better suited to certain ideas for you?

CL: I had a very different relationship to those materials than to working with clay. With other materials, I have a specific idea and execute it in that material to the best of my ability. With clay, it’s much more of a back and forth. It feels collaborative. I work out ideas while working with clay. For any project, I need it to be ceramic, otherwise I wouldn’t arrive at the same idea.

OC: The clay has its own agency that pulls you in different directions.

CL: Exactly, I am collaborating with the clay; we are working together. Clay has such a life and personality to it.

Anika Hsiung Schneider, Ducks! ; Family Table with Jiao Zi Chopstick Holders, Xiao Cabbage Vases, and Bai Cai; Double Consciousness, Double Happiness , 2022-2024, B Clay, glaze, mesh bag, chopsticks, drypoint, Rives BFK

INTERVIEW WITH ANIKA HSIUNG SCHNEIDER

Olivia Comstock (OC): In your body of work Yellow Colander, White Walls, you describe your mixed identity using the metaphor of the yellow colander. How does this object help you understand your “Chineseness through your Americanness”?

Anika Hsiung Schneider (AS): The yellow colander hung in my parents’ kitchen for decades. It was always in the background. When you use a colander, you bring things together, but at the same time, you separate what passes through from what stays inside the colander. That feels like a lot like my identity.

As a Chinese American, I am always separating out the two parts of my identity in my mind and analyzing myself. I think, what’s Chinese? What’s American? What’s white? What’s Asian American? I embody the act of the colander. My identity brings all these parts together, but I separate them to understand my own identity better.

So much of how I see myself as Chinese comes through the eyes of other Americans. I’m always thinking, does this person see me as Chinese? Do they see me as Asian American? The comments from predominantly white Americans give me glimpses of how they view me. I can never forget how I am being perceived as other, Chinese, or mixed in America. This, rather than how I feel about my identity, shapes how I separate the layers of my identity.

OC: How do you use references to memory, childhood experiences, and play to explore and understand your cultural identity?

AS: All my work references memory and childhood experiences visually. I’m dealing with hard-to-describe experiences, but I want a sense discovery to come through in my work. I also integrate play into my artmaking process by recreating how children explore the world.

Memories are something I have been interested in for a while. Even before I made work strictly about my identity, it was about memory and family. I ask myself how my childhood experiences shape my identity in adulthood to better understand myself, my place in the world, and my family’s place.

OC: How is food connected to memory for you?

AS: The kitchen is more connected to memory than food for me. The memory of the kitchen space, the people, the objects, the ingredients, the food, and the table are all part of that story.

OC: Can you talk more about why the kitchen is important for you?

AS: This goes back to my mixed identity. The kitchen is where people came together from both sides of my family. My Chinese grandmother, on my mom’s side of the family, was the main kitchen user. I grew up in a multi-generational household with her. She cooked a lot of our meals, making Chinese recipes, American Chinese versions, or her own versions. She used kitchenware inherited from my dad’s side of the family. The yellow colander I think came from my dad’s grandmother. These were very much hand-me-down objects, not family heirlooms, but the two sides of the family came together in the kitchen more than any other area of the house.

OC: What is the relationship between food and cultural identity for you?

AS: Food tells the story of family and cultural identity. But, I ask myself if the food I know from my grandma is traditional Chinese food? Or was it just her version? Or her version because we lived in America? I know people aren’t putting hot dogs in fried rice in China necessarily, but I’m sure there are other similarities.

OC: Your pieces combine familiar kitchen objects such as chopstick holders, fans, vases, and vintage Tupperware with food, especially Bai Cai (Bai Cai is the Mandarin word; the Cantonese and English word for this vegetable is Bok Choy). How does food interplay with the objects, containers, and tableware that surround it?

AS: The vessels that hold the food are part of the story. The kitchen table is a place where many things come together. There’s a dance of objects and foods the movement

of the prep, serving, and eating. There might be American food in one vessel and Chinese food in another, and they’re together on the table, but they’re also their own separate things. The food was prepped by my Chinese grandmother who didn’t know those people on my dad’s side of the family who passed down the vessels, but it all comes together in our kitchen as a mixed household.

Bai Cai has become a prevalent motif in my work. It’s a placeholder for other ideas and foods because it is such a common vegetable. It was just prevalent in the kitchen, so it is prevalent in my work.

