Jan Fisher and the Ceramics Studio: A little bit of Heaven

There were three things you had to do to get an A grade for the ten week semester sculpture class with Jan Fisher.  They were: do three sculptures, do not miss more than three classes, and do 20 hours after class work in the ceramics studio.  “Everyone can get an A", Jan would say, "I don’t believe in the bell curve.  Whoever invented the bell curve should be shot!” He would say that every semester, first day of class:  “whoever invented the bell curve should be shot!” I imagined some person, the inventor of the bell curve, drawing a bell on the board and saying I’ve got it! Then the crack of a gun.

This was the academic Jan talking, or as academic as he got. In reality it was just a set of measured things to be ticked off a list so all the paper work looked good.  Nothing to do with real art. One could do all that, those three things and get a good grade.  But I realized early on that to make it as a real artist, doing those things will not prepare you in the least.  What you really had to do was so much more than that. The nice thing though if you did just do those things and worry only about the grade, you could finish the semester, pat yourself on the back and forget about it.  What Jan actually taught in his actions and what he said off the record was so much more.  He wanted us to work so hard, give our souls, make something of our lives and generate a wave that would go around the world and reach up into heaven. The simple requirements for a grade stopped at the end of the semester, what he really wanted from us lasted much longer, carried on much further and haunts me even to this day.

Coming to Hawaii

The Royal Hawaiian Family King Kamehameha 

and co. Jan was excited, he had big plans for 

some park with all the royal family.  But later 

when I started taking classes the sculptures 

were gone and he never spoke of the 

project again.

I first came to Hawaii in 1989 to attend Brigham Young University on the beautiful north shore of Oahu in a small town called Laie. Hawaii is such a wonderful place to go to school, the agreeable climate, beautiful smells, sites and wonderful people everywhere. I truly had a sense of awakening, that something was going to happen and was happening at this moment. I had sense of coming alive. This was before I ever stepped into the Ceramics Studio. When I entered the Ceramics Studio, it was hard to take in the place in all at once because it was filled with so many sculptures.  Amazing pieces. Way better than anything I had ever done.  When entering the Ceramics Studio you walk right into an open area where all the sculpting takes place.  As I walked through the door I first saw a group of figures Jan Fisher was working on, a group of King Kamehameha and his family. They were half-sized figures, grouped together with the man himself, King Kamehameha, at the front. For a budding artist to see such works in the making, it was awesome. Jan had his back to me and was working on the piece.  He craned his neck around as we entered and I was introduced as a new arrival from New Zealand that wants to be a sculpture student.  Jan was very nice and gave me a brief tour of the studio.  He showed me some pieces he had been working on and told me what various projects students did there. I think I must have peaked his interest as there was a long line over the years of top art students from New Zealand.

My First sculpture in Hawaii: 
Christ in America

For me Jan didn’t generate a desire to create, I already had that, but he did fuel it to much greater heights.  I wanted to create something that would impress, that would be so beautiful--something to add to all the great works I saw in there.  My first project shows that, a small relief I did of Christ in America.  Jan helped me on this, especially the Christ figure.  When I look at it I think of the help he gave me on my first piece. I left the strokes he put on it. It was a good start and was helpful in showing Jan I meant to put forth a good effort and worth the time to teach.

The Masters

Jan wanted us to do great things and so he keyed off and often talked of the great masters.  He showed pictures like Michelangelo’s David, or Rodin’s Thinker.  He told stories and pretended to act out scenes from their lives.

"Michelangelo would come out of his studio,  he’d be all white, covered in marble dust.”  Jan would be standing a little hunched over.  "He’s walking down a narrow street of Florence, totally exhausted." Then Jan would shuffle across the floor, head hanging down. “Some people would be coming up in the opposite direction and there would not be enough room to easily pass by. As they got near Michelangelo he’d say out GET OUTA MY WAY!”  Jan would thunder his voice and swing his arms up. 

“Rodin would be in his studio, trying to decide on a good pose.  His models would walk around his studio completely nude. Rodin would wait and look” Jan would pace around the room imitating a pensive Rodin, his hands in his pockets jiggling his keys. "Then a model would do something, sit down or turn to get something and Rodin would say STOP!” Jan would freeze as he stood, hips sticking forward. “And that’s how Rodin would get his poses!"

