Visit Kevin's Work

Home | Contact | Student Portal

About

Classes

Follow Us:

Bookmark:

Press > Articles

We're In The News!

Voted Best Pottery Studio for Amateurs
August 2008

Best of LA 2008

Students at Xiem Clay Center can live out their Jonathan Adler dreams with six-week courses in sculpture, pottery, and tile making. Each series of classes (registration fees starts at $240) includes 25 pounds of clay and 12 hours of instructions. Students have access to the center’s studio, which opens on a patio that looks like a Zen garden by way of the Southwest. Those who sign up for premier memberships can use the studio round the clock and have their ceramic work consider for display in the center’s 1,000-square-foot gallery.

View Full Original Article (pdf 253KB)

Art From Earth
by Seth Amition - October 8, 2007

Xiem™ Clay Center in its well-equipped, modern and spotlessly clean studio offers up classes for learning, a studio for creating, a gallery for experiencing.

It takes three days to fire up a kiln. The first day, the kiln operator cleans out the kiln and places the pre-heated clay pieces in it, filling up the space inside the kiln as best as he or she can, the second day, the kiln is fired up, the clay pieces cook and gain structural integrity and the third day, they are left to cool.

...Learn

Every step of the process is demanding. An error can destroy irreplaceable work, countless hours of artistry can lost.

Kilns are also expensive, and this makes clay workshops valuable commodities. Kevin Xiem Nguyen, founder and proprietor of the Xiem (pronounced “sim”) Clay Center in Pasadena has created an all-encompassing clay arts facility, with classes to teach, a studio to create and a gallery to experience.

Nguyen, 36, was born in Vietnam and moved with his family to southern California when he was 14. He studied at Cal State Long Beach and later at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Design.

“He worked with clay as an industrial designer,” Suzette Munnik, the Xiem Center’s education director says. “Some people like it, other don’t. He happened to like it a lot.”

View Full Original Article (pdf 253KB)

Kevin Nguyen Designs a Career in Ceramics
by Judy Seckler - May 2007

The Ceramic Realm of Kevin Nguyen

The Xiem (pronounced “sim”) Clay Center is setback from the street, which makes its discovery all the more appealing for first-time visitors. Every inch of the 4500-square-foot space on Lake Street in Pasadena, California, with its 24 wheels and four state-of-the-art kilns, is spotless. The modern glass and stucco structure, with its angular architectural details, welcomes artists to dive in.

...Learn

“The center is a dream place for me and it happened so fast. It’s almost beyond belief,” recalls Kevin Xiem Nguyen, the center’s founder.

It’s a vision that got its start a little more than three years ago through the partnership of Nguyen, an Art Center College of Design graduate, and Brian Fees, a CFO of a software services firm. Fees, a collector of ceramics, met Nguyen selling his work at weekend craft shows like the Beverly Hills “Affair in the Garden,” where he was awarded “Best of Show” during the last four years. Nguyen was at a crossroads in his career as an industrial designer at the time. After following a friend to a ceramics class in Santa Monica, California, “an obsessive love of clay” took hold over him. One he thought he could parlay into a business and a new career. He approached Fees—who had a penchant for buying buildings, fixing them up and reselling them—with the idea of creating a new educational clay center and artistic community, which Nguyen could call home base. To make the concept work, the two men embarked on a journey, researching what it would take to create a thriving artistic community. On a vacation to five or six countries, among them Denmark, Sweden and Finland, they saw how others before them had established successful clay studios.

In the solitary world of ceramics, it’s common for artists to work alone or with a spouse or partner. It’s unusual to produce work based on a well-thought-out business plan that drives both the artist and the business forward, although it’s a common model used in business circles. The 35-year-old Nguyen attributes his industrial design skills for propelling him in a new direction. Fees credits the profitability of the venture on a three-prong approach: different levels of monthly, quarterly and yearly memberships, a range of beginner, intermediate and advanced classes, as well as sales from Nguyen’s work, which accounts for fifty percent of the center’s revenue. “We’ve established a loyal clientele and the revenue generated is predictable from month to month,” Fees explained. He also realized the need to buy property outright instead of leasing. He noticed in his research that several studios had run aground when they lost their leases and he wanted to avoid the same scenario. A frame store leases 1000 square feet of the building, which defrays overhead costs. The division of labor between the partners is what one would expect. Nguyen serves as chief clay artist, and as the center’s graphic, product and furniture designer, producing T-shirts, packaging and handmade brushes that are sold at the center’s retail store. The store also carries an impressive selection of ceramic tools. Additionally, Nguyen serves as the center’s buyer, looking for ceramic gems to be sold alongside his work. Fees pays the mortgage and the instructors. He handles all the finances and tracks the money. Another staff member, center director Suzette Munnik, handles class scheduling and curates the gallery shows that run four times a year. Junzo Mori serves as the center’s lab technician, supervising the firings.

Fees, who had relocated to Atlanta, spent a year traveling back and forth on weekends to the West Coast to oversee construction. Meanwhile, Nguyen showed his work at additional craft shows, where his sales generated additional start-up money for the center. During the shows, Nguyen established a mailing list of 1000 clients. Invitations to the center’s opening in October 2003 were generated from his list. “All have become customers,” Nguyen said. Simultaneously, the center held its first exhibition, a combination of Nguyen’s work and nearby faculty teachers, creating a list of potential teachers for the center.