OC: Your MFA is from Minneapolis College of Art and Design, where you were originally a painter. Now you primarily work in ceramics and printmaking. How do you translate, reinterpret, and transfer stories between different mediums?

AS: My printmaking and ceramics drive each other. Sometimes I have an idea for print I make it, and I reuse some motifs from one print to another. When I think about the narrative of the print, sometimes I need to pull out one aspect into ceramics because it needs to be three dimensional. Sometimes I know it needs to be ceramic; sometimes it is the opposite, and I’m interested in investigating this narrative in ceramic. Then it goes back into my print.

They’re both very similar in process. Because I am so interested in memory, I like print making because it has so many layers to it. I make the plate, then that plate transfers onto the print, and then there is the print. The image changes from the original idea to the plate to the print of the plate. That transference has a nice relationship to memory, the changes in memory, and how memory transfers.

With ceramics, there is the ceramic object, but it is not a replication of the original kitchenware object or food form. The ceramic pieces are the memories of those real objects. The ceramic pieces that look like yellow Tupperware are not meant to be replicas. They are sculptures of the memory.

Jacqueline Tse, Vanitas/Decay, 2021 Stoneware, porcelain, underglaze, glaze, gold luster, gold plated brass findings, metallic twine, 28" x 40" x 24"

INTERVIEW WITH JACQUELINE TSE

Olivia Comstock (OC): You create ceramic sculptures of sugary confections, like cake, pie, and ice cream. The inspiration for this work is your love/hate relationship with sugar. Can you talk about the dualities that you set up: love/hate, sugar/death, delectable/disgusting, and beauty/addiction?

Jacqueline Tse (JT): As I’m growing into my own person, the condition of duality is important to understanding my humanness. I was raised to think of myself as static, growing up in a half-American and half-Chinese household. I needed to choose a lane and just stick with it to fit in. My entire life, I’ve struggled to embrace both of everything at the same time. My love/ hate relationship with sugar is exactly like that I love eating sugar, but when I eat too much, I hate myself for doing so.

The sugar/death dichotomy is part of the same thing. It’s tied to being joyous and sad, or peaceful and frenzied.

I like having the two extreme parts of myself. I guess that’s what being an artist is I always feel strongly about something. I set up that black-and-white idea in my work. The concepts are very dark, so you would think the work would be black, but I did the opposite and made everything white.

OC: You create lasting but inedible illusions of the foods with which you struggle. You also draw from the art of patisserie, where the art is viewed for a very short temporal period and almost immediately consumed. How would you characterize your relationship between looking, eating, and art?

JT: It’s all related. I’ve had difficulty with temporality since I was a child. I had a diary where I wrote down everything I’d done the entire day and kept mementos of random things. I felt the need to preserve everything that happened at every waking moment.

I was raised in Hong Kong where you just constantly want to shop and eat. Living in the States is also the same, just the flavor is different. These are cultures built on consumerism.

I have a relationship of consumption to everything in my life. I must consume this. I must experience it all. It’s related to

eating. If I see it, I want to eat it because the ultimate way to consume something is to swallow it. It’s the same with art too. When I see a piece of art, all I want to do is consume it by imitation.

I turned to patisserie as an art form because it is so beautiful! Then you eat it, and it’s gone. That makes me sad. I want to preserve that beauty in my artworks. My pieces are made from porcelain, the strongest type of ceramic. Porcelain, unless you shatter it, is going to stay intact.

OC: Do you use any specific techniques from patisserie in to create your work?

JT: Everything I do, even down to the tools I use, are from baking. I use baking supply piping bags and tips. The science of it is really the same.

OC: What differences do you find between working with clay versus edible ingredients?

JT: There is a connection between working with frosting and clay in its slip form. I love making chocolates. I love making cakes. All those skills, I’ve practiced. That translates into the techniques I use in clay. There are adjustments I must make because clay dries differently, but there are a lot of similarities.

OC: Your work started out as all-white porcelain, but you have recently introduced color. What does it mean for you to work in color versus white?

JT: Originally, I wanted to keep everything white because white is the color of death in Chinese culture. It’s also a color of peace, which resonated with me. A big part of it is also practical. There are other artists who are brilliant at glazing to make dessert sculptures that look extremely realistic. I tried to do that, but the whole process became more about experimentation and getting the colors right. It took away from creating the form itself and slowed my process down in terms of getting ideas out.

