JB Blunk 1926-2002

"Wood. Clay. Stone. Spirit. These are the elements from which JB Blunk created his work, and a more elemental artist of the postwar era would be hard to find. Blunk proceeded through sheer instinct and in deep conversation with nature; his art was the ultimate expression of a life lived off the grid." —Glenn Adamson

James "JB" Blain Blunk was born in Ottawa, Kansas. He graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1951 where he studied physics, later changing his major and studying under noted ceramist Laura Anderson. After serving in the United States Army in the Korean War, he met sculptor Isamu Noguchi in Japan and served apprenticeships with Japanese potter Kitaoji Rosanjin (1883-1959) and Bizen potter and Living National Treasure, Kaneshige Toyo (1896-1967). Blunk was the first American to apprentice into the line of descent of that country's great unglazed stoneware ceramic tradition.

Working primarily in wood and ceramic, James Blain Blunk developed a distinct style that drew upon the Japanese principle of directness as well as an unfaltering reverence for the natural world, particularly ecology and primordial landscapes. Taking forms from antiquity and mysticism and translating them instinctively through raw, salvaged materials, Blunk produced a body of work that represents an innate expression of, and conversation with, nature. 

Blunk's interest in Japanese ceramics was spurred by his studies under Laura Andreson at the University of California, Los Angeles. After graduation, he was drafted into the army and stationed in Korea, where a short training trip to Japan led to a chance encounter with the Japanese-American sculptor Isamu Noguchi. After his discharge from the army in 1952, and with Noguchi's introduction, Blunk worked for four months in the Kamakura studio of the noted ceramicist Kitaoji Rosanjin. He then spent fourteen months in the Bizen workshop of Kaneshige Toyo. These apprenticeships offered Blunk firsthand exposure to Japan's ancient unglazed ceramic tradition. Blunk's instruction in the power of the elemental-earth, water, and fire-would become fundamental to the character of his own work. He took these principles back to California in 1954, settling in Inverness, fifty miles north of San Francisco, in 1956. There, between 1959 and 1962, the artist built and furnished a home and studio for his family on an acre of land gifted by his friend and patron, the surrealist painter Gordon Onslow Ford. Single-handedly producing both the structure and the contents of the home-the wooden furniture as well as the ceramics used daily for eating and drinking-Blunk considered it to be his masterpiece.