For us it was like listening to a preacher in some high roller church. He was very funny too. To other more casual students it was not so enjoyable.  After one such class I was walking across campus with a fellow art student, fully inspired, pumped up from the talk and I asked, what did you think of what he said?  She replied "that was a total waste of time.”  I was dumbfounded. She said she wanted to sculpt but he just kept talking and talking. "We had no time to do anything." I said yes I can see what you mean, I think he had something he wanted to tell us, to know and we are supposed to come in after hours and work on our own stuff.  That was how it worked.

Teaching

Jan’s practical teaching, hands on correcting every student’s problems, had waned by the time I got there.  He was through with babying people through their works and ending up with a bunch of Fisher clones.  He gave advice and talked more, letting the students discover for themselves.  At key moments he did step in and help steer people back in a better direction.  Perhaps this also had to do with the large commission work he was getting which limited his time teaching but since he did all his own work at the Ceramics Studio, it was immensely helpful to see how a working artist got commissions and created pieces for clients.

After two semesters of sculpting I put forth my best effort and created Christ
Healing the Blind Man. Jan was amazed with my progress. I did it all by myself
in the summer with no advice from him. He was proud of what I did and showed
it to other art professors.

Jan always wore nice cloths. Black pants and a nice aloha shirt.  He would pace up and down as he taught. He would sometimes demonstrate, along with a running commentary on what he was doing: "Don’t tickle the clay!  I should have a speaker at the corner of the studio and anytime anyone touches the clay too much the speaker would go hehehehaha" and he would jump around like a monkey as he was making the tickling sound.  

If Jan just got off the phone with some good news like someone wanted to commission him, then he would get really happy. This is when he started talking of bigger things, of creating sculpture the whole world would stand up and take notice of--great sculptures that he and his students would create to glorify God and his kingdom, sculptures for Church buildings and temples, especially the temple at the new Jerusalem and the old Jerusalem. He wanted to make the 12 doors for the twelve tribes of Israel. He could almost taste it.

Happy day for me, a fulfillment of my professor’s wish that his students create
works for temples: the frieze above the Newport Beach Temple doors

Money!

Jan actually did well for himself when I was there, he had many commissions and pieces he sold.  In spite of this he talked to us of money and art. The big discussion for art students was always selling sculptures, getting commissions, and how to do it without, as Jan would say, ‘prostituting’ your ideals in the name of the all mighty dollar. "Money! Money! Jan would say in a deep cynical voice.  His favorite anti-establishment song was Money by Pink Floyd.

As we got out of the temple, Jan
pulls out a $50 note and says, "make
sure you rent a Lincoln Continental,
it’s a smooth ride."

This was in deep contrast to what he actually thought of money, he loved it.  Well maybe not love but it was a great weakness for him and whenever he had it, it burnt a hole in his pocket.  Whenever he would get a good sized commission he had a hard time not being too giddy and spending up large. He was very generous at these times.  He once said that if a beautiful naked lady walked through the door it would not be a huge temptation, but if someone walked in with loads of cash to tempt him, that would be a trial. I can hardly fault him as he was very generous to me and insisted on paying for a honeymoon to Maui for my new bride and I, and I did work for him to buy a very nice ring as well.

What stuck with me was this advice: Create for people who really understand what good art is, not the masses, ‘sculpt for other sculptors.’  It has been good advice but he forgot to say that you will feel good about what you do, receive praise from people who know good art, but most appreciating sculptors have no money, so you’ll hardly get a sale from it!

Fellow Jew and Brown People

Jan already liked me because I was from New Zealand. Of his own personal heritage Jan said he had Jewish blood. Jan thought from my looks and my eastern European heritage that I had Jewish in me too. He called me his fellow Jew. When he told me that I was Jewish too I said really?  He said yes.  I said well all right then. I have never been able to find out for sure if I was Jewish.  From his sisters, I'm not sure if he was Jewish either. His sisters once said to me that "Jan was the only Jew in our family." Jan stuck with this thread. He would ask the question, "who are the best today in every field of art, music or science? Jews, just like you and me". I had no idea what I was, my family history is murky, but if that meant he would take special interest in me and teach me, I would be Jewish. I was his fellow Jew.

