A piece of pottery with a wide crack in two places used to serve rice on my dining table. It was a real conversation piece, and not because diners would grind their teeth on broken-off bits of bowl. The imperfections were all part of the design. After the potter Hadrian Mendoza had shaped the item into a medium-sized half sphere with smooth sides, he had made the slits, before finishing off with a glaze of gray and white.

Maybe it was tempting fate, for the dinner party came that a clumsy guest decided that the cracks were not enough, and the rice bowl ended up in the trash. So when last February Hadrian exhibited pieces at Mag:net Gallery in Makati, with two other potters in the show called “Centering,” off I went to have a look.

No cracks, breaks, and stabs this time, as had been this particular potter’s style in previous years. Now the pieces are more controlled and fluid, more traditional, actually. Ask Hadrian and he will tell you that this is him taking his craft more seriously. No more room for error now; a miscalculation cannot be remedied by a touch of deconstruction. You’ll be informed that it has to do with turning 30, which he did a few months back. “Now is the time to start going for your goals,” he says, “to push yourself past your limits.”

We have to watch this guy, then, if in the coming years he intends to go for it more than he has in the past. It’s been 10 years since he took a short course on pottery and gotten hooked on it. So despite the business degree earned from Mary Washington College in Virginia, U.S., Hadrian decided not to enter the corporate world, but rather get jobs at pottery studios to learn more of the craft. “My main goal was to work, work, work.” So manic was he that he even exhausted teachers at the Corcoran School of Arts, where for a year and a half he was a part-time student. “They fold me that it was time to move on,” he says. “I was putting a big dent on supplies, using up a lot of clay all over the place. I was always in the studio and my pots were everywhere.”

Local potter Jon Pettyjohn was not turned off when, in 1997, Hadrian came to the Philippines for a year to work as his apprentice. In 1999, with Hadrian back in the States, he got a call from Pettyjohn, asking if he was interested in working together. Shortly after, the Pettyjohn-Mendoza School of Pottery was born.

For the past years now, in their space in Greenbelt, Makati, students have been learning to work clay. It is only when you handle the material yourself do you realize that making a bowl is not an easy thing. First comes wedging, where with your two hands performing twisting and breaking-off motions you handle a ball of clay, aiming to get an even consistency. Then comes centering, a tricky process that rezuires your hands to position the clay exactly right, aligning the particles o fearth just so, while a foot turns madly to get the kick wheel going. You push into the middle of the lump of clay now, opening and making smooth what will be the bottom of the bowl. Your foot still moves. After this, raise the clay to form sides, shaping as you go along.

When you’re satisfied with the form, the work is still not done. There is the trimming of the base, the application of glaze, and the firing. All the steps require hours of practice to perfect. You need reach only the middle part, sighing with relief that the sides of your bowl did not separate clear off its base, to realize that this is a serious craft. A potter cannot be lazy.

Hadrian has ideas playing in his head, some new, others taking off from stuff he’s done in the past. “Never let yourself be satisfied with what you do,” he proclaims. “There’s always a quick satisfaction in something- a new color, a new form- but you shouldn’t dwell on it too long.” Advice well taken; time to stop thinking about cracked rice bowls then.

Hadrian Mendoza, 30, a stoneware maker, can be called the Picasso of Philippine pottery because of his fearless and audacious search for the unusual and indigenous forms, including expressionistic shapes, despite the limitations of pots and vases.

Mendoza was a business administration graduate of the Mary Washington College and a one year old student at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington D.C., before he hankered for roots and willfully transported himself to Manila to become a stoneware potter by end of 1997.

"I gave myself 10 years to pottery then," he recalled.

At the start, he had an eight-month of apprenticeship with Jon Pettyjohn, a famous Fil-American master potter in the Philippines. Mendoza's quid pro quo for the master then was "energy for wisdom in pot making". True, Mendoza was on the road to become a humble craftsman.

"But the truth is, I wanted to put some culture into my work. I didn't know how, but I knew it could be done by working in my own country," Mendoza explained.

While in Manila, he meditated on being a Filipino. In the process, he slowly metamorphosed into an individualistic and a nationalistic artist with a keen and hungry eye for Southeast Asia's indigenous forms, even as he perfected the abstract and minimalist forms that went well in the making of stoneware pottery, the way it is currently done in the Philippines.

