Make, Do: A Panel Conversation on JB Blunk and Toshiko Takaezu
May 22, 2025
6:00–7:30 PM
Location: CMA
This panel conversation celebrates the creative vision of trailblazing artists JB Blunk and Toshiko Takaezu, whose work is featured in the exhibition Wild Earth: JB Blunk and Toshiko Takaezu, on view through August 3. Bringing together four speakers—Eva Kwong, Mariah Nielson, Andy Rahe, and Rick Yoshimoto—with close personal ties to the artists, the panel will explore Takaezu and Blunk’s respective working processes, their efforts to integrate art into daily life, and their deep commitments to the natural environment.
This program is free with registration.
Register
Learn more about the panelists below.
Eva Kwong was born in Hong Kong and moved to New York as a teenager. She became interested in the arts as universal language in high school. She received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and her MFA from Tyler School of Art. Her work-study job at the Nature Lab at RISD immersed her studies in the diversity and similarity of forms from nature. Her lifelong interest in the intersection of the art and science of the natural world provides the conceptual framework and visual vocabulary for her compelling, colorful organic forms in sculpture, installations and vessels. She met Takaezu through her in-laws, who were students and lifelong friends of the artist. Eva and her late husband, Kirk Mangus, fired many of Takaezu’s ceramic works in their kilns from the 1970s through the 2000s.
Mariah Nielson (b. 1978) is a curator and design historian. As the daughter of the pioneering American artist JB Blunk, her holistic approach was influenced by growing up in the Blunk House, the home he built by hand with salvaged materials in Inverness, CA. She was a curator at the Museum of Craft and Design, San Francisco, from 2009–2011 and director of the JB Blunk Residency from 2007–2011. In 2013, she completed an MA in Design History at the Royal College of Art and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, under the direction of Glenn Adamson.
Mariah is currently the Director of the JB Blunk Estate, preserving and researching his practice, and Director of Blunk Space, an art and design gallery dedicated to expanding Blunk’s legacy by connecting his practice to that of contemporary artists all over the world. She is the editor of the first monograph about the artist, JB Blunk, which is now in its third edition.
Recent curatorial projects include Design is a State of Mind, with Martino Gamper, Serpentine, London, 2015; Blue Jeans & Brown Clay: Artists and Designers at the Blunk House, Kate MacGarry, London, 2020; JB Blunk: Muse, Kasmin, New York, 2022; Three Landscapes: JB Blunk, Anna and Lawrence Halprin, Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, 2022; and Same Blue as the Sky, with Studio AHEAD, 2023. Recent talks include “Alma Allen and JB Blunk: In Conversation”, Palm Springs Art Museum; “Natural Instincts” at Design Miami/, presented by Birkenstock; “Managing an artist estate” at Kunst Meran, in Merano, Italy; and an interview with Dr. Bridget Harvey for the podcast Getting Making.
Andy Rahe first met Toshiko Takaezu as a high school student during the summer at Skidmore College. He worked as a shop assistant at Skidmore until 1998 when he transitioned to becoming her apprentice. During his apprenticeship year, Takaezu recognized their ease of collaboration in many aspects of daily life but also in artmaking practices—especially in creating the monumental wheel-thrown works in her Star Series. They continued to work together for several years after Andy’s apprenticeship, and they remained close until Takaezu’s passing in 2011.
Andy taught at the Columbus Academy from 2005–2018 as an upper school visual arts educator. He remained active in the hospitality industry throughout, serving at local establishments (The Burgundy Room, Mitchell’s Ocean Club) leading him to plant his own grape vineyard in 2009 and open his own winery in Baltimore, Ohio in 2015. Takaezu loved hearing stories of how the grapes were growing tall and getting stronger with each passing year, a bond of growth shared by many of her apprentices, as she had vibrant and fruitful flower and vegetable gardens at her home in Quakertown, NJ.
Andy continued to make his own artwork as an arts educator, both in clay and painting, and as a Director of Operations for Stump Plants, a locally founded and national house plant store that featured his vessels in all of their locations from 2019–2023. Andy’s current role as a sales associate for Argo & Lehne Jewelers presents new opportunities for creativity in crafting custom jewelry designs for his clients.
Rick Yoshimoto was born in 1948 and grew up on the island of Oahu, Hawaii. He moved to California in 1970 to pursue a graduate degree in art. In 1977, he moved to the Northern California coastal town of Inverness where he worked closely with JB Blunk at his studio until his death in 2002. Since 2015, he has resided in Lamy, New Mexico, where he continues his work. Yoshimoto creates ceramics, furniture, paintings, and sculpture that can be appreciated as sculptural forms, painterly artworks, functional objects, or all three.
