Pittsburg Project

In April 2005, three semi trucks rolled away from Jun Kaneko’s Omaha studio  loaded with a multitude of wooden tools and paintbrushes, forklifts, industrial clay mixers, and forty-five tons of clay, all bound for the Mission Clay Products factory in Pittsburg, Kansas. Ten years after completing his Fremont Project at the Mission Clay factory in Fremont, California, where he had created twenty-four sculptures ranging from eight to eleven feet tall, Kaneko was ready to attempt an even more ambitious sculptural feat. Measuring 40 feet in diameter with 19-foot ceilings and 12-foot doors, the kilns in Pittsburg are the largest in Mission Clay’s portfolio. With the support and vision of Mission Clay’s manager Bryan Vansell, Kaneko and his team set out to build his most monumental ceramic works yet.

Kaneko and his assistants spent the next two years at the Kansas factory, hand-building thirty-six 9.5’ Dangos, four 8.5’ Heads, and four 13’ Dangos. The largest pieces were completely constructed inside the kiln, Kaneko and his team laboring six to seven days per week. The pieces dried in their respective facilities under computerized humidity and temperature supervision for a full year. The six week long bisque firing then proceeded in the fall of 2006, during which Kaneko prepared for the glazing process. He glazed the sculptures over a period of seven months before the final, six-week-long glaze firing. The kilns were opened in September 2007, and, two and a half years after the unprecedented project began, in October all forty-four sculptures were loaded onto semi trucks bound for their home back in Omaha. 

After forty-five years of experience in the medium, the Mission Clay Pittsburg Project is Kaneko’s most ambitious sculptural undertaking and resulted in his largest fired single objects. Three of the large Heads were installed on Park Avenue in New York City from June to November 2008 as part of the New York City Public Arts Program.