Sue Chiu, in her dining room, holds one of her trays.
Chiu’s teapot was juried into the Ellarslie exhibition in the spring.
Chiu’s tea set features hand-made saucers in the shape of Taiwan.
Sue S. Chiu displays her ceramic works at exhibits around Central Jersey.
By Pat Summers
Lawrence resident Sue S. Chiu can claim all she wants that she’s not an artist, but her home—filled with her ceramic boxes, covered jars, trays and teapots—clearly contradicts her.
So does the fact that she registers for a ceramics course every semester at Mercer County Community College, and when she’s not there, or playing doubles tennis or taking walks with her husband, she’s likely to be creating more ceramic pieces.
During her extensive travels, she looked for ceramic works, often buying small pieces. She had left her native Taiwan for Hawaii as a university exchange student in the early ’60s. Later that decade, she joined her scientist husband, Timmy, in North Carolina. They also lived in New York State and California before moving to Lawrence in 1974.
Chiu, 77, took her first ceramics course in 1984 and immediately took to making pottery as well as collecting it. But realizing she couldn’t really get into it then—“We had to make a living,” she says with a laugh—she waited until she retired from American Cyanamid in 1998 to get going.
Ever since, it’s been total immersion, as she learned various ways to work with clay and began producing teapots—for years her main focus. Chiu estimates she may have made 60 of them by now, but because she’s given many away, she doesn’t have an exact count.
She hand-builds some works, uses the coil method for big pieces and throws on the wheel. Summertime means raku season, a time when she concentrates on this low fire pottery technique, saying simply, “It is beautiful.”
Beautiful, too, is a tour of Chiu’s serene home, which serves as a living museum for her ceramics. Near the front door, the library houses numerous books, as might be expected. But many shelves hold her ceramic pieces, in a range of sizes, hues and finishes. She describes how each one came about as if it were made yesterday.
The dining room is another show room, where anything ceramic is likely to be her work, and the fireplace mantel in the living room features an array of her teapots.
Although there’s still more upstairs, the richest ceramic vein occurs downstairs, in Chiu’s basement studio and storage-display area. Shelves and cabinets around the room are filled with her work. Representing about 15 years of learning and producing, the pieces here range widely in form and technique. Arranged chronologically, they would make a 3-D curriculum vitae.
As always, Chiu begins with her desired end in mind, with preliminary sketches including size, shape and color. She saves everything she makes, with one exception: she once smashed a plate because “the glaze came out very ugly.” These days, the glazes she’s happiest with are sandy yellow, slate blue, spearmint (“like celadon”) and butterscotch. In typical modest fashion, she says they’re “very forgiving,” without crediting her own skill or experience.
She doesn’t make ceramic (“fine art”) sculpture, but Chiu says, “When I make a functional piece, I want it good enough to display.”
That’s no problem. She has regularly exhibited in the annual juried Mercer County Artists show at Mercer County Community College, and her bamboo-handled teapot was juried into the Ellarslie Open at the Trenton City Museum this spring. Her work was also part of the juried South Brunswick Arts Commission show, “Natural Celebrations,” that closed late last month.
Leaves are a recurring motif in her ceramics. She especially likes viburnum (“a firm leaf with deep strong veins”) and ginkgo leaves, sometimes collecting them on her walks. The sharply imprinted leaves seen on some works and the clay leaves attached to others illustrate her admiration.
To say that Chiu—an energetic five-footer—has produced a myriad of ceramic pieces is to understate. Taking stock of the work in her home is like counting jelly beans in a giant jar.
Her ceramics include a basically blue “patchwork” teapot, with each patch a different design, and other pieces that include carving or application of materials like horse hair and feathers. A charming tea set includes hand-made saucers in the shape of Taiwan, where the artist was born in 1936.
Some pieces were raku fired, with or without glaze; others were sawdust fired. Continually registered in Mercer’s ceramics courses, she has use of the college’s kiln.
Trained in entomology (the study of insects), Chiu earned master’s degrees from National Taiwan University and the University of Hawaii. Her work experience in academia and industry prompts her self-description as a biologist/chemist.
The Chius’ grown son and daughter, Raleigh and Joy, both graduated from Lawrence High School, after which Raleigh went to Caltech, and Joy, to Swarthmore.
For Chiu, summer highlights include some travel besides the raku course she looks forward to every year.
,
