Hideo Mabuchi

Seek/make; relate/reflect; teach/write — these are the phases of my creative cycle. Various works result: objects, essays and talks, images and data, derivations, courses. Intuition drives the cycle and the cycle serves to refine and expand intuition — intuition about what is interesting, what is beautiful, what matters.

I do feel that beauty matters. It’s something you seek not something you make. It’s something you chase, something constitutively elusive. But you can find its tracks and frame them. You can find them in materiality, in hidden structures (both microscopic and mathematical), and in unexpected, far-flung connections.

I work with different kinds of frames. Ceramic objects are great frames for materiality, but less so for theoretical insights or surprising points of contact between ideas and historicity. Lately I’ve come to think of the courses I teach as one of my primary creative outlets. They are handy frames for my favorite connections among science, art, craft, and the humanities. They are opportunities to invite others into my cycle.

And there is writing. There is always writing — choosing words to externalize the cycle, an evolving intuition making tracks. Even if no one follows, it helps to see where you are.