A Samoan feast: Jan loved
culture and native peoples

Race was a huge part of it all for Jan.  Many of his sculptures were of Polynesians and their legends. He loved the Polynesians having lived in Samoa and Hawaii for over 25 years. He befriended Polynesians that understood him and adopted him as their own. His arms were tanned from the Hawaiian sun so looking at his own arms, after a while, he thought of himself as Polynesian too.  He would say the biggest shock for him would be each morning when he would look at his face in the mirror and see a white made staring back. Other times his realization of being white was not so subtle.  He related to me one experience when he was walking in Laie shopping center, when the hairs on his neck stood up, his senses became alarmed and a voice said watch out!  He pivoted his head in time to have his cheek grazed by the fist of some big polynesian. With the big Polynesian now off balance, Jan took off running to save himself. Those times for sure he knew he was a Haole (white person). He would say he understood why they (Hawaiians) hated white people after taking away their lands and their dignity.

Other Interesting Stories: Kama Pua'a Pays a Visit

Jan told some amazing stories but none were more amazing than the story he once told us when he was in the middle of creating works for the Grand Wailea hotel.

The Hawaiians have a legend of a pig man, like the native American's wolfman, who could change his appearance from a man to a raging pig.  Jan did a sculpture of the Kama Pu’aa (pig man) for the hotel on Maui. He started off with a maquette for approval.  He had the maquette at his home in Kaaawa.  One time during the day when the house was empty, he went upstairs to take a nap.  While half asleep he heard the sliding door open and a strange sound like cloven feet smacking the linoleum floor.  It could be heard moving around in the kitchen then onto the carpet and the distinct sound of it coming up the stairs.   Ka clop ka clop. Jan said, "oh no it’s coming up here!"  He covered his face with the blanket and refused to see what had just flung open the door to his bedroom and was hoping around his bed. Ka clop ka clop ka clop! Cowering, he said to himself "I’m not looking! I’m not looking!" Eventually the visitor went down the stairs and left.  He later asked a Hawaiian friend what that meant.  He said the Kama Pua’a was coming to see the sculpture you did of him and... he liked it.

A scaled up version of the pig man,
Kama Pua’a approved

The Duke

Third place? Wow not bad!

It is well known now that Jan created the famous statue of Duke Kahanamoku.  I was there at the beginning. One day he came into class (my second from him) and said they want a new statue of the Duke in Waikiki, anyone who wants to put in for it can count it as a class project.  Oh wow!  I wanted to try for it.  There were many art students. The only other student that tried was a senior student, he did a very nice piece. Jan also entered. Jan kept his sculpture a secret from us but helped me with mine, offering small advices. I had my Samoan friend Jerry Amua model for me.  Jan used the art model budget to pay for Jerry’s time. There were a few entires from all over the Western United States. After the judging Jan was announced the winner. Not normal in most commission competitions, but the judges decided to say which other pieces they liked and my piece was judged third best!  I was over the moon.  Imagine, I thought, I came third and I have hardly begun.  When will I have my own commission!!! Little did I know that it would be a hard slog and a few years down the road before it actually happened.

Don’t Change a Note!

A dainty figure of Hina and the Mo’o. Jan would say it
was a Polynesian version of Eve and the serpent.

