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Jake Boggs earned a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Eastern Kentucky University. He is a studio artist as well as the ceramics studio coordinator at the Donkey Mill Art Center in Holualoa, Hawai’i, serving the community through ceramic education and outreach programming. Jake is also a board representative for the Island of Hawai’i at the non-profit organization Hawai’i Craftsman. Working in tandem with this organization, he has introduced numerous workshops in Kona, hosting various visiting artists from around the globe to the greater Hawai’i community.
Shawn S. Spangler (SSS): I'm curious about your time living in Hawai’i, from graduate school on O’ahu to currently living and working on the Big Island of Hawai’i. Are there any specific moments or achievements that stand out in your ten-year artistic journey while calling Hawai’i home?
Jake Boggs (JB): Many of the most fulfilling triumphs of my past ten years working in Hawai’i are related to ways in which I have been able to help facilitate the arts. I’m on the Board of Hawaii Craftsmen, a craft-based non-profit that, among other programs, has held a prominent statewide juried crafts exhibition since the sixties. Through volunteering on the Craftsmen’s board, I have been able to take on an active role in developing opportunities for artists in the community. I also volunteer on the acquisition committee for the State Foundation for Culture and the Arts, a state organization that works to “promote, perpetuate, and preserve culture and the arts in Hawai'i." This position has also given me the opportunity to help artists get their works into the public collection. Working at the Donkey Mill has also been a wonderful opportunity to share my passion for ceramics with the community here in Kona. Through my role at the Mill, I have hosted workshops with many of my clay heroes and been able to record their mana’o (ideas and thoughts) in a video interview series. (Links to these interviews and more can be found on YouTube under @donkeymillartcenter)
A major achievement in my studio practice was reaching a point where my wife and I were able to build a studio at our home. Having a private studio has allowed me to have a place of focus where I can dig deep into my work without much distraction. In the summer of 2023, I was able to do a six-week residency at the Archie Bray Foundation; that was a highlight, and I’m still amazed and humbled by the experience. Many opportunities to exhibit and connect have come from that bit of mainland exposure. Also, being able to spend three years lecturing at the University of Hawaii at Manoa was very insightful and rewarding; working with university students was a dynamic and generative experience.
SSS: You have mentioned that growing up in rural Appalachia cultivated a wonderment and appreciation for nature. While you were studying and working at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, I recall you often walked from a neighboring valley to campus. Walking seemed to be a profound and important part of your research. How has the natural environment of Hawai’i impacted you?
JB: Before moving 4522 miles across the globe to Hawai’i I lived in Eastern Kentucky. My childhood was spent in a little coal mining town called Harlan, where I found being in nature a fulfilling way to spend my free time. The Cumberland Mountains and the Ko’olau Range on O’ahu have enough similarities for me to find solace in the valleys where the distance from home didn’t seem so far. Part of a peripatetic project I worked on for my MFA thesis involved walking those 4222 miles around O’ahu, so I walked 4 miles to and from campus every day for a few months. It was an exceptional walk that started in the upland forests in the back of Pālolo Valley, down a dirt road through groves of fruit trees and old homesteads.
Through my teens, I read a lot of Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, and John Muir; these authors radically influenced my concept of being in nature. When I arrived in Hawai’i the environment was virtually unknown to me; the blooming plants, the rugged geographies, and the sea teeming with life all sparked a childlike sense of wonder and curiosity within me. My graduate research explored how objects inform the ideas of place, experience, and belonging; this led me to engage systematically with the natural and constructed environments. These investigative processes continue to influence my explorations in form and color.
The sunlight in the tropics is exceptionally strong, saturating the landscape and amplifying color. Using slips, stains, and underglazes, I reflect this intensity and abundance of color in my work. These color choices are informed by my lived experience, be it a sunset walk with my wife or a sampling of hues from our garden foliage. These references are broken down into a visual language and encoded in my work. Whether subtle or overt, these experiences influence my color choices and color combinations.
SSS: I have been reflecting on David Pye’s notion of “workmanship of risk." I first read Pye's book (Nature and Art of Workmanship, published in 1968) years ago and return to it periodically. Regarding your current practice, how much risk-taking does your studio practice afford you? Can you talk about your various processes and your work?
