Art Talk Lunchtime Gallery Series

Join us for our Lunchtime Gallery Series for American Artist Takaezu with Don Fletcher. This exciting series brings you new topics on the arts from local and regional organizations, museums and galleries. Each session features presentations from various experts, online with Zoom.

October 12, 2023 from 12:00 noon to 1:00pm

Don Fletcher will present an introduction to the Takaezu Studio, located in Flemington, NJ, where Toshiko lived and worked from 1975 until 2010. The studio has a wonderful collection of her work, with a few pieces currently on loan to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, for their upcoming year-long Takaezu exhibition (opening Sept 30, 2023).

American artist Toshiko Takaezu (1922–2011) was born in Pepeekeo, Hawaii to Japanese immigrant parents Shinsa and Kama Takaezu. One of eleven children, she was raised in a traditional Japanese household whose values, as well as the surrounding Hawaiian landscape, strongly underscore her artistic practice. During her five-decade-long career, the artist worked in many media including painting, fiber, and bronze. However, her primary medium, and that for which she is best recognized, was ceramics. Takaezu was instrumental in the post-war reconceptualization of ceramics from the functional craft tradition to the realm of fine art. Her signature “closed form” merged the base form with glazed surface painting to create a unified work.

Don Fletcher, President of the Quakertown Studio Project, was a student of Toshiko Takaezu’s at Princeton University starting in 1969. He had been urged to take the class by a fellow artist and continued to make pottery after graduation. To support the pottery habit he turned to computer programming during the week and spent many years of enjoyable weekends gardening, cooking and working with clay at the studio. In keeping with Toshiko’s wishes, he took over operation and management of the studio so that her students and apprentices would always have a place to work. He and his wife Carla purchased the property and art collection from Toshiko’s family, and have lived there very happily since 2011 amidst a varying, but always interesting and rewarding group of resident and non-resident artists. 

Our art talks Lunchtime Gallery Series is free to WWA Members (any level) and $10 to all others.

Everyone must register, please click here:
Register for Lunchtime Gallery Series: American Artist Takaezu with Don Fletcher
Zoom link will be sent the day before the event.

What to expect:  Our art talks with the Lunchtime Gallery Series hope to inform and engage audiences with a range of topics in the arts.  We bring in local organizations, providing a platform for them to reach new people with shared interests in learning and becoming informed in cultural topics, all presented near me in central New Jersey with Zoom.