Sometimes Jan would have me help on real commission projects. On one occasion a larger than life sculpture he was working on Hina and the Mo’o had a big crack developing in the lizard’s tail. Jan had to leave for the evening so he left it to Don Smiler (a past sculpture student) and me to fix it.  Our first approach was to drive spikes into the clay near the crack and repair the break. But as we drove spikes in the crack became bigger until a very big chunk fell off! I said lets do this right and lay in a better support structure with rods and pack in fresh soft clay.  If we try and stick the fallen piece back in, it will just fall out again.  So Don and I went to work and to make sure it was packed good. I had Don slap and pack the clay in with the side of a hammer.  As we got it back to where it was I said... hey stop!  Look at that!  Don stepped back and I said look it looks way better with that texture and the hammer marks in there it looks really good, like the tail is about to move. We were so proud of our work.  I thought it looked better, much better. Jan came in the next day and...it was like how parents feel when their toddler smears peanut butter all over the furniture, he hit the roof!  Me and Don were in trouble, but Don had got there before me and took the brunt so by the time I got there Jan was just mumbling to himself, fixing our mess and quoting from the movie Amadeus, "too many notes?...which ones should I change your majesty?..too many notes?!"




Jan Gets Let Go

The story of Jan’s termination after having him for a teacher for only two years is too long for me to cover in this post. I will say there was a lot of jealousy and dissatisfaction with Jan by both students and other teachers.  I was pretty much oblivious to all the drama, I was too busy being an art student.  One day, just before class, I came into to hear Jan say he was being fired.  It happened just before class so I sat down with the other students. I sat there upright with tears streaming down my face. After class Jan came to me and said it’s okay, it’s not right away, there’s still a little time to teach you before I go. And so it went.  It was a good time, not long enough, but I learnt enough from Jan to last me through those years-the years I had left at school, under new management.  It actually carried me even further than that, it took me about 8 years to figure out what Jan said and all he taught, how it all fitted together.  Once it did sink in, those years later, a light went on in my head and I now understood. With this understanding, with this gift, I felt like I was ready. I now had the confidence to take on the whole world.

My Teacher Jan Fisher’s Beginnings and the Making of the Program at BYU Hawaii

Jan Fisher came to BYU-Hawaii in
1970 to take over the 3D program
and built it to become like no other.

"No man is an island, but it can be a good place to learn to sculpt!"

LeRoy Transfield

In the still hours of the Hawaiian night when the campus was winding down, the ceramics studio was still a hopping place and Jan Fisher was just warming up into his work and his story telling. The sculpture students, a captive audience, could while away the late hour working and listening to fantastic stories, learning about the life and times of our teacher.  He would lean back, thoughtful, then dart in to add clay here or there to his latest big creation. Always in love with whatever he was working on.  On each piece he would say, it is my best piece ever... ever! In tandem with this was constant speaking, talking (“pontificating”, he would say) on one subject after another.  In story telling, when he wanted to emphasize a bit of the narrative he would stop sculpting, turn his head, raise his eyebrows, open his eyes wide, blurt out the punch line and then bust out laughing with a slap of his thigh. Ah ha ha ha! The more interested you seemed, the more encouraged he was to tell the next fantastic story. You need not speak only nod, agree and laugh too. He told many stories about family life growing up, the good and bad times and all the drama. Ever the artist, many of the students agreed that he should have been an actor.

These stories I’ve pieced together. For this account I’m going to keep to his art career and the interesting journey he had at Brigham Young University-Hawaii, pre 1989. In other words this is all the stuff he did, art wise, before I came to BYUH. These stories and accounts are what I heard, understood and remember. They may be tainted by embellishments or misunderstandings in what he said.  I do have a good memory and those times were so epic in my life, how could one forget them. He also repeated a few of his stories saying them in pretty much the same way and details each time. This account I give is also very brief compared to all the stories, the amazing stories, that he told of things. As I write and form this account, many things come back to me, more than I can ever say.  But as I have said, this is a brief description of his art endeavors, challenges and building the program at BYU-Hawaii that I and many other art students benefitted from.

Jan said he was always into art, painting and drawing at first.  He loved doing water colors.  He said he enjoyed the work he did but it was perhaps a little overworked, too detailed and too much time spent trying to capture every highlight on every hair.  It wasn’t until after serving a mission for the LDS Church in Mexico and a time in the army that he was able to devote himself to art as a student at BYU in Provo, Utah.  He didn’t say too much about his painting journey there.  He said his teacher was good at knowing when to step in and help a student that was struggling.  The solution was often to wipe out the painting and start again.  The teacher he spoke of most fondly was his Industrial Design teacher Alexander Darius. Darius gave out no A grades, only one A- and the rest were B+ down.  Jan made sure he was the one to get that A- and worked long hours to prove himself and learnt a great deal when it was over. Even after retiring Jan would visit this man.

