Attending a Chopstick-Making Workshop in Kawagoe

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Last year in advance of my residency, I attended washi paper-making and kintsugi workshops in Tokyo before heading down to Yakushima, an island known for its natural wonders. There are always more things one could do than time to do them in, so I prioritized immersion in nature to gather reference imagery and experiences, but one of the opportunities I was sad to miss out on in Yakushima was the chance to make my own set of wooden chopsticks.

Since I was lucky enough to get to come back to Japan this summer, I looked into whether there were any chopstick workshops in or around Tokyo. The most frequent recommendation was to visit a town called Kawagoe, which by a combination of train, bus, and walking was about an hour and a half away from where I was staying. There, Wood Works Kawagoe (Karaki Woodworking) offers a workshop in making chopsticks.

When you arrive at the shop, you either can begin right away if there are available seats or you get a digital ticket reservation. When I showed up, all the seats were full but I was the first in line. One of the workers told me it would likely be around 45min wait, so I walked around the touristic “old town” streets of Kawagoe for a little bit, but 15 minutes later my seat was already open!

You first choose from a suite of wood blanks, selecting for either appearance, hardness, or both. I was instantly most attracted to the high contrast bocote of the selection options, which also happened to be one of the harder woods (and one of the most expensive). The shop presented the hardness of the wood as a potential upside and downside simultaneously, in that hardwood is good long-term for durability but is more difficult to shape, as it requires more strength to plane and sand. Bocote is a decorative wood not native to Japan (imported from Central America), but there are a lot of traditional woods for chopsticks that are imported including ebony, rosewood, and purpleheart.

I particularly liked one of the bocote wood blanks that had eyes in it, so I asked if they had any more pieces than what were on display so I could find a matching pair, and the staff kindly opened a deep drawer full of more blanks. I found two pieces that had a lot of contrast and some eyes.

A photo of me shaving down the first of my wood blanks.

Then I began the process of making my chopsticks. The blanks are printed with numbers on them, and you place one into a former in a specific sequence and shave down the wood with a plane until it becomes flush with the mold. You then rotate and put into the correct space in the sequence and do it again and again until you’ve done all four sides. Then you repeat the process with the second chopstick. I have to say that the hardness of the bocote was no problem at all at any stage, so I wouldn’t let the shop’s talk of needing sufficient strength impact your wood selection choice.

Sanding the chopsticks with coarse sandpaper.

Once you have finished planing, you refine the shape with a coarse sandpaper. Once you are happy with the shape of your chopsticks, you then polish them with a fine sandpaper. On this step, I polished until I thought they were likely good, and then asked a staff member to check. They said they could use more polishing, so I went back at it. I then asked again and received the same answer (which I was happy about - I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be aiming for or what was possible to achieve with the provided sandpaper, so I appreciated the feedback!). After polishing a third time, I got the OK to move onto the final step: oiling. I dipped each chopstick into linseed oil and rubbed it into the wood. This helps seal the surface while also highlighting the woodgrain.

When completed, you package the chopsticks and you’re done! I liked mine so much I thought maybe I should buy some sets of bocote chopsticks as souvenirs for others (the workshop also sells their own finished chopsticks), but when I went to look at their three bocote sets available for purchase, they were not nearly as beautiful as mine (and they were more expensive than mine as well, to cover the labor!). I ended up leaving with just my set. The workshop in total, including the type of wood blanks I selected, cost me about $35.

My finished, handmade set of bocote chopsticks!

I'm in Tokyo!

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I flew into Tokyo a few days earlier than my exhibition-related trip down to Yamanashi City, as I really feel jet lag so I wanted some time to try to burn a bit of it off first. I arrived on May 14th in the early evening. The next day, I stopped by my favorite paper store Ozu Washi to pick up a few items that I might want for my main event that afternoon: a traditional indigo-dyeing workshop at Hanten’s Mizuno Dye Factory at OKUROJI.

The workshop is of course intended for dyeing clothing, so I brought a few white cotton pieces along; however, I also wanted to dye some washi paper! Some of the washi I brought ended up not being suitable, but two pieces in particular were viable. I ended up dyeing those two along with a lightweight long-sleeved shirt and a blazer. The cost in total of the workshop was up there, but I thought it was worthwhile. I paid approximately $275 (and separately bought the items to dye as well) and spent over two hours preparing and dyeing my pieces.

I learned a bunch of tie-dye techniques in the process!

