Hadrian Mendoza

ceramic artist

Hadrian Mendoza, a stoneware Potter, works with a fearless and audacious search for unusual and indigenous forms, including expressionistic and abstract shapes. Mendoza was a graduate at Mary Washington College in Virginia and a former student at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington DC, where he was awarded the prestigious Anne and Arnold Abramson award for Excellence in Ceramics in 1996-1997.  He also organized the 1st Southeast Asian Ceramics Festival under the 2007-2009 Toyota Foundation Japan Grant. He curated the 2nd Southeast Asian Ceramics Conference and Exhibition in Fuping Pottery Art Village’s FLICAM International Ceramics Museum in China. 

In 1997 he searched for his roots and moved back to the Philippines, where he slowly metamorphosed into an individualistic and nationalistic artist with a keen and hungry eye for Southeast Asia’s indigenous forms. He has made deliberate attempts at achieving heavy cultural undertones for his works. In 2009, Hadrian moved to Virginia, USA with his family and is currently the art director at St. Thomas More Cathedral School. A humble craftsman, Mendoza serves at the feet of his own cultural dilemmas as an artist.

His works are permanent collections in museums in Cambodia,  China, Korea, Japan, and 3 renowned museums in the Philippines, which are The Metropolitan Museum Manila, The Ayala Museum, and BenCab Museum.

Malaysia and Singapore

 

Many of the ceramic factories in these two areas were established by immigrant Chinese in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Factories in other parts of the region, such as the pottery industry at Singkawang in west Kalimantan in Indonesia, developed in this way also. The Taiping Rebellion (1848 - 65) left China in a disruptive state of social order. Refugees swarmed Guangdong and Fujian Provinces, causing an excessive drain on the resources. Beset with famine, disease and anarchy, large numbers of Chinese emigrated from the southern provinces. Thus, Southeast Asia benefited from the unfortunate events in China by the direct transfer of Chinese potting techniques.

 

Documented evidence about he everyday life of immigrant Chinese in Southeast Asia between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is beginning to emerge, and it is evident that many factories started as small family operations set up to produce ceramics fro personal domestic needs. Accustomed to high-fired glazed vessels fro daily use, the Chinese must have found the utensils used in Southeast Asia, such as banana leaf plates and coconut shell cups, alien and unsuitable. Conversely, the colorful wares with their pristine glazes and painted motifs must have appealed to the local inhabitants of the regions, thus, and industry was born.

 

Unglazed pots for domestic use are made today in some rural parts of Malaysia but the knowledge and skill of potting is rapidly being lost. Daily utensils previously made of earthenware are today being replaced by metal replicas or by less expensive Chinese pottery. The ancient method of hand building is used and the potters are almost always women. Instead of a rotating wheel, the clay is shaped on a square wooden tray.

 

One remaining factory is in the village of Sayong in Perak. A training school has been set up to teach modern potting techniques, including the use of mechanized equipment. Some vessels are thrown on the wheel and others are molded. All the wares are fired in a modern gas kiln.

 

The main product is a black, unglazed water bottle in a double-gourd shape. The two sections are disproportionate in size and the neck has a bulge. The body is decorated with a band of vertical lines, deeply incised with a bamboo knife. A distinctive feature of these water bottles is a glossy, burnished surface, which is achieved by burying the pots in rice husks immediately after firing.