After graduating with a BFA in painting he turned to getting a masters degree.  He decided to switch his interest from painting to pottery. In choosing a place to go to school, he searched out the best he could for a teacher, not only that but the best potter in the country that he could find that was teaching. He found such a person in Oakland, California at Mills College, one Antonio Prieto. I do not know much about Prieto other than Jan said he was the best. In order to get into the program, he travelled to California and presented his portfolio and was accepted into the school.  This in spite of the school being (and still is) a women’s only college. He would say he often got his campus mail titled: Ms. Jan Fisher.

Jan Fisher’s pottery teacher at Mills College, 
Antonio Prieto (1912-1967)

He undertook his studies with great zeal and passion.  Prieto was the man who knew and Jan wanted to know everything he was willing to teach. Interestingly Prieto was taught by Pablo Picasso which meant for me that I had a creative line back to a famous artist.  Jan took on learning everything Prieto knew. He became such a proficient learner that he started throwing pots just like Prieto.  Not only that he started acting like him, walking like him and saying things he said.  The other students gave him the nick name the little Prieto. Prieto started getting annoyed with Jan.

Living in the Bay Area, going to an art school in the 1960’s when experimentation in drug use etc. must have been a challenge for a straight up conservative guy like Jan.  He said that he once went to an art show opening and some of the people there started rolling around on the floor naked.  You can imagine how Jan described that one. While the students where preoccupied with this trend, Jan would spend his nights and weekends in the studio creating.  In order to work late he would unlatch a window and when the studio closed down, would come back later through the window and work into the night.

One morning Prieto came in to the studio to find Jan with a huge amount of work on a large table.  That was it for the professor.  He shouted at Jan, look at all this stuff!  There’s no way we’re firing all this, it would tie up our kilns for weeks! Prieto turned to march out.  As he turned away, Jan grabbed the edge of the table and lifted it toward him dumping all the pots on the ground in one great crash. A cloud of dust and debri rolled after Prieto’s heels as he made for the door.  As the cloud of dust settled, having escaped through the door way,  Prieto now peaked his timid head around the corner at a stewing Jan. As Jan would tell the story he would turn his neck side ways, a silent, disbelieving Prieto. It would leave me thinking: wow all that work destroyed, but what a crash!

Jan was failed by Prieto and had to leave the school without his degree.  But that didn’t stop him.   He went to a local college and got his grades up so that he could finish his courses and get his masters degree.  But Prieto had plans to fail him and prevent this.  I’m gonna fail you Fisher!  Jan said he prayed and looked for divine intervention so that he could still make it somehow pass and, like something out of a movie, it happened. Towards the end of term, before the grades were handed out, Prieto was taken ill.  He actually suffered from what Jan called stiff man syndrome and lying in his bed, slowing lost control of his body withered away and died.  All students were given a passing grade, Jan had his degree. Rather a morbid ending but that’s how Jan told it.

After graduating, he had an opportunity to teach seminary in Samoa for about 3 years.  Then he got his job as art professor at Brigham Young University-Hawaii on the beautiful north shore of Oahu.  By the time I got there, 19 years later, there was a good sized facility for 3D art.  But when Jan got there it was just a small shed that Jan added to, pouring cement and building up structures over the years. Working in the summer months, he once built a very large kiln, doing it all with very little or no help from the school. It was mostly from his own resources or free building materials he could find.  He spoke fondly of how he and a Samoan student, Ed Soliai worked to build a brick vaulted kiln with a 30 foot chimney that could fire pieces up to 9 feet tall. It was a very impressive structure.

The interior of the ceramics studio from my day, my male figure in the center. In the background under plastic is the original Manu Hi’i. Behind my male, a Maori warrior by Ken Coffey. The brick  structure behind Ken’s piece is the large kiln Jan built. The open area in the back had more kilns and a bronze foundry which never ran while I was a student.