The perfection of his craft, he said, always remained inversely proportional to his intense and deliberate attempts at achieving heavy cultural undertones for his works, a predicament that began when he vowed to be become a potter while he was still in the US.

In eight years, Mendoza has made three distinct phases that could be called major landmarks in Philippine pottery, in terms of achieving meaning and symbols for his works.

From 1996 to 1997, while he was still an arts student in the US, he made 30 gigantic jars, some of them taller than his 1.77 metres.

His "Chain Vase," made in early 1997, is a tall brown jar with a distorted, semi-sunken, and anguished mouth. Its tapering body and round belly are textured with coils that were earlier shaped by his fingers. The vase is decorated with criss-crossing black chain that, after a long glance, begins to look like a spine.

Gaping windows

Another piece, entitled, "Bahay Kubo (the Philippines' nipa hut)," has four round pots stacked on top of the other. There are small gaping windows (or wounds) at the seams where they are connected, making them stand tall with fragility. The whole piece is embossed with spine-looking chain.

"The bahay-kubo was implanted in my mind (when I was a young boy). But when I was making pottery, I didn't realise that I was making bahay-kubo with pots until the whole piece was fired," he said.

Mendoza's first jars have become archetypal of his "coming of age," of a voice that strongly speaks of rejection of oppression, of a strong desire for manhood, identity, dignity, and the flowering of one's culture, a passion common nowadays among many Asian artists who have been separated, by force, from their own cultural milieu.

"I think I have found my home here," he said. It was a subtle way of saying, "I don't want to be alienated again," a phrase often heard from many talented Fil-Americans, who in search of intensities and identity, have decided to come home and arduously embrace their own culture, with intuition more than reason.

In 1980, Mendoza was seven, in grade one at the prestigious San Agustin Elementary School, in Dasmarinas, Makati when his mother Rica brought him and his older brother Jo-Vincent and younger sister Patricia to stay in the US. His father, Victor, a corporate giant in one of Manila's rising companies, was left behind. Although the new Filipino immigrants settled in a good neighbourhood in Washington D.C., Mendoza recalled, "There were times when I saw my older brother being beaten up and I could not do anything about it."

Even in hindsight, Mendoza barely underlines anything personal and cultural to the old pieces that he has made in the US. Explaining them, he said, "I was making pots that were taller than me to test how big I could work on stoneware; to test how high the clay could go, how thin and thick the clay should be, how to stack them together, and create a distinct mark on where they are attached.

"The bigger the size of the piece, the better is the movement for the glaze. There is more challenge in applying three layers of glaze without brush strokes coming out on the big pots," he explained. "There is intimacy in making big jars," he added: "You spend a couple of days with them. You're dedicated to them. In comparison, you finish small pieces in a day."

Importance of bamboo

In March 2003, five years after he became a potter, Mendoza accidentally discerned the importance of bamboo, a common grass in the Philippines, as a possible core of Philippine indigenous form. He was then creating nodes with a piece of wood, on a vase that was turning on his potter's wheel. Instantly inspired, he made three tubular shapes which he stacked together, and created bamboo pieces as high as three to four feet. Glazed with ipil ash, they were subjected to reduction firing in his 1.5 metre tall kiln, which he made near his home in Laguna in 2001.

"My goal is to put culture into my work, so that when people see my pieces, they are not only recognised as Mendoza's, but as pieces that come from this region," he explained.

But after creating 50 bamboo jars and its variations, Mendoza said he was done with the "very Philippine shape".

Some of these pieces were shown at the 139 Gallery in Makati Commercial Centre's Glorieta in December 2003, and at the Magnet Gallery in Makati's Paseo de Roxa Avenue in January 2004.

In early 2004, Mendoza started experimenting on the Manunggul Jar, a prototype of Southeast Asia's 3,000 year old funereal vessel, (dated 710 to 890 BC), which was unearthed by Filipino and American archeologists in the Tabon Caves of Palawan, in southwestern Philippines in March 1964. The remains of a 3,000 year old man were also discovered in the same cave.

When the old Manunggul Jar was found, anthropologist Robert Fox was delighted and said, "It is the work of an artist and a master potter. It is the most beautiful burial jar [ever] found by archeologists in the whole of Southeast Asia."

A drawing of the old Manunggul jar is featured on the P1,000 bill.

