CERAMICS PROFESSOR TO DISCUSS EXPERIENCES IN CHINA'S "PORCELAIN CITY"

NEWPORT, R.I. - Jay Lacouture, professor of art, will discuss his recent work as a visiting artist in China during "Jingdezhen: The Porcelain City" at 5 p.m. Wednesday, March 24 in the DiStefano Lecture Hall. Lacouture's illustrated talk will portray his experiences living and working in a land where ceramics is at the center of the cultural and economic heartbeat of the community.

Lacouture worked in Jingdezhen as a visiting artist for five weeks last fall as part of the West Virginia University/Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute's International Ceramic Program. In this city of 1.5 million people, about 800,000 are ceramics workers. Once the seat of the Ming Dynasty, the people of Jingdezhen have been making royal porcelain for 2,500 years.

Lacouture's five-week visit to Jingdezhen last fall was made possible through a program started 16 years ago by his mentor at West Virginia University, where Lacouture earned a master of fine arts degree in 1980. During his time in Jingdezhen, Lacouture gave presentations, including one as part of a Chinese TV series on ceramics, but he spent the bulk of his time working with clay.

"I was the first one in, and the last one out," he says. "You walk around with dirty pants and shoes with porcelain on them and it's like the red badge of courage. They're like, 'oh I get it, he's one of us ... the crazy foreigner is one of us.'"

The Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute, located in China's Jiangxi province, has about 13,000 students, of which about 10,000 are studying ceramics.

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