RANDOM YOKAI

Cannon Beach Gallery, Dec. 14, 2025 – Jan 4, 2026
Reception, Dec. 19, 2025, 3-5PM

The work in Hafu Potter – Random Yokai emerges from the meeting of clay, fire, and story. Drawing on yokai—supernatural beings, tricksters, and spirits from Japanese folklore—the artist explores figures that exist between the ordinary and the extraordinary. At once mischievous, grotesque, and wise, these beings embody imagination and contradiction, and the resulting jars, jugs, and vases give physical form to that spirit. Together, they suggest a world that is complex, playful, and never entirely straightforward.

As a Hafu artist, they turn to yokai as a means of connecting with Japanese heritage. Yokai serve as a bridge to storytelling and imagination, offering a way to reflect not only on cultural traditions but also on how people perceive and understand the world. When experience resists clear explanation, yokai provide a language of wonder and ambiguity. Through this imagery, the work engages with heritage, mystery, and those aspects of life that defy easy definition.

Clay itself becomes a parallel to folklore: a material defined by transformation. Each vessel begins as earth, shaped by hand, and is ultimately realized through the unpredictable alchemy of fire. The works are fired in Neiseru Gama, the artist’s wood kiln, where flame leaves marks of ash, carbon, and heat across the surface. Like yokai, wood firing resists complete control, producing surfaces that are unrepeatable and shaped as much by chance as by intention.

Working with clay and fire is central to how the artist finds balance in the world—both grounding and spiritual. It is a dialogue with materials and elemental forces larger than oneself. The resulting works act as vessels of that exchange, holding humor, unease, reverence, and play. Through encountering them, viewers are invited to reflect on belief, perception, and the mysteries that shape lived experience.