On top of the cover of the old Manunggul Jar is a death boat with two seated figures, one at the rear is holding a paddle, and the one infront who has his hands folded on his chest. Both have covered heads and jaws.

Enamoured with the piece, Mendoza said, "I have the same boat and the same seated figures. But look closely, the bodies are moving differently [they are not as deathly and as zombie-looking as in the old jar]." He also placed the boat with seated figures on a big circle with a stand, which has been used to symbolise the male and the female gender.

Lower depths

With his new pieces, the youthful Mendoza who, as an artist, has had his share of the overpowering lower depths, believes that he has resurrected life and claimed the value of courageous journey from the antique Manunggul jar. Placing more colourful glaze on his new jars, he thinks he has also overpowered the underlying sense of life's eternal return on the old Manunggul jar.

"I am not afraid of taking things of history and putting them in my work. I am not replicating them. I am imitating them and putting them in a different form [to achieve a different meaning]," he explained.

Living in the Philippines has challenged energised him. In 1998, his personal and avant-garde pieces were featured in his first one man show at the Metropolitan Museum. One of them was entitled "Self portrait," a red and brown piece made of three straight cylindrical shapes stacked on top of each other, at the top of which is a small tip with curly locks, similar to his hair-do (also called dread lock) at the time. He has enlarged a small antique Chinese jar for beer, to three feet and to make it look like an overweight hedonist.

He almost failed to settle down in Laguna, southern Luzon where his studio is located. Soon after his apprenticeship with Pettyohn and his first one-man show, he returned to the US in late 1998, where he fired kilns in exchange for studio time at some artists workshops. "There were times when things got stagnant and I felt strangled," he recalled. Changes happened when Pettyjohn asked him to come back and establish in 2000, the Pettyjohn-Mendoza school of pottery at Makati's Greenbelt commercial centre.

At home with his clay, he said, "Every time I make forms, subconsciously (or instantly) I can think of glazes." He has developed intimate relationship with his works. "I can see what a piece went through from the time it was shaped to the time it was fired. I can see how the clay was made thin, how it was stretched out and moved in a position it does not naturally like, until it was shaped and fired to one's desired shape," he explained. He has become a humble craftsman after serving at the feet of his own cultural dilemmas as an artist.

July 30 in Gallery 139 at the Artwalk, 4/L, Building A, SM Megamall. Here Mendoza is tinkering with his craft and has moved on from vases to more functional items.

These are utensils guaranteed to turn dining into an exotic experience. Coming face to face with them on the table may enhance your appreciation of the visual appeal of food, or even whet your appetite. But a contemplation of their worth and aesthetics may distract your experience and cuisine.

There are still vases here, and they do function as vases, but they are rather more sculptural than merely practial. Incised, impressed or dented, some have classic forms (conical, spherical, pyramidical), while others are oddly shaped, with protuberances or peacock spots on the surface, snakelike spirals around the body, oval ring on the face, uneven rim.

One or two of these as a converstion piece on the table can set off the dinner, even without the flowers. A few xould be jugs or pitchers such as an anagama fired one of slate-green with a prominently protruding lip, the uper half of the conical body giving the illusion of leaning.

The exhibit, however, consists mostly of bowls of various sizes and functions. They can serve as individual soup bowls, tureens, teacups, canisters, coffee mugs, drinking glasses, even dim sum trays. The largest of these, in tan-blue matt glaze, of greenish-gray with cerulean and brown spots, can serve as a fruit tray.

A set of 10 small bowls in shino glaze, of whitish gray-brown, slightly elevated on unglazed bases and adorned with horizontal ribbing, could be teacups. There is a similar set of eight, but in khaki glaze, of tobacco-brown with blue traces.

The rest are variants- smoothe-surfaced or highly textured, dull or shiny, with relief or ribbing, drips or washes, of greenish tinge, celadon, olive-green, reddish brown, or half-maroon and half-black, ink-blue outside and brown inside, with ink-blue spots, rust-colored speckles, or a concentric bottom of gray and azure, like the nacre of a shellfish.

There are several porcelain bowls in tan-blue matt glaze. There is a set of three, shiny ones of yellowish brown-green. Another is a set of five, azure with thitish spots. The loveliest of these porcelain pieces is a blue one with an uneven rim and concentric bottom with spots of violet, like mother-of-pearl.

