Omaha Brickworks Project

Jun Kaneko met Ree Schonlau in1981 at a glass workshop in Pilchuck, Washington. Schonlau was then director of a non-profit art program, known today as the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, located in Omaha, Nebraska. Schonlau had developed an “Artists in Industry” program at the Bemis, which promoted artists’ access to industrial work sites, and Kaneko was intrigued by photos Schonlau showed him of the brickyard and large beehive kilns her ceramic artists were using in Omaha.

So, the following summer Kaneko did a two-week workshop through the Bemis at the Omaha Brickworks, and by 1982 he and Schonlau had secured the use of a beehive kiln for a full year. Kaneko was the first artist to be granted this exclusive access. 

For the Omaha Project, Kaneko decided to take advantage of the kiln’s immense size by fabricating four enormous, dumpling-shaped sculptures and four mattress-sized slabs, each weighing 3,000 pounds. Kaneko recalls, “When I was given the large kiln, I thought, “Should I make 50,000 cups or a few big pieces?’ I went for the big pieces and it was very interesting!” 

This was the largest single venture Kaneko had yet undertaken. Each sculpture was built inside the kiln in which they would be fired. Drying them took more than three months, and the firing process took nearly forty days. His gigantic, dumpling-shaped sculptures — which Kaneko jokingly dubbed “dangos,” a Japanese word for dumpling that is also a term of endearment —  were six feet tall, seven feet wide, five feet deep, and ultimately weighed 5.5 tons each. Though not all of the pieces survived the firing, at the end of the process three dangos and three slabs emerged from the kiln. 

Kaneko’s attitude is that an artist must “do something, see what you did wrong, do it again.”  In the years since the Omaha Brickworks Project, Kaneko has perfected the delicate process of constructing and firing his colossal dangos, which today are among the most celebrated and iconic works in all of contemporary ceramic art.