JB: Within the constraints of a good design, I take a fair amount of risk. This process begins with a fair amount of sketching to work through design choices. When I commit to a form, I will work up a one-to-one scale drawing of the piece to work from. I keep this visible while working and use it as a guide to keep the form on track, especially when working on large-scale objects. Making sketches of most of my forms conserves material and energy while increasing the chances that the pieces will turn out how I have envisioned them. I can take tremendous risk through sketching; there’s no downside to filling up a sketchbook. Once I’ve formed a piece, I begin to work on the surface, considering my color palette, then begin adding layers. This part of the process is significantly more intuitive, a sort of improvisation process. While improvisation may allude to executing suddenly or without a plan, however, while I begin to compose my surfaces through impromptu actions, I may add information, spending weeks on solving a visual puzzle. The layers of marks present a history, weaving a tapestry of movements and colors, providing depth and insight into my process. Similar to assembling a puzzle, I lay down a certain color or add a particular texture to a piece where I deem it necessary.
My livelihood doesn’t depend solely on selling the work I produce; this affords me the opportunity to take certain risks in my practice. I always try something new upon each piece while working through a series. Over time, this process developed my visual vocabulary in ways I could never have imagined had I worked more conservatively. When I’m in a good studio flow, after that sense of apprehension subsides and my hands warm up, I begin to follow my creative impulses – those little whispers that lead me to the next piece. Ultimately, I trust in the process to lead my work towards an exceptional level of craftsmanship while retaining an intuitive energy.
SSS: As ceramists, we all work as part of that lineage of makers extending this long sequence of recorded mark-making in clay. The materials we work with bear a significant amount of historical weight. How relevant are historical references within your artistic practice?
JB: I was fortunate to have been dragged through many museums as a child. Those experiences instilled an acute sensitivity to form. I love ceramic history; it is one of my largest influences when it comes to form. Working on a piece that engages in conversations with historical vessels creates a tangible connection between myself and past makers. I can feel how their hands would have moved the material, and through that, I gain a deeper understanding of not only the artifact but the maker and culture that produced it. I think of George Kubler’s concept of prime objects and replications and their relationship to time. My work exists in a sequence of replication, adaptation, and innovation that started with two cupped hands many thousands of years ago. Through practice and innovation, the function of the hand evolved into ideals of craft and art.
There are certainly visual themes present in ceramic culture, forms, surfaces, etc., most of which hold a high level of craftwork and are intentional. Forms that you can tell are made well and are lightweight just by looking at a picture of them. These standards of beauty in ceramics have been present for millennia and are something I work to uphold.
My forms and surfaces exist in contrasting periods of history. My forms reference pots nearly lost to time, while my surfaces are in dialogue with abstract expressionist painting, a symbolic style of the modern era. These elements in my work exist in tension – one is referencing the past, and one is the present. This dualism is a bit uncanny and hopefully intriguing. I see vessels and Ab-Ex painting as being two of the most straightforward and direct forms of material expression available. Pots are pots; they aren’t trying to be anything else, just as color is color and marks are marks. This directness is one reason I am drawn to utilitarian objects and work to synthesize the two styles.
SSS: That’s interesting, Jake, and the role of ceramics, tracing philosophical discourse on how art can certainly function through materiality. This line of inquiry piques my curiosity, reflecting upon “the potter’s space” brought up by Philip Rawson. Would you speak to the intangible or metaphysical qualities of your work and how you relate the value of making in relation to the spirit of the human condition?
JB: Rawson's theory of the potter’s space is a potent description of the spiritual nature of ceramics, one that I often go back to when thinking about the function of my own work. The interior space is the key to Rawson’s premise, but I think it goes beyond that.
He is essentially saying that vessels are singularities in space/time that serve as portals to a metaphysical dimension. That’s a bold claim to impose on an ordinary pot, but I agree with it. One could look at pots as windows into our own metaphysical vessels, our skulls holding our consciousness. Ceramics, just as any artform, can activate our imagination and our contemplative nature.