Four rectangle plates are scattered amid the the bowls: in tenmoku glaze, colored marooon with washes of black; in khaki glaze, with ink-blue washes; in tan-blue matt glaze; and in shino glaze, a whitish gray-brown piece with raised edges. Each looks like a sushi or sashimi dish. But it may also serve as a salver for nuts, chips, cookies, candies, or even as a sauceboat.

There are, of course, some round plates: a set of three in tan-blue matt glaze, elevated on bases; and a set of five in shino glaze, of whitish gray-brown.

We'd like to think these are dinner sets, that is, if one's idea of fine dining is eating off the bivalve of a giant clam.

Pottery is one of the most ancient arts, with the oldest known body of work dating back to the Jomon period (from about 10,000 to 400 BC) in Japan. It is interesting to note that even these ceramic works already boasted of a uniqueness an sophistication in technique and design.

Excavations in the Near Eadt have turned up primitive fired clay vessels estimated to be more than 8,000 years old. There were already potters working in Iran by 5500 BC. In fact, there is a griat possibility that earthenware was probably being produced even earlier on the Iranian higher plateau. Back east, Chinese potters had developed their own techniques by about 5000 BC.

There are three types of pottery wares- earthenware, stoneware, and Chinese porcelain. Earthenware is composed of clay (usually blended clays) and baked hard, the degree of hardness depending on the intensity of the heat. When glazing was invented, earthenware were coated with glaze to make them waterproof. There were times, though, when glazing was used purely for decorative purposes. Stoneware is derived form earthenware except that the former is fired at great heat to make it nonporous. Thus, stoneware became more preferred for home use. Porcelain is a Chinese invention. It is believed that porcelain was first made by Chinese potters toward the end of the Han Dynasty (206 BC to AD 220). It was during this period that pottery became more refined in body, form, and decoration.

And that, in a nutshell, is a condenses history of pottery. Thanks to the Internet, I was able to get this information.

Now, let me share a brif history of my personal affair with pottery. It was in the late '70s that I became acquainted with clay pots. Basically, I had a set of clay cookware (for kids, of course!), which my lola bought for me suring a trip to Antipolo. Whenever I would break one of my precious miniature cookware pieces, my mom would oblingly buy me a replacement at the market. And then, during my growing up years (and even to this day) I would encounter the palayok in restaurants, as it was used for serving my favorite kare-kare. I even used a palayok for a Science project once in high school. It was the container in which I grew my bonsai (never mind the fact that my teacher then found it ridiculous to use palayok; for the record though, my bonsai thrived in that container so she had to give me a passing grade).

Today, I am happy to tell you that I have met a real, honest-to-goodness potter: Hadrian Mendoza. How did I chance upon him? Well, wish I could relate something out of the ordinary, but it really was out of need. There I was, again, looking for something interesting to write about and there he was- Hadrian.

Of Filipino descent, he was flown to the United States (to Washington, DC, to be exact), soon after his auspicious birth. That was sometime in 1979 to 1980. He went to school at Mary Washington College in Virginia and the Corcoran School of Art. In 1996 to 1997, he was awarded the Anne and Arnold Abramson Award for Excellence in Ceramics. In his own words, he "makes pots and teaches pottery."

Of course, you might ask, "What kind of a job is being a potter? Well, it is probably similar to being a painter or a sculptor. "I made a camel the first time I touched clay," he shares of his personal love affair with pottery. Mind you, he's been playing with play dough all his life. And when he turned professional, his firs handiwork was, you guessed it- a palayok!

Aksed what drew him to this art, he merely shrugs his shoulders. It seems more like instinctively knowing what you wnt to do. Hadrian currently divides his time between teaching pottery at the Pettyjohn-Mendoza Pottery School (Garden Square building in Greenbelt, Makati) and making his own collections for shows and exhibits. While he sees teaching as a way to spread the word on the beauty of making pottery, he still prefers being a potter. That is, making and creating pots as a form of artistry.

And being the true artist that he is, he stays in Makiling, where he "draws energy from the mountain." Typical of most artists, he also has curious working hours. "I work just before the sun sets till before sunrise," he explains. Why? He attributes this to his belief that he is an old soul. Believing in sestiny, he is not one to openly advertise his work.. Similarly he knows he will be "found" by fate. (According to him, it is much like me sinding him and thus he was afforded a chance to tell more people about pottery).

