Japanese artist teaches Maconites how to make broken pottery ‘better than before’

Beth Dunwody saved a broken piece of pottery for more than 10 years, waiting for someone to come along and fix it.

She never thought she would be the person to do it.

“I’m just delighted to have it back and to have it restored even better than before,” she said.

Dunwody was one of eight participants at a Kintsugi workshop on June 28 at the Mill Hill Community Arts Center.

The instructor, Azumi Aoyagi, said Kintsugi is an old Japanese art form used to repair broken ceramics and pottery. The class put back together their broken pots and vases and painted the cracks gold.

“I want to give a lesson: just don’t throw away broken stuff when you break (it) and we can repair it,” she said.

Aoyagi, from Japan, traveled to Macon with her friend Christian Brauneck, who grew up in Macon.

Brauneck, a photographer, said he moved to Japan around two years ago to teach English and met Aoyagi. Shortly after meeting, they both quit their jobs to focus more on their art, he said. Aoyagi was already doing small workshops and art classes in Japan, and they started talking about traveling to different countries to do workshops as well.

For their first trip, they went to San Franscisco first and then stopped in Macon.

“We’ve just received a lot of positive feedback from many, many people,” he said. “I figured people would like it, but they were extremely like satisfied with the experience. They had like a deep appreciation for what they did in our workshops.”

Dunwody said Aoyagi and Brauneck were great instructors who made the technique easy to learn.

“I’m so glad that they brought this workshop and this technique to Macon, and we hope that they will come back again soon,” she said.