Recently, I decided to explore color again, but with a different approach. This time, I am not mimicking the look of the dessert itself but connecting to an abstract feeling and a

cartoony look. With the bust in the exhibit, the color makes it come alive.

OC: You were raised between Hong Kong and the United States. How did your experience living within and outside of both cultures change your understanding of yourself and each place?

JT: In Hong Kong, I needed to fit this box of being Chinese. In America, I had to fit in as an American and as “American-born Chinese.” It was stressful and challenging as a growing person to constantly code switch between all these different cultures. I struggled with understanding who I really am and where I belonged.

Now, in my late thirties, I’m just starting to feel comfortable in my own skin and embrace my diverse and unique upbringing, to be everything all at once and not worry about what box to fit into.

OC: What is the relationship between food and cultural identity for you?

JT: Food is a life force, and how we live our lives always centers around food. It is always going to be important for me. I think about food and culture every day. Straddling two cultures makes my life more flavorful and interesting.

For example, I can’t eat the same things every day because I get bored. A very traditional Chinese breakfast is rice porridge with preserved duck eggs. But to mix it up, I created my version of it with oatmeal and a soy sauce marinated egg.

I no longer feel the stress of being socially bound to just one cultural identity. I embrace both cultures. Just like with my artwork, I contain these interconnected and mutually perpetuating forces.

LING CHUN

Ling Chun states, “I have a drive, a lust, and a greed for color.” Chung is a multimedia artist from Hong Kong, and her work represents the coexistence of multicultural identities within a single society. Her practice focuses on creating artifacts which speak about history with a contemporary sensibility. In her execution and conceptualization of creative projects, Chun brings together her knowledge of Chinese culture and her contemporary artistic vision. She aspires to create public artifacts to bring relevance to historical storytelling in her future artistic pursuits. “Breaking expectations and perceptions my surfaces extend even beyond the form, bursting with unusual, surprising materials, including the use of hair. I believe contemporary ceramics will serve as a latter-day artifact of our current acknowledgement of cultural identity. It is a material strongly connected with history but never limited just to its heritage a new age of ceramics will be one where style is no longer restricted to the old forms.”

Ling’s Mom’s Best Dumpling Filling

Dumpling Filling Ingredients

1. Cabbage (shredded)

2. Green onion (finely chopped)

3. Mushroom (finely chopped)

4. Carrot (finely chopped)

5. Ground Pork

6. Dry small shrimp (finely chopped)

7. Egg Yolk

Seasoning

• Salt

• Soy sauce

• White pepper

• Sesame oil

Chun earned her BFA from School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her MFA from Rhode Island School of Design (Providence). Chun is the recipient of numerous awards including several grants and fellowships from the Archie Bray Foundation (Helena, MT), an Art Bridge Fellowship from Pratt Fine Arts Center (Seattle), and an 2020 NCECA Emerging Artist Fellowship. Her worldwide exhibitions include shows at Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University (New York), Honos Art (Rome), and Gyeonggi Museum of Contemporary Ceramic Art (Gwangju, South Korea). Her residency experience includes c.r.e.t.a. rome (Italy), Arquetopia Foundation and International Artist Residency (Puebla, Mexico), and Seward Park Clay Studio (Seattle). Chun is currently based in Washington where she works as a ceramic educator at North Seattle College and Seward Park Clay Studio.

Steps to Prepare Dumpling Filling

1. Add salt to shredded cabbage and let it sit in the fridge for an hour.

2. Take the cabbage and squeeze out all the extra water.

3. Sauté mushrooms, carrots, and dry small shrimp with sesame oil.

4. Add ingredients 1-7 to a large bowl, mix thoroughly. Add some salt, a dash of soy sauce, and white pepper.

5. Your dumpling filling is ready for wrapping.

Now you can enjoy a long conversation with your family about everything until all the filling runs out. Enjoy. (love)

JENNIFER LING DATCHUK

Jennifer Ling Datchuk is an artist born in Warren, Ohio and raised in Brooklyn, New York. Her work is an exploration of her layered identity–as a woman, a Chinese woman, as an “American,” and as a “thirdculture kid.” Trained in ceramics, Datchuk works with porcelain and other materials often associated with traditional women’s work such as textiles and hair to discuss fragility, beauty, femininity, intersectionality, identity, and personal history. Her practice evolved from sculpture to mixed media as she began to focus on domestic objects and the feminine sphere. Handwork and hair both became totems of the small rituals that fix, smooth over, and ground women’s lives. Through these materials, she explores how Western beauty standards influenced the East, how the nonwhite body is commodified and sold, and how women’s globally, girls’— work is

still a major economic driver whose workers still struggle for equality.