As a potter, he has simple needs for his art form. Clay, wheel, glaze, kiln, and hands. Pottery, he says, is done by the hand and that's what makes it special. Then, ofcourse, lots and lots of inagination.

Hadrian holds anywhere from four to six one-man shows each year. He has an ongoing show, entitled "Spontaneously Raw," at the Izukan (88 Corporate Center, 141 Valero corner Sedeno Sts. Makati).

"self portrait" and "sunset at Calatagan"

"porcelain vase"

"sculptured vase"

Seven Months in the Philippines is Hadrian Zamora Mendoza's diary of his innermost thoughts which he profoundly expresses through clay.

The exhibit, which will open tomorrow at 6:30pm at the foyer of the Metropolitan Museum of Manila and will run until July 17, showcases 70 earthenware and stoneware vessels which draw inspiration from the enveronment, nature, animals and people. The decorative objects will then be put on display until Aug. 1 at the Met Shop.

"Most of these pieces are unintentional, meaning that their beauty lies in the unknown. I don't know where they came from but must have come from my mind. Upon completion of each piece, I take a step back and try to comprehend what has just happened during the creating process. Most of them, I believe, are expressions influenced by my personal contact with people, animals or other forms of nature. Basically, our environment here in the Philippines," said Hadrian.

Like the vase entitled Sunset at Calatagan, which combines a rich surface of blended color and detail with a simple, curving form. This white and pinatubo glazed stoneware reminds him of Calatagan where he spends his weekends to take a respite from his work on Mondays to Fridays, that is, creating pots of varied shapes from 9am to 6pm at the residence of fellow artist Jon Pettyjohn in Pansol, Laguna.

"It's not hard on the mind but kind of tiring mentally because you do it all day," said Hadrian.

On the other hand, Self-portrait, a pinatubo, chun and tenmoku-glazed stoneware, speaks of Hadrian's passion as an artist. "It stands up straight on its toes. Like the artwork, I am starting to make a career as an artist. And it's really hard. I haven't considered myself a full-time artist. But that's what I'm trying to do. I think it comes out of my work."

Seven Months in the Philippines will also display untitled works such as a porcelain vase with chun and ox-blood red glaze and a sculptured vase with pinatubo and tenmoku glaze.

"Like a musician who doesn't think of anythin while he plays, I just try to find things that relate with me. With some pieces, I find nothing so I don't name them. Sometimes, a title for a piece comes to my mind after a year," related Hadrian.

For Hadrian, the richness of an artwork shines through when its viewers could see something in them which they could relate to; when the piece does not only speak of the artist but more on a universal level.

"A painter-friend tells me not to worry if one understands the works or not. I just have to find my own meaning in the piece. And so does Jon Pettyjohn who is a big believer in making things that you like. he often tells me to do whatever I want and not to worry about people who will play with my art."

Some viewers who saw Hadrian's show last year say that his works look "too intense." Or that his sculptured vase depicts "a lot of anger" because of the cuts on the object.

"When clay is wet and is on the potter's wheel, it's really responsive to your hands with just the slightest movement. It's like an instrument that when you feel good on a certain day and you're in tune with the clay, it will just come up. You'll feel there's a lot of energy in you as soon as you create designs. I really have a hard time explaining my works and how I see them," says Hadrian.

It was three years ago when Hadrian first dabbled in pottery in the United States where he has been residing since he was a kid.

"I was brought there not by choice but by certain incidents that occur in life. A climate where on uses heaters during the colder seasons greatly affects the way a piece is made by breaking the natural effects of the environment upon the clay. So this show is special to me cecause it is the first time that I am able to work under natural conditions and in my place of birth," related Hadrian who plans to put up his own studio next year in a less congested place in the Philippines where he can offer pottery workshops.

And since Hadrian began to learn the art and techniques of pottery, the more he became eager to know everything about his culture and to go into a deeper quest for his roots. "I have returned to the Philippines to search for my roots and understand the true meaning of clay. Majority of these pieces tend to look sculptural. But by working under Jon Pettyjohn, I've found a bridge that might lead me to my root. So as I take a step back and try to comprehend this show, I hope that viewers will experience a fraction of the energy that I have put into these pieces."