During that first decade (the 1970’s) at BYUH, besides developing the program and his own art, Jan faced many challenges, most of which I know little about. There was the challenge of keeping his job, going on sabbatical for a year, divorce, remarrying, and the friction he had with his fellow teachers and the administration.  Artistically he did mostly pots and abstract pieces, maybe a little figure work. He would say he liked sculpture but his ladder was up against the wrong wall. When I got there he was all about the figure, not abstractions. In those early years, not withstanding what he preferred, some of his students did do large figure works such as Ken Coffey (a Maori warrior) and Ed Soliai (Samoan Chief) which were still in the studio when I got there. There was a large abstract fiberglass constructed piece I saw that he said nearly killed him because he worked it up without proper protection and landed himself in hospital on his death bed.  He attributes his recovery to a blessing he received while in the ward.  In the early days he threw big huge pots, taller than a person and developed a few different styles of pottery.  One was what he called a multi-chamber pot which was like several pots inside each other joined and the base, then cut down the middle to reveal the different chambers.  He said he got the idea from sea shells.  The other thing that his students were doing when I got there was crystalline glazed pots.  Very beautiful glass-like glazes that had delicate patterns all over the surface.  But by the time I got there he had personally had it with pots.  His saying was 'a pot’s a pot’s a pot.'

One of the pieces that impacted Jan: Moses by Michelangelo.
Jan would say with great passion: "When no one was looking I jumped the barrier, I reached up and closed my eyes and felt the great nose and slowly ran my fingers down his great muscular arm, tears filling my eyes as I went."

Sometime in his teaching he decided to travel to Europe and toured around to see the great art pieces in Italy and France.  He was deeply impressed by Michelangelo and Rodin’s work and came back a changed man.  He now wanted to do figure work.  There was probably more to his metamorphosis but all I really know is he went to Europe and came back wanting to create great figurative art. He built a foundry, for bronze casting, in the back of the ceramics studio.  He also developed methods for creating busts and life-sized figure works for firing in the kiln using water based clay. This method he called the hollow method or pinch method, he had all his students learn and create figures as well. He started to build a body of work of his own and get commissioned work. All of his private commission work was done at the school. It was good for Jan because renting places to create in Hawaii is very expensive and it was good for the students because we could see a more experienced artist at work.  This included the Koloa Monument, a statue to Manu Hi’i, a bust of a prominent business man in Hawaii, a figure riding a horse for St. Louis High School and a Hawaiian bust for Iosepa, Utah and other smaller projects. There may be others that he did before I came, but these I recall the most. Besides this he also did numerous works in clay right along with the students that were fired in the kiln. These included busts and life-size male and female nudes.  The grandest of all these creations was the huge monument to the Sugar Cane workers which was installed in Koloa, Kauai in 1986. He would say, thousands and thousands of man hours were put into creating it.  Although many students helped, he said the primary student that helped him and put in many hours along with Jan was Dennis Stublefield. When he told of what he and Dennis went through to create that piece, of misery, uncertainty, long hours and exhaustion, all I could think of was, I’m glad I wasn’t there!

A happy Jan Fisher on dedication
day of his Koloa Monument

The commission was actually small monetarily, it was not supposed to be as grand as it eventually turned out to be. Jan may have lost money on the whole thing.  But this was his chance to make something special. Once finished, he now had a large monument to his name which helped him get other works, particularly the multiple commissions he got from the Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts and the Grand Wailea Hotel on Maui. Even though he did many great works through out his career, the Koloa monument was probably his best work. Looking at the castings there are many imperfections, bad pours and low quality finishing work. The Hawaiian’s head is actually solid bronze because the shell broke during the pour (a blow out) and they filled it up. There was no time for a re pour.  It must have been heavy! When it was installed it didn’t even have a proper patina, just the bare sandblasted bronze.  Over the years it has weathered and so that doesn’t really matter now about the patina although some of the imperfections are much more obvious. Understanding and knowing that it was created from such a small budget, by a teacher and his students on the remote north shore of Oahu, with little experience in casting bronze, on a make shift set up...makes the work, the entire finished piece, an absolutely incredible achievement!