Datchuk holds a BFA in crafts from Kent State University (OH) and an MFA in artisanry from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. She has received grants from the Artist Foundation of San Antonio (TX), a travel grant from Artpace San Antonio (TX), and the Lighton International Artists Exchange Program (Kansas City, MO) to research the global migrations of porcelain and blue and white pattern decoration. She was awarded a residency through Contemporary at Blue Star (San Antonio, TX) to conduct her studio practice at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Berlin, Germany) and has participated in residencies at The Pottery Workshop (Jingdezhen, China), European Ceramic Work Centre (Oisterwijk, Netherlands), and the John Michael Kohler Arts Center Arts/Industry

Residency (Sheboygan, WI).

In 2017, she received the Emerging Voices Award from the American Craft Council and in 2020 was named a United States Artist Fellow in Craft. Her work has been featured in a solo publication Jennifer Ling Datchuk: Half through French and Michigan (San Antonio, TX), and included in Artpace at 25, Black Cube: A Nomadic Museum, The Guardian, Vogue, and American Craft Her work is in the collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (TX), San Antonio Museum of Art (TX), Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art (New Orleans). She is currently an assistant professor of ceramics at Arizona State University (Tempe) and lives and maintains a studio practice in Phoenix, Arizona.

Ingredients

1 pound ground pork

7 eggs, beaten

120 grams shredded cheddar

10 grams white vinegar

8 grams salt

3 grams cumin

4 grams minced garlic

4 grams chili powder

1 pack dumpling wrappers

Make the filling

Lightly scramble the eggs. Chill.

Mix ground pork with vinegar, salt, chili powder, cumin and garlic. Combine scrambled eggs, cheese and chorizo mixture. Chill.

Make the Salsa Cremosa

1/2 pound jalapeños, deseed half or as many as desired to increase or decrease the spice

1 white onion, cut into quarters

50 grams garlic

100 grams of neutral oil, plus some oil to toss vegetables

8 grams salt

1.5 pounds sour cream

75 grams lime juice

Toss jalapenos, garlic and onions in oil, liberally. In a large skillet, cook jalapenos, onions and garlic on medium high heat, until everything is soft (some char is ok). Put everything from skillet, including any remaining liquid, into blender with lime juice and salt. While blending, add oil to blender and blend until everything is emulsified. Remove from blender. Let cool. Add sour cream, whisk together until even.

Make the dumplings

Place a heaping teaspoon pork filling just below center on each wrapper. Wet the edge of wrapper with water and fold the top half over the bottom half and pinch the border to seal. Alternatively, pleat dumplings by

making small folds starting on one edge and ending on the other, pinching firmly to seal after each fold. Place on prepared baking sheet and continue stuffing and sealing dumplings until all pork mixture is used.

Heat 1 tablespoon vegetable oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add dumplings in an even layer, sealed side up. Fry for 1 to 2 minutes, or until golden on the underside.

Add 1/3 cup water to skillet, lower heat to medium-low, and cover with a tight-fitting lid. Let steam for 3 minutes, then adjust lid so it is ajar, allowing steam to escape. Cook until no water remains, about 3 minutes more.

Use a spatula to transfer dumplings to serving plate, crisp side up. Repeat process until all dumplings are cooked.

Chorizo and Egg Dumplings  Recipe credit: Jennifer Hwa Dobbertin, Chef of Best Quality Daughter

CATHY LU

Cathy Lu is a ceramics-based artist who manipulates traditional Chinese art imagery and presentation as a way to explore how experiences of immigration, cultural hybridity, and cultural assimilation become part of American identity. “By creating ceramic-based sculptures and large-scale installations, I explore what it means to be both Asian and American, while not being entirely accepted as either.”