This program is free with registration.
Register
Learn more about the panelists below.
JB Blunk, c. 1990. Photo by Jan Watson. Courtesy of JB Blunk Estate.
Toshiko Takaezu working on a closed form, 1974. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. © Family of Toshiko Takaezu.
About the Panelists
Eva Kwong was born in Hong Kong and moved to New York as a teenager. She became interested in the arts as universal language in high school. She received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and her MFA from Tyler School of Art. Her work-study job at the Nature Lab at RISD immersed her studies in the diversity and similarity of forms from nature. Her lifelong interest in the intersection of the art and science of the natural world provides the conceptual framework and visual vocabulary for her compelling, colorful organic forms in sculpture, installations and vessels. She met Takaezu through her in-laws, who were students and lifelong friends of the artist. Eva and her late husband, Kirk Mangus, fired many of Takaezu’s ceramic works in their kilns from the 1970s through the 2000s.
Image by Alanna Hale
Mariah Nielson (b. 1978) is a curator and design historian. As the daughter of the pioneering American artist JB Blunk, her holistic approach was influenced by growing up in the Blunk House, the home he built by hand with salvaged materials in Inverness, CA. She was a curator at the Museum of Craft and Design, San Francisco, from 2009–2011 and director of the JB Blunk Residency from 2007–2011. In 2013, she completed an MA in Design History at the Royal College of Art and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, under the direction of Glenn Adamson.
Mariah is currently the Director of the JB Blunk Estate, preserving and researching his practice, and Director of Blunk Space, an art and design gallery dedicated to expanding Blunk’s legacy by connecting his practice to that of contemporary artists all over the world. She is the editor of the first monograph about the artist, JB Blunk, which is now in its third edition.
Recent curatorial projects include Design is a State of Mind, with Martino Gamper, Serpentine, London, 2015; Blue Jeans & Brown Clay: Artists and Designers at the Blunk House, Kate MacGarry, London, 2020; JB Blunk: Muse, Kasmin, New York, 2022; Three Landscapes: JB Blunk, Anna and Lawrence Halprin, Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, 2022; and Same Blue as the Sky, with Studio AHEAD, 2023. Recent talks include “Alma Allen and JB Blunk: In Conversation”, Palm Springs Art Museum; “Natural Instincts” at Design Miami/, presented by Birkenstock; “Managing an artist estate” at Kunst Meran, in Merano, Italy; and an interview with Dr. Bridget Harvey for the podcast Getting Making.
Andy Rahe first met Toshiko Takaezu as a high school student during the summer at Skidmore College. He worked as a shop assistant at Skidmore until 1998 when he transitioned to becoming her apprentice. During his apprenticeship year, Takaezu recognized their ease of collaboration in many aspects of daily life but also in artmaking practices—especially in creating the monumental wheel-thrown works in her Star Series. They continued to work together for several years after Andy’s apprenticeship, and they remained close until Takaezu’s passing in 2011.
Andy taught at the Columbus Academy from 2005–2018 as an upper school visual arts educator. He remained active in the hospitality industry throughout, serving at local establishments (The Burgundy Room, Mitchell’s Ocean Club) leading him to plant his own grape vineyard in 2009 and open his own winery in Baltimore, Ohio in 2015. Takaezu loved hearing stories of how the grapes were growing tall and getting stronger with each passing year, a bond of growth shared by many of her apprentices, as she had vibrant and fruitful flower and vegetable gardens at her home in Quakertown, NJ.
Andy continued to make his own artwork as an arts educator, both in clay and painting, and as a Director of Operations for Stump Plants, a locally founded and national house plant store that featured his vessels in all of their locations from 2019–2023. Andy’s current role as a sales associate for Argo & Lehne Jewelers presents new opportunities for creativity in crafting custom jewelry designs for his clients.
Rick Yoshimoto was born in 1948 and grew up on the island of Oahu, Hawaii. He moved to California in 1970 to pursue a graduate degree in art. In 1977, he moved to the Northern California coastal town of Inverness where he worked closely with JB Blunk at his studio until his death in 2002. Since 2015, he has resided in Lamy, New Mexico, where he continues his work. Yoshimoto creates ceramics, furniture, paintings, and sculpture that can be appreciated as sculptural forms, painterly artworks, functional objects, or all three.