I like to think of my pots as meditative objects, vessels to live with and interact with visually. I often take my finished work straight from the kiln and set it on my kitchen table so I can interact with it while I eat. Eating a home-cooked meal and meditating on a vessel are very similar in that they are slow; they take time and energy to realize and, through that process, are fulfilling.
Though they often allude symbolically to a utility, most of the vessels in my recent work have been sealed off at the top; they appear as vases, yet devoid of openings. I do this in part to highlight the form removed from utility, yet keeping that metaphysical energy contained in vessels. The notion of tianquiping vases (a form characterized by a small mouth, straight neck, and round body) from the Ming and Qing dynasties captures my attention. These forms translate to heavenly spheres and symbolize aesthetic embodiments of the metaphysical world.
You mentioned art existing through materiality. I would like to expand on this to say that humans, as much as we are thinkers, exist through materiality. I think about the concept of homo faber, most recently popularized by German-American philosopher Hannah Arendt. We really make our world through what we make with our hands, which sets us apart from most other life. There is a mind-hand-mind sequence to this when art is involved, and it is essential to the human spirit. We generate an idea, we manipulate material, and the object/product generates new ideas. The tools we make in clay can be used to drink coffee and to have an existential reckoning; it just depends on how you use them.
SSS: I would like to shift topics slightly. Hawai’i being the most culturally and ethnically diverse state, with rich heritage and Kanaka traditions on the islands – outside of academia and nonprofit entities, have you found there to be a strong, vibrant art community, and has the local culture influenced your creative process in any way?
JB: At Eastern Kentucky University, I took two non-Western art classes with Dr. Gay Sweely. I quite enjoyed the sections on the Pacific, though at the time I had no plans to ever live here. I’m very conscious of the traditional material culture of Hawai’i. I’ve spent countless hours studying the collections at the Bishop Museum and various cultural centers, as well as the work of contemporary cultural practitioners.
The popular understanding is that pre-contact Hawai’i didn’t have a ceramic tradition; only after settlers from around the globe established communities in the islands did the ceramic history here begin. That beginning, as far as I can tell, started around 1802 when Kamehameha the Great commissioned a brick palace to be constructed in the nation’s capital in Lahaina, Maui. The team, including a few Brits, used local materials for that construction. Over a hundred and forty years later, another brick factory was opened in Honolulu, but locally made bricks are confined to these two factories and are not a crucial part of local architecture or commerce. One could argue that brick-making is the most legitimate or at least oldest ceramic tradition in Hawai’i. I haven't started making bricks yet.
SSS: As both an artist and an educator, does life on the islands ever test your resolve? By which I mean, how do you navigate possible misconceptions about life in Hawai’i? Living in an area fueled by tourism and investment, can you dispel any paradisiacal myths of living in “vacationland?"
JB: That’s an interesting question in that it addresses the stereotype of Hawaii being solely a tourist destination where most people would come to escape work and responsibility. Most people wouldn't know that there are over a dozen college campuses in Hawai’i, many of which have great clay programs. I would agree that in certain circumstances, life in Hawai’i can pacify one's ambitions; however, it’s a slippery slope. Hawaii is a demanding place to live. The cost of living is the highest in the nation, even in the rural areas. Forbes stated in a 2023 national ranking that ‘Hawaii claimed the top spot as the most expensive state in terms of cost of living. Additionally, residents of the Aloha State have the lowest amount of disposable income available annually ($5,929).” The disposable income being so tight for folks affects how much art is being bought and sold. To survive in the arts here, you must constantly pursue your craft by any means possible. It’s really an exaggerated reflection of the state of the national job market; most people must have multiple streams of income to survive. To do that, I take on multiple roles; my main role is the ceramics studio coordinator at the Donkey Mill Art Center.
SSS: Certainly, the financial challenges faced in Hawai’i could make life as an artist more challenging than one may expect on the mainland. I have noticed the cost of shipping has dramatically increased along with the cost of materials over the past couple of years. Has this inflation, on top of the already expensive prices found in Hawai’i, created any setbacks, perhaps even hindering creative growth and development of your work in any way?