Lu received a BA and BFA from Tufts University (Medford, MA) and an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. Her work has been exhibited at Johansson Projects (Oakland, CA), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and Galerie du Monde (Hong Kong), among many others. She is the recipient of several awards including a 2020 NCECA Emerging Artist Fellowship, an Asian Cultural Council Individual Fellowship (NY), and a Pratt Travel Grant from School of the

Museum of Fine Arts (Boston). She has completed numerous residencies including Anderson Ranch Arts Center (Snowmass Village, CO), Irving Street Projects (San Francisco), and Mudflat Studio (Somerville, MA). She currently teaches at Tufts University (Medford, MA).

Tomato & Egg Stir Fry

Eggs

Tomatoes

Garlic cloves

Scallions

Sugar

Salt and pepper

Sesame oil

Canola oil

Crack eggs into bowl and mix. Add a little salt and pepper.

Slice tomatoes into wedges. Rough cut garlic. Slice scallions

Turn pan on high heat with canola oil. Make soft scrambled eggs. Remove from heat and place in bowl.

Add more oil to pan and add tomatoes and garlic. Add a sprinkling of sugar.  Cook on high heat.

After a minute or two, add the eggs back in. Add scallions and sesame oil. Cook until tomatoes are softened.

Serve with rice.

ANIKA HSIUNG SCHNEIDER

Anika Hsiung Schneider creates work that simultaneously speaks to being Chinese American as well as to whiteness. “It is about how this whiteness (of society and my family) has always shaped my understanding of myself. This work takes my Chinese-self and recreates it through an American understanding of Chinese identity. In a way that subverts, reclaims, and mirrors Europeans’ invention of chinoiserie, something that is not at all Chinese but also based upon Chineseness. With an Asian Mixed female identity, I reside in a highlyracialized body which also exists in a liminal state. This liminal state of being transports my work to themes of loss, transitional spaces, visualizing the intangible, and redefining my identity on my own terms. My artwork manipulates and reimagines Chinese imagery through a multimedia approach. My childhood home was entrenched with both Chinese objects (such as chopstick holders, fans, and vases) to typical Americana domestic objects (such as vintage

Tszuh

Notes on Tszuh

My grandmother often prepared tszuh , a sweet rice porridge, for breakfast. She would make it on a large pot on the stove. This was more of a weekend meal, to have time to prepare it. It would simmer on the stove for a long period of time. The bottom always ended up burnt, which is why I think I did not care for it. I ate it carefully to avoid the burnt taste that would permeate from the bottom. I can only remember one time in twenty-four years when it was not burnt. Then I thought tszuh is not actually that bad. To really be true to my grandmother’s recipe, the bottom would need to be slightly scalded to infuse a burnt taste into the porridge. Not in every bite, but enough to not make it the best experience. This is why topping with sugar is also a necessity. Making is highly variable and up to you!

Tupperware colanders and cornflowerpatterned Corningware). The Chinese aspects of my work are at once deeply familiar and distant to me, like artifacts of a past I do not fully know. Through the act of recreating and restructuring Chinese symbols, I am creating my own narrative of what it means to be Chinese, to have a Chinese family, and yet struggle with cultural gaps by creating a visual identity that is distinctly my own.”

Schneider received her BS in studio art and environmental studies from Gettysburg College (PA), and her MFA from Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD). Her work has been exhibited nationally at galleries including Soo Visual Arts Center (Minneapolis), Dumbarton Concerts Gallery (Washington, D.C.), and Landmark Center Ramsey County Historical Society Gallery (Saint Paul, MN). She has also participated in the Ayatana Artist Research Program, (Nova Scotia, Canada), the In Cahoots Residency Boost Prize full grant

Instructions

• Put rice and a lot of water into a big pot on the stove.

• Let the rice cook and cook. Stir occasionally, but not too much or you won’t get the correct burning.

• The rice should cook down to a thick porridge mush with a consistency like oatmeal.

• Add toppings and let them finish cooking with the rice. Toppings can include sweet potato, beans, nuts, and dates. It can also be made savory, but my family only eats it as a sweet breakfast porridge.

• Serve hot and top with all the sugar you need to get it down.

• Avoid the bottom.

(Petaluma, CA), and the Artist in Action Residency at Annmarie Sculpture Garden & Arts Center (Solomons, MD). Her awards include Windgate University Fellowship from Arrowmont School of Art and Crafts (Gatlinburg, TN), Gettysburg College Provost Grant (PA), and a 2022 Minnesota State Arts Board grant. Schneider currently lives and works in Minneapolis where she serves as the director of exhibitions and artist programs at Minnesota Center for Book Arts and is adjunct faculty at MCAD.