Mason Stain Crackle Raku Pottery

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The pieces of bisqueware I brought to this workshop (with markings noting which ones broke during the stressful firing process).

At my April 2025 raku workshop at Dakota Potters Supply, I experimented with several new techniques. One that I was really interested in was seeing how adding a Mason stain (in this case, dark teal) to terra sigillata slip and applying it as a top coat on my greenware would ultimately react with different finishing methods.

There aren’t really good recipes for adding Mason stain to wet slip (usually you’d add it to dry clay powder by weight and then add the water afterwards). However, I already had a bucket of mixed up terra sigillata slip in my house, so I just scooped around a cup of it into a small tupperware and added a heaping spoonful of dark teal Mason stain. I then applied it with a fan brush to several pieces of pottery that were still wet - not even leather hard, a bit wetter than that. The coloration significantly lightened as they dried, and I was left with a very light blue coloration. I was worried that might not be enough, so I added another heaping spoonful of the stain to the remaining dyed slip and applied that to a few more ceramics, experimenting as well with placement and markmaking.

To the right, you can see an image of the bisqueware I brought to the raku workshop; the pieces with X’s on them blew up in or shortly after removal from the kilns, so they were thrown out.

At the workshop, I was interested in two different techniques that would make use of the Mason stains: crackle glaze and ferric chloride saggar (or “baked potato”) firing. In this post, I will share the crackle glaze results. I could have used a white crackle glaze (and maybe I should experiment with that to see how opaque it really is), but I was worried it would be fully opaque so instead I applied clear crackle to two of the Mason stain pieces.

This first bowl, which is the rightmost bowl without an X on it in the bisqueware image, just has clear crackle applied to the inside, lip, and just around the lip on the outside. The rest of the piece I left bare to absorb the carbon from the reduction atmosphere.

Unfortunately the crackle either didn’t really crackle, or if it did, the very low contrast between the smoky dark grey and the dark teal is such that very few cracks are really visible. I think if I try this again I will either need to use way less Mason stain or experiment with white crackle or a mix of white and clear crackle. It is still a very pretty bowl, but a bit plainer than I wanted on the interior given the expense and “decorative” status.

Next, I applied crackle glaze to the interior of the taller dish with Mason stain terra sigillata slip on the interior and a burnished exterior. I then applied one coat of naked raku slip resist to the exterior.

The Mason stain crackle interior behaved the same as with the first bowl, so I have similar feelings about it. However, I am enjoying the mixing of techniques on one piece of pottery and plan to explore similar options moving forward.

April 2025 Raku Workshop!

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My colleague Paul Adamson and I brought a large group of Morningside community members to another raku ceramics workshop at Dakota Potters Supply on April 26, 2025!

Here are some photos from the day, which will be followed by posts about my pieces (once I get them photographed and edited).

My Solo Show in Yamanashi City is Open!

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I’m so excited to share that my solo show in Yamanashi City’s Nezu Memorial Museum opened today!

The exhibition poster I designed for Living Bridges: Art, Ecology, and Sister City Connections.

As you may already know from previous posts, Yamanashi City is the Japanese sister city of Sioux City; I met their visiting delegation in honor of our 20th year of this sister city relationship at Morningside University in November 2023 and then visited Yamanashi City with Morningside University board member Mia Sudo in July 2024 after my Arts Itoya residency in Takeo-onsen, Japan.

Between then and now, many folks have come together to help celebrate all of these connections and the 20th year of Yamanashi City’s incorporation by having me present a solo art show in Nezu Memorial Museum! This has been a monumental undertaking that could not have been accomplished without the support of many people including Morningside University board member Mia Sudo, the Morningside University administration, Yamanashi City mayor Takagi, Ms. Yokoyama from the Yamanashi City Local Resource Development Division, numerous Yamanashi City Hall staff and Morningside University colleagues.

Living Bridges: Art, Ecology, and Sister City Connections will be on exhibit from April 26 - May 24, 2025, and I will be on site during its final exhibition week!

New Pets: Opae Ula Shrimp and Malaysian Trumpet Snails

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I’ve had my gargoyle gecko Ashlar for six years now as my only pet, though I also keep hundreds of houseplants as well.

An opae ula shrimp swimming next to a Malaysian trumpet snail in my new tank.

