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If ever there was an artist whose name sounds like their medium, 'Blunk' might be the sound you'd expect a ball of clay to make when thrown down with full force on a pottery wheel. And if ever there was an artist whose work feels the way its creator envisions reality, JB Blunk's biomorphic forms are both rigid yet soft, both tangible yet strange, and both autochthonous yet other-worldly. Presented in a series of exquisitely rendered detail, this monograph captures the full scope of acclaimed 20th century artist JB Blunk's life work — from jewellery to pottery to sculpture to his hand-built home. Interspersed are archival interviews with Blunk and essays by Noguchi, Blunk's daughter Mariah Nielson and Rick Yoshimoto, among others. What emerges is an oeuvre that is obsessively varied while remaining singly focused. In an age where we are encouraged to carve out a space for ourselves in the world, to bend reality to our will, and to shake our fist to the sky when reality refuses to bend according to our preferred contours, JB Blunk's work teaches us how to prove our own existence to the world in our own humble and life-affirming way: by leaving marks within it that somehow appear to have been there all along. 

Words by: Kasumi Borczyk
Image by: Shannon May Powell

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