Jun Kaneko

(Japanese, born 1942)

Jun Kaneko is a Japanese-born American ceramic artist best known for his large-scale sculptures. Sometimes weighing up to 100 pounds, his works resemble prehistoric monoliths onto which he paints elaborate, colorful, abstract designs. Born in 1942 in Nagoya, Japan, he came to the United States to study at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles and later at the University of California at Berkeley. There, Kaneko studied with Peter Voulkos, Paul Soldner, and Jerry Rothman during a period known to be the contemporary continuation of the 1950s California Clay Movement. The artist has worked in experimental studios in the Netherlands, Japan, and the United States, and has produced large-scale, hand-built sculptures in industrial and civic settings for the cities of Philadelphia, Omaha, Boston, and Kansas City, among others. Kaneko has continued to expand his oeuvre, designing whimsical sets and costumes for contemporary productions of Puccini’s Madame Butterfly (2006), Beethoven’s Fidelio (2008), and Mozart’s The Magic Flute (2012). His works are in the collections of the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, the De Young Museum in San Francisco, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among others. The artist lives and works in Omaha, NE, where in 1998, Kaneko and his wife formed KANEKO, a nonprofit cultural organization functioning as a community arts space.