Recently I decided to branch out into keeping what are colloquially called “Hawaiian volcano shrimp” or “opae ula,” Halocaridina rubra. These shrimp are special because they are extremely adaptable, long-lived (lifespan is over twenty years!), and have a very small biological footprint which requires minimal care (no filtration, no water changes beyond topping up to combat evaporation, no heaters, no airstones, rarely providing supplemental food beyond what naturally develops in the tank). The one curveball to their care is that they live in brackish waters, and can handle a variety of salinities but prefer about 1.010. Brackish water is a bit limitation in terms of what other species of fauna and flora you can keep alongside them; most aquatic plants are either freshwater or saltwater and will “melt” in brackish conditions. There are just a couple forms of macro algae that keepers have identified that are safe. In terms of other fauna, the most recommended tankmates are Malaysian trumpet snails, sometimes called MTS for short: Melanoides tuberculata. These snails are typically a freshwater species but they can adapt to brackish conditions and are considered good tankmates for the shrimp as they are also detritivores, but they do more to turn over the substrate and clean the glass compared to the shrimp.

I made this three gallon jar aquarium using aragonite sand, coral I gathered from a Japanese beach, and basalt and lava rocks I gathered from Iceland. I added a Venus comb murex shell I purchased online, as I wanted some fine lines in the tank but have read that the commonly used “sea fan” gorgonian skeletons will break down over time and pollute the tank so I chose a safer route.

I then stocked the tank with a tiny brackish marimo (a form of macro algae) as well as a brackish Chaetomorpha macro algae, eight Malasian trumpet snails, and approximately thirteen opae ula shrimp. I say approximately because they were impossible to count with complete confidence - they came with the Chaetomorpha algae ball I bought from the same seller and were darting in and around it.

Here are some photos from the first couple days! This is the cleanest it will likely ever look, as it will begin to grow the biofilm and algae that will serve as the primary diet for the shrimp and snails.

Photos from the "Food for People" Show at USD!

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As you may recall from this post, I was invited to participate in the show Food for People at the University of South Dakota Art Galleries. I attended the closing reception on Friday, March 28th, and it was fun to see all the other artwork on display as well as chat with some of the participants and viewers! Here are a couple of photos I took of the show statement as well as of my own installed artwork. In making these tile paintings, I intentionally have not grouted them into a fixed viewing situation, and I found it interesting how this show’s preparator chose to orient and install them!

Upcoming: Orange City Arts 2025 Regional Art Show

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My artwork has been juried into the Orange City Arts 2025 Regional Art Show Stewards of Creation, which will be on display April 5 - May 3, 2025. I have one painting and two ceramic vessels in this exhibition; my colleague Shannon Sargent and my student Eli Boyd Harris also each have an artwork in the show as well!

The exhibition is located in the NWC DeWitt Theatre Arts building at 721 Albany Ave SE, Orange City, IA 51041. Viewing hours are Mondays-Saturdays, 9am to 10pm. Cash prizes will be awarded to ‘Best in Show’ and ‘Honorable Mention’ at the closing reception on May 3, 2025!

Loess Bluffs National Wildlife Refuge

It was recently Morningside’s spring break, and some friends and I visited Kansas City together! I previously lived in the KC metro for six years while working at USM, but I’d somehow never knew about the Loess Bluffs National Wildlife Refuge, which is about 90min north of KC (in between Sioux City and KC). In planning this visit, I spotted it on the map. After looking into it, I decided it was my one firm desire for the trip (though my friends were extremely accommodating and we accomplished all of my desires!).

The Loess Bluffs National Wildlife Refuge has a large wetlands area as well as the bluffs which host a number of short, moderate difficulty hiking trails. We first hiked the Munkres Homestead Trail and its overlook where we gazed out at the wetlands, and I particularly loved the latter part of that hike after it joins the Loess Bluff Trail and descending the steps - that end portion of meandering forest habitat trail was really enjoyable. We then did the auto tour, and we saw numerous trumpeter swans, a bald eagle, tens of thousands of snow geese, and a very large eagle of some sort as well as a swimming muskrat.

I really loved it, and highly recommend it to anyone in the vicinity. Now that I know about it, I plan to visit each time I’m en route to KC; it’s only a 9min detour away!

Ceramic Plate Donations to Women Aware's Auction

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For the third year in a row, I’ve donated ceramic artwork to Women Aware’s annual banquet’s silent and live auction. This year is their 40th Annual Women of Excellence Awards Banquet, and it’s happening on Friday, March 28, 2025 at the Marriott Riverfront in South Sioux City, NE.

I've Been Making Ceramic Sauce Bowls, Too!

