A Childhood of Free Exploration

Hanada: How did you first encounter glass?

Ken Ikushima: When I was a child, I was always drawing, cutting and pasting paper… always making something. I thought, “When I grow up, I want to be making things no matter what.”

Hanada: Was it influenced by your family?

Ken Ikushima: My father was a salesman for a liquor company. Because of that, I was in the U.S. from the age of two. My mother cooked and sewed…
I don’t think there was a direct influence, but I’m grateful that even though I didn’t study at all and only made things, they didn’t scold me and rather watched over me welcomingly.

Hanada: So it wasn’t “Stop drawing and study”?

Ken Ikushima: Not at all. They let me attend art classes and took me to museums and galleries.

Hanada: You still keep a sketch diary, right?

Ken Ikushima: It helps maintain my drawing skills and serves as a memory aid. I tend to forget things easily (laughs).

Hanada: Keeping a sketch diary must make you observe things and events more carefully.

Ken Ikushima: Usually I draw from memory the next day, so it requires both observation and imagination.
Sometimes I reread them and think, “Ah, that happened,” or “I did this”… It’s really fun.
The ones from when my son was small are especially amusing.

Wait, What About Pottery?

Hanada: Where in North America did you live?

Ken Ikushima: Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York.

Hanada: Do you feel any influence from your childhood experiences in the U.S.?

Ken Ikushima: Probably the language. When I returned to Japan in sixth grade, I couldn’t write hiragana.
Math was also a disaster (laughs).
At that time, U.S. arithmetic for sixth grade was adding 1000 and 1000, for example.
So even in a normal Japanese school, it was incomprehensible.
I transferred to a school with an international class, where I first studied hiragana.

Hanada: How did you decide on your career path after that?

Ken Ikushima: Specifically, I wanted to become a ceramic artist. Tama Art University had a “Craft Department.” At the time, I thought “Craft = ceramics,” and figured if I got into the craft department, I could eventually work with ceramics somewhere.
It was fortunate that I got accepted, but once I enrolled, the craft department only had glass and metal.
Ceramics, for some reason, was under the oil painting department (laughs).

Hanada: You only found out after entering?

Ken Ikushima: Yes. I thought, “Huh?” But then again, the prep school teachers never said anything even though I wanted to study ceramics. Well, I guess I was the one who didn’t know (laughs).

Hanada: So you chose glass instead.

Ken Ikushima: I had admired the pottery wheel, but I told myself, “If I tilt the wheel, it’s glass.”
Either way, I only had two options.

Hanada: Well, which is closer to ceramics…

Ken Ikushima: I’d say glass. The glaze is basically glass too.

Working and Thinking

Hanada: What did you do after graduation?

Ken Ikushima: I spent three years at Niijima Glass Art Center, two years in Yoshihiko Takahashi’s studio, and then two years in Dan Dailey’s studio in New Hampshire.
The first two were mainly glassblowing, but at Dan Dailey’s, I also learned torch work and polishing.

Hanada: What kind of work did you do with Dan Dailey?

Ken Ikushima: Dan would show us something like a painting and decide, “Make something close to this.”　As assistants, we worked to realize it.
The approach of “materializing what’s in Dan Dailey’s head” was incredibly fun and full of first-time experiences.
Dan only painted and said, “Do the rest freely.”
Basically, he gave instructions only for shape and color, and we figured out the rest.
At that time, Dan was considered top-class, so seeing glass from a different perspective at that level was extremely valuable.

Bright and Fun

Hanada: And now in Nishi-Izu.

Ken Ikushima: It’s been 22 years.

Hanada: Nowadays, you mainly work with lace glass.
Your work is bright and fun, rather than gorgeous or elegant.

Ken Ikushima: “Lace but for everyday use.”
Although I work with lace a lot now, I’m not strictly a lace artist, so I want to explore various things.

Hanada: Are there things you want to pursue in the future?

Ken Ikushima: Woodworking… I do it occasionally for fun, but I want to go deeper.
Carving, assembling, and combining with other materials like wood and metal.
I also want to try installations.

Hanada: How about your exhibition at Hanada?

Ken Ikushima: This time, there’s a video of the making process, so I hope people can imagine it while looking at the pieces.
Lace glass itself is a fun process.
As I like to say, “Interesting work produces interesting results.”