JACQUELINE TSE

Jacqueline Tse was born in San Jose, California and raised between Hong Kong and the US. Her lush sculptural offerings are “highly influenced by my anxieties of being human, particularly the dilemmas of everyday urban life. It is an ongoing exploration of my fascination with American society of excess and shameless consumerism, social media overstimulation, greed and gluttony as a remedy for emotional disconnection. Meanwhile still celebrating the beauty and flaws of these fragile human conditions.”

Tse earned her BFA from New York University in Studio Arts in 2006. She then launched directly into a career in design. In 2017, after a decade of working in the fashion industry in New York designing jewelry for established American brands, and “ethically burdened by capitalism, corporate greed, and culture of excess consumerism, she returned to her passion of sculpting as a form of self-therapy.” Her work has been exhibited in galleries across the Unites States

Soy Sauce Egg Ingredients

(adapted from Momofuku’s soy sauce egg recipe)

1 T agave syrup or honey

2 T rice vinegar

3/4 cup low-sodium soy sauce 6 large eggs

Cooking directions

In a 32oz wide mouth mason jar, add the syrup, rice vinegar, and soy sauce, shake it up to mix.

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Carefully put the eggs into the boiling water and cook for exactly 6 minutes and 50 seconds, stirring slowly for the first 1 1/2 minutes to distribute the heat evenly. Meanwhile, fill a large bowl with cold water and ice. When the eggs are done, transfer them to the ice bath.

Once the eggs are cool (and the water isn’t uncomfortably icy), peel them (in the water this will help them keep a perfect exterior). Transfer the eggs to the mason jar

including Talon Gallery (Portland, OR), House of Novogratz (Venice, CA), and Contempop Gallery (New York). Her awards include the 61st Faenza Prize through the International Competition of Contemporary Ceramic Art (Italy), 2020 NCECA Multicultural Fellowship, and was a Sculpture Award finalist for Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize (Armidale, Australia). She has participated in a residency at Salem Art Works (NY). She currently resides and maintains a studio practice in Tucson, Arizona.

of soy sauce mixture and marinate in the fridge for at least two, and up to six hours, making sure they are completely submerged. If necessary, top the eggs with a small plate to ensure submersion.

Remove the eggs from the sweet and salty solution. You can save the soy sauce mix for another round of eggs if you wish. The eggs will keep, refrigerated in a tightly sealed container, for up to a month.

Oatmeal Ingredients

Steel-Cut oats

Bouillon cube or your preferred broth stock

Cooking Directions

Cook your steel-cut oats with your preferred method, but either cook it in your choice of broth or add in bouillon cube or seasoning to flavor it while it cooks.

To Serve

Portion out your oatmeal and top with a sliced soy sauce egg, ENJOY!

Savory Oatmeal with Soy Sauce Egg

NORTHERN CL A Y CENTER

Northern Clay Center’s mission is to advance the ceramic arts for artists, learners, and the community, through education, exhibitions, and artist services. Its goals are to create and promote high-quality, relevant, and participatory ceramic arts educational experiences; cultivate and challenge ceramic arts audiences through extraordinary exhibitions and programming; support ceramic artists in the expansion of their artistic and professional skills; embrace makers from diverse cultures and experiences in order to create a more inclusive clay community; and excel as a non-profit arts organization.

Exhibition Staff

Kyle Rudy-Kohlhepp, Executive Director

Tippy Maurant, Deputy Director/Director of Galleries & Exhibitions

Maria Hennen, Galleries Coordinator

Board of Directors

Paul Vahle, Board Chair

Lisa M. Agrimonti

Bryan Anderson

Mary K. Baumann

Heather Nameth Bren

Evelyn Weil Browne

Nettie Colón

Chotsani Elaine Dean

Frank Fitzgerald

Patrick Kennedy

Kate Maury

Brad Meier

Philip Mische

Helen Otterson

Debbie Schumer

Curator and essayist: Olivia Comstock

Photographer: Peter Lee

Design by Joseph D.R. OLeary (vetodesign.com)

Honorary Directors

Kay Erickson

Legacy Directors

Andy Boss

Warren MacKenzie

Joan Mondale