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In addition to the chopstick rests, I’ve made a number of little ceramic sauce bowls to gift to folks in Japan as well! To complement my leaf chopstick rest designs, I went with flowers for these small dishes. I photographed a range of six, and then provided you with a single shot of one of my favorites:

And as I did with my chopstick rests, I’ve made a few small ceramic Sioux City dishes as well. I’ve included as a size comparison one of my Sioux City chopstick rests next to these little dishes:

Though my own vision is to use all of the above pieces of pottery as sauce bowls (for wasabi, yuzu koshō, etc.), they could serve as little trinket/ring dishes, too.

My Own Ceramic Chopstick Rest Designs!

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I’ve been producing a number of chopstick rests to give out as gifts this summer in Japan! The people are so nice and there’s such a gift-giving culture that I want to make sure I am able to reciprocate. I’ve mostly been making a variety of leaf chopstick rests:

However, I also am in the process of making a few Sioux City chopstick rests for those who are more connected to the sister city relationship between Yamanashi City and Sioux City or have strong bonds to Morningside University.

These are much more finicky to glaze, as keeping the text legible and the heart from “bleeding” into the white satin glaze requires a multi-step glazing process:

  1. I glaze the heart with two to three coats of glossy red with a small brush

  2. I apply wax resist to the heart and each of the letters with a very small brush

  3. I brush on two to three coats of the white satin glaze

  4. I painstakingly coax the glaze off the wax resist areas using a very small, wet brush

It’s tedious, but the results look great:

Shelby Prindaville's custom ceramic Sioux City, Iowa chopstick rest

Any of my chopstick rests can easily be converted into a magnet instead, if the recipients prefer to use them that way!

Short KNCK Radio Interview via NCK Today

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Concordia High School in Concordia, KS, one of my alma maters, has repeatedly invited me to connect with its students and share my love of art, nature, conservation, and higher education with them.

Radio host Loren Swenson reached out to me recently to once again highlight my journey and reflect on my time at CHS in another KNCK “Alumni Moment” segment which air during halftime at sports events; this one was played during a basketball game on Friday, February 7, 2025.

Below is a screenshot link to the recording on ncktoday.com on its general Talk Show page, but there’s no individual link so as more shows get added, it’ll be harder to find this specific show recording. I’ve therefore downloaded the audio file and then uploaded it at the bottom of this blog post so that this post will continue to make this recording easily accessible! As an FYI, the beginning of the recording suffers a little from compression/feedback issues, but it smooths out pretty quickly.

Promotion to Full Professor in 2025!

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I learned yesterday that I will become a senior faculty member at Morningside University beginning next fall, as I will be promoted to full professor!

In academia, there is a ranking system which is typically: instructor → assistant professor → associate professor → [full] professor.

I served as an instructor while teaching at Louisiana State University in graduate school in 2011-2013, became an assistant professor when I was hired full-time at the University of Saint Mary in 2013, was promoted to an associate professor in 2019 after earning tenure at USM but then moving to Morningside University, and have held the rank of associate professor since then while earning tenure at Mside in 2022.

It is an honor, and one that few academics reach before their mid-40’s, so I’m pleased to have earned it at the relatively youthful age of 38!

Generative AI Stealing From and Misunderstanding My Content

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In preparation for my Morningside University Humanities Speaker Series lecture Clay and Fire: Exploring Raku Ceramics, I was googling raku terminology to take screenshots that demonstrate that some of my artwork and research published within my blog posts are in the top internet search results for a number of raku finishing techniques. (Note: all below Google screenshots have a black background because I browse it using “dark mode” which is a bit easier on my eyes.)

In particular, my honey raku ceramics are the very first three image results and my website is also typically the first or second overall search result!

Screenshot of Google search image results for "honey raku", with my images as the first three results

As I was gathering screenshots of that, Google’s experimental generative AI decided to interrupt with its description of what honey raku is, and I was genuinely surprised when I first glanced at it - it was just a garbled reproduction of my own blog posts. Note that my blog is the first result under its “Learn more” right side panel.

The first Google generative AI stolen, erroneous description of “honey raku”

In comparison, below is a screenshot of the beginning of my blog post it’s pulling from:

A screenshot of a portion of my own honey raku blog post

You may have noticed these errors in the above generative AI description:

  • the image it stole (used uncredited) to illustrate the description is not of honey raku, it’s of ferric chloride and horsehair saggar-fired rakuware which is a different technique

  • the honey isn’t hot, the pottery is hot as it’s coming out from the 1000°C kiln

  • it works best on convex forms because the melting honey rolls off the convex forms but it settles in concavities and then you get large black pooling marks which aren’t as aesthetically pleasing

I downvoted this first generative AI description due to its errors, and then redid the search just to see what would happen. The generative AI “learned” from my downvoting, so it removed some of the misinformation, stole an image of mine to embed, and added new misinformation instead.