Life sized figures of the Sugar Cane workers. Models were student and his second wife Becky, Don Smiler (a maori) was the big Hawaiian(left).  Jaime Mendame, a sculpture student from the Philippines, was the Filipino(right). Other ethnicities are Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Portuguese and Puerto Rican. Above the Hawaiian in the blank area was supposed to be a plantation owner on a horse. Jan hated the idea of including such a figure and after two failed attempts to cast the rider, the owner figure was abandoned.

At this point I can not go on without mentioning an artist that had a great influence on Jan, that he spoke of often and would tell us of art principles and philosophies this artist taught to him; a Samoan artist named Mataumu Alisa, or Mat as Jan sometimes called him. Mataumu was ten years younger than Jan and a student at BYUH before Jan arrived.  Back then Mataumu, a new student from Samoa, was so enthralled with art, did nothing else, that he lost all desire for other academics and was eventually kicked out of BYU-H.  He stayed in Hawaii and went to the Honolulu Academy of Arts where he enjoyed much success, learning and selling his art.  He received work from the State of Hawaii to do large ceramic murals. He later decided to come back to BYU-H in the early 1980’s, a family man, and finish his degree with an eye on getting an MFA and coming back to teach at BYU-H, which after a few years he eventually did.  Despite being an older student, he was well experienced and knowledgeable and fell in with Jan and helped Jan with design problems and gave Jan advice. Jan loved it. His influence can be seen in many of Jan’s pieces from that time period, not the least being the Koloa Monument. Jan would say Mataumu was the greatest living artist and stayed in contact with him for his life.  He went in and out of contact with many friends and relatives, but never Mataumu. It would have been nice if I could have had lessons from Mataumu. Jan tried to repeat some of his words to me as best he could, not as good as the real thing, but I somewhat got the gist of it (hah, maybe not).

A huge influence and mentor to Jan was 
Mataumu Alisa seen here in 1975 with the
beginnings of a mural he did for
Moloka’i High School.

A couple of demonstration busts
Jan made to show the students
how to sculpt their pieces
hallow and fire them.

Before I came Jan had another big commission as well that was halted half way.  He was commissioned by Robert Schuller to create a large bronze fountain for his Crystal Cathedral in California. He had made some progress and had some of the ceramic pieces dipped and ready to pour bronze into when the school shut down his foundry for safety reasons.  He had already received money from Schuller.  Jan tried to install all the necessary devices to make the kiln legal under the new requirements but they could never get them to work right and it bought the whole bronze casting operation at BYUH to an end.  Jan had to pay back all the money he had been advanced.  When I got there I saw the students had cast bronzes at one time, but for the whole 4 years I was there the foundry never ran and it never would again.  All bronze casting Jan did after that was molded in Hawaii and sent to the mainland for bronze casting and then the finished piece shipped back.

The small Manu Hi’i, renditions of Christ, life sized ceramic nudes and the clay sketch for the Robert Wilcox statue

Jan had many faults and problems. People loved him for his passion, being bold and getting things done.  People hated him because he was too bold, said too much and got too many things done which made their lack of productivity uncomfortable. All his art was not the absolute greatest. But he did have flashes of brilliance. He put everything into the tasks he set for himself and all his art students benefitted from it. He never felt threatened by any students that made a good piece of art, he reveled in their success. He was willing to share any insight he had. His enthusiasm was contagious. That is what set him apart among his peers at BYU-H and other programs around the country. This was the stage that was set when I entered the Ceramics Studio as a freshman student in 1989.

Surrounded by sculptures, supplies and equipment, my friend Debi Brown poses for me in the mucky Ceramics
Studio.  Behind her is one of the never to be finished ceramic shells, ready for a bronze pour, for the Robert Schuller fountain at the Crystal Cathedral. Up above to the right on a shelf is my now fired sculpture of my Christ Healing the Blind Man.

The original large kiln fired Manu Hi’i
that was molded and cast in bronze.

Raku firing: Lab assistant Bryan Draper places a red hot pot in a barrel of sawdust. The blast kiln was also used for melting wax out of the ceramic shells for bronze casting.