JB: A great majority of my work is inherently geared towards the market; I intend for what I make to sell, and hopefully within a year or two of when I make it. So far, I’ve been exceptionally fortunate to work with galleries across the islands to do that for me, especially Halelea Gallery on Kauai. Developing a vocabulary of design choices that are consumable has helped me sell work and alleviate the stresses of thinking about what expenses are needed to produce the work. These choices are also reflections of some of the guiding aesthetics in contemporary art in Hawai’i.
I’m a minimalist at heart and am pretty frugal, so I don’t mind the expenses to ensure that my art can be the best it can be. Art is my first priority; the money always comes later. That being said, I do not make a living selling my art; my job at the Mill plays an important role in the finances of my studio practice. I also increase my prices to follow inflation and the trajectory of my career. I know some artists are still pricing their work like it’s 1975, and though I respect the McKenzian philosophy of pricing pots, I don’t work in that fashion.
A major challenge is that of exposure to the border art market and ceramic world. Hawaii is often overlooked and stereotyped as a string of resorts or a tropical playground for young, adventurous influencers. I feel like mainland buyers aren't looking to the hundreds of exceptional artists working out of Hawai’i, to everyone's loss. Private collectors here are few and far between, given that art may not be a priority for those already burdened by extreme expenses. The State Foundation for Culture and the Arts is a prominent collector of work in the state, with over seven thousand pieces in their collection. We also have the Arts in State Buildings Law, which allocates 1% of the construction of new state buildings to be spent on the arts. Commercial real estate developers also source art from Hawaii-based artists; in a state that runs on tourism, these opportunities are abundant; getting into the world of commercial art can significantly boost one's career.
There certainly have been and are challenges in making ceramics in Hawai’i, but I really don’t have much knowledge of what making ceramics elsewhere is like, so I can't say that my struggles here are unique to the place or not.
SSS: Looking ahead, how do you envision your future as a ceramic artist in Hawai’i? How has your experience these past ten years shaped your outlook on art and life? Do you have any new projects or aspirations that you're excited about pursuing in the coming years? Moreover, what advice would you offer emerging artists considering a similar path of living and creating art in a place as distinctive as Hawai’i? Lastly, is there anything else you'd like to share about your remarkable ten-year artistic odyssey in the heart of the Pacific?
JB: I have come into my own in Hawai’i, from earning my MFA to getting married (to another exceptional ceramicist) to finding multiple ways to engage with the community and share my art. To build on that, I would like to continue to work within the arts to strengthen our community of artists and art lovers. There are many aspects of the art world that can be developed across the islands, especially outside of O’ahu, like gallery representation and collector development. Many visitors want to buy local art, but there’s a disconnect on what that means and where to find it. They must be taught what quality local art is and pointed towards the galleries that sell it.
Most importantly, you must want to be in Hawai’i to make art in Hawaii, and that looks significantly different from making art in areas similar to Los Angeles or even Kansas City. The culture here is unique and robust in ways that if you can’t adapt, you won’t last long; I see people wash out all the time. I’ve been lucky enough to be welcomed by many people here who have accepted this wayfaring stranger into their community.
Some of my upcoming projects involve a solo show in February at Hawaii Pacific University, where I’ll be exhibiting work from my summer residency at the Bray as well as the continuation of that body. I’ve also been accepted to curate a group show at the Kahilu Theater Gallery this summer in Waimea. This one will be the fourth exhibition of new work from an international cohort of painters, printmakers, and ceramicists that has been showing together over the past five years. I’ve been stepping into the role of curator recently, which has been really rewarding on multiple levels.
Finally, I wouldn’t be the person I am today without the impact of being in Hawai’i. I’ve lived a third of my life here, and through that time, I’ve learned so much about myself. Being separated from my family and friends in Kentucky forced me to take on responsibilities and adapt to survive. When I was in Montana this summer, my Airbnb host, who had been to Hawai’i once or twice, mentioned that I embodied the spirit of Aloha; what a compliment! It made me wonder if I had really acculturated to Hawai’i and embodied this meaningful trait genuinely. Where does my southern hospitality end and the aloha spirit begin? Overall, I’ve gotten suspiciously lucky in many ways. I wouldn’t have had these successes without my family and friends near and far who believed in me and fed me with encouragement; to them, I’m exponentially grateful.