The second Google generative AI stolen, erroneous description, this time with stolen imagery as well

In this new description, it’s fixed the image reference and the convex vs. concave misunderstanding, but introduced new errors including:

  • for honey raku, you do not put the hot-out-of-the-kiln ceramic into a pit of combustible materials and then create a reduction atmosphere; that is, however, the process for some other raku techniques

  • it now doesn’t seem to know when/how the honey gets added, but it’s somewhere in the pit and that’s apparently enough

I shouldn’t be surprised; I’ve seen ChatGPT arguing that “strawberry” has only two R’s and generative AI advice to stare into the sun for 10-15min per day because it’s sincerely quoting from satirical newspapers. It’s a first for me, though, to see it explicitly quoting and erroneously paraphrasing me to spread misinformation.

Upcoming: Morningside University Humanities Speaker Series Lecture

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Coming up on Tuesday, February 18th at 7pm in Morningside University’s Weikert Auditorium (on the 2nd floor of the Buhler Rohlfs building), I will be presenting in the Morningside University Humanities Speaker Series with my Clay and Fire: Exploring Raku Ceramics lecture. This event is free and open to the public, so please stop by!

Shelby Prindaville's Morningside University Humanities Speaker Series raku ceramics lecture ad for February 2025

Behind the Scenes of Paper Snow (紙吹雪)

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Here are progress photos of Paper Snow (紙吹雪)! You can click on any of the thumbnails to see them larger in a sidescroll viewer. (Note that for in-process documentation, I rarely ensure a uniform lighting situation nor accurately color adjust the resulting photos like I do for the artwork photo.)

This painting was unusual for me in that I almost always start painting backgrounds before moving on to foregrounds and then going back and forth between the two until I think the piece is finished. With this painting however, I knew I didn’t want to obscure too much of the beautiful Uzurado dyed washi paper, so I started with the subject and then tested out just a cast shadow composition before adding a little ground and horizon.

New Artwork: Paper Snow (紙吹雪)

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During my first visit to Yamanashi City, I shared with several folks from city hall that I kept being stymied in my quest to see species-standard tanuki; as a consolation, they took me to Yamanashi City’s Manriki Park in the hopes of sharing their capybara with me. I was told it was up to fate as to whether I’d glimpse him or not, as sometimes he prefers to stay indoors (out of view). Fortunately for me, he was outdoors when we arrived and I was able to take some photos of him!

I painted this Manriki Park capybara atop Uzurado dyed washi paper from Ozu Washi. Uzura means quail in Japanese, and is a reference to the “paper snow” or confetti scraps and speckles decorating the paper like quail plumage.

This is Paper Snow (紙吹雪), acrylic on Uzurado dyed washi paper, 21.5x17”, 2025. Note my katakana stamp signature on the lower left below the capybara’s feet - that stamp was an extremely thoughtful gift from Yamanashi City to me!

An acrylic painting of Yamanashi City's capybara on Uzurado dyed washi paper by Shelby Prindaville

An acrylic painting of Yamanashi City's capybara on Uzurado dyed washi paper by Shelby Prindaville

A Second Residency with Arts Itoya!

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Due to my return to Japan in May 2025 for two solo shows in Yamanashi City’s Nezu Memorial Museum and Hirakata’s Kansai Gaidai University, I am happy to share that I will be completing a second artist residency in June 2025 with Arts Itoya in Takeo-onsen, Japan. I still have a lot of reference material and washi paper to make use of, and also plan to visit all three of the nearby well-known ceramic towns of Arita, Imari, and Karatsu. On my June 2024 residency I only carved out time to visit Arita once, and it was overwhelming; my artist travel friend Emily and I spent a full day there, walked until our feet were about ready to fall off, and we saw fewer than half of the studios and shops. I look forward to checking it out again and visiting Imari and Karatsu for the first time!

Spring 2025 Courses

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In Spring 2025 here at Morningside University, I will be teaching Graphic Design I, Painting I and II, Senior Art Seminar, Graphic Design Internship, Internship in Arts Administration, and Senior Project in Arts Administration. Enrollment in Senior Art Seminar has been steadily climbing, so keep your calendars open for all the exciting senior show receptions that will be happening in April and May!