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1980 RECIPIENT Doucet-Saito — Ceramic ArtistsAbout the craftspeople |
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"The work of Doucet-Saito is neither sensational nor arbitrary. It has evolved year by year, in effect exploring all the possibilities of the slab: multiplied horizontally, it becomes a mosaic; layered vertically, it becomes a style; joined in three dimensions, it becomes an urn, a vase, a torso, which may then be opened, unfolded, split Like a cell. Throughout, there is a play of textures and forms, of inside and outside, of the yin and the yang. Radically sculptural, theirs is an art realized through the hands — a bodily synthesis of knowledge and desire."
D.G. Jones |
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A fusion of sensibilities — personal, cultural and aesthetic — in both life and work has been the objective of the ceramic artists known professionally as Doucet-Saito. When they first met, in a pottery workshop in North Hatley, Quebec, Louise Doucet was a graduate of the School of Art and Design, Montréal Museum of Fine Arts, and Satoshi Saito was a Tokyo-born graduate student studying economics at McGill University. |
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Untitled, 1980 Stoneware 21 cm (height) x 34 cm x 19 cm Image used with permission of the artists Archives - Box 592, F6 and F7 |
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Sharing a common interest in ceramics, they married and went to Japan to study with pottery masters. Since their return to Canada, they have worked together on a farm in the Eastern Townships of Quebec. For Doucet-Saito, Life in Canada has Liberated them from following any particular ceramic tradition, leaving them free to draw inspiration from the great works of Oriental ceramic art as well as from ancient Pre-Columbian, Greek, Egyptian and Etruscan art. |
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Untitled, 1980 Stoneware 42 cm x 33 cm x 25 cm Image used with permission of the artists Archives - Box 592, F6 and F7 |
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Through their dedicated efforts to perfect their skills, research local clays, and explore the formal qualities of the ceramic medium, Doucet-Saito have achieved a sophisticated mastery of their craft. Gradually, their vessels have evolved into expressions of pure form. That some critics classify their work as ceramics and others as sculpture is irrelevant to Doucet-Saito. Their interest lies in creating, together, ceramic works that communicate directly to the viewer something of the joy, risk and reward that is their life and art. |
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Satoshi and Louise Saito firing a wood-burning kiln at Mashiko, Japan, April 1967 |
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Ceramic mural (detail) by Doucet-Saito, Imperial Life Assurance Company of Canada, Toronto, photographed in 1985 |
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