It took eleven months of preparation before the center could open; a bit longer than Nguyen’s original optimistic estimate of three months but the partners knew their vision wasn’t going to happen overnight. At last, Nguyen had a studio to generate his ceramic art while providing a range of classes offered at various levels of expertise in wheel throwing, handbuilding, tile making, sculpture and glaze calculation. A premier studio membership allows members 24-hour access to the clay center. All of the membership levels allow patrons 4500 cubic inches of bisque and glaze firings per month. About 35 glazes are available to the members for their use. It’s a hands-on environment where students can practice their skills and improve in the company of others.

All this might not have been possible if Fees didn’t have confidence in Nguyen’s work. “I knew there was a commitment there. I was skeptical at first but then I attended some of his shows and saw there was a following for his work,” Fees recalls. The skills culled from Nguyen’s background as an industrial designer have played an integral part in his transition. He keeps up with design influences. Being able to take a concept to finished product with a budget, producing a beautiful object that also improves the quality of life and being immersed in Asian aesthetics all factor into his ceramic work. “He relates color to designer trends. He’s very aware of contemporary colors,” Munnik said. “He gets this from his training.” In addition, the artist knows his market of 24–50 year olds.

Nguyen’s ceramic work is a constantly evolving experiment with process and glazes. The common thread that runs through his current work is a passion for color and texture. In one style, crisp, contemporary lines telegraph his industrial design background. For these pieces, he uses wheel-thrown stoneware that is fired to Cone 10. The exterior surfaces of his bowls are covered in a matt crackle finish, while the interior surface is high gloss. His color combinations are so bright and satisfying that, overall, his pieces s eem to glow. Because of Nguyen’s use of inlaid and sprayed porcelain slip, the inside surface has the look and feel of porcelain. Working in a s econd process, Nguyen makes wide- and thin-necked stoneware vases with contrasting textures. A major portion of the body is sanded to produce variations in the surface, giving the pieces an earthy persona. The primary texture of the work is interrupted by matt bas-relief patterns. Fired to Cone 10, the end result is a cross between a modern and Craftsman look. As he evolves, his expressive approach to texture is evident.

A lot has changed for the boy who started life in Ben Tre, a small Vietnamese village. In 1986, the then-14-year-old Nguyen, his parents and five siblings immigrated to Costa Mesa, California, seeking political asylum because his father had been a soldier with the anti- Communist government. He arrived in Southern California never having seen a modern refrigerator or stove. He had never watched TV or movies on a VCR.

His first task was to learn English and Spanish at Costa Mesa high school and weekends working at swap meets. His family made extra money recycling cans, newspapers and cardboard at the Irvine recycling center. He experienced the simple joys of his new country when he visited supermarkets to look at all the products on the shelves and take advantage of the air conditioning. He studied math, engineering and physics at a nearby community college and Cal State Long Beach but soon became enamoured with industrial design. He left behind his academic career track, winning a scholarship to Art Center College of Design. After five years, his interest in industrial design took a back seat to ceramics. Since then, his ceramic work has garnered much attention in and around Pasadena. In 2006, Nguyen was chosen as one of six Pasadena Arts Council Gold Crown Honorees, celebrated as having significantly enhanced the cultural life of the city. It’s all about taking small steps, according to the partners. “I’ve been involved in a lot of small businesses. It grows and you hire more people. Then you have to grow into that,” said Fees. Aside from custom packaging for various tool kits, another project on the horizon is to design software to track cubic firing inches. “It will only print a slip if you have a positive balance,” Nguyen said. The plan is to launch the program by the year’s end. Fees wants to offer it to universities without cost since firing is the most difficult and expensive part of the ceramic process. There’s no telling where the center’s growth will go, given Nguyen’s ongoing ability to top himself. He promotes the Xiem Clay Center (www.xiemclaycenter.com), its retail store and gallery with verve.

And he retains a child’s wonderment about it all. “When I look back, it’s one of the most amazing journeys: not having been around a society with modern conveniences, it’s almost a 180-degree turnaround,” Nguyen marveled.

View Full Original Article (pdf - 3.37MB)

Across the Pacific:
Contemporary Asian Ceramic Art
by Matthew Leslie - April, 2007

The public is invited to celebrate the opening of an exhibition of contemporary ceramics by Asian artists, at a reception scheduled for Sunday, April 15, noon to 4pm. Several participating artists are expected to attend.

“Across the Pacific” surveys current trends from Korea, Japan, China, and Vietnam through recent work by respected artist including the work of Kevin Nguyen, Bruce Kim Hon Sun Choi, Jenchi Wu, Ken Takahashi, Kyung-sook Suh, Li Kung, Mitsuko Kamiya, Nobuhito Nishigawara, Sam Chung, Sewon Minn, Tadao Kamiya, and Young-Bae Kwon.

...Learn

Several of the artists, will present a free informal slide show in the Muckenthaler’s Mudd Art Studio at 2pm on April 15, when the exhibition opens to the public.

“Across the Pacific” closes June 24 at the Muckenthaler Cultural Center, located at 1201 W. Malvern Ave., Fullerton, CA 92833. The Muckenthaler Center also offers ceramics classes for all ages. Visit www.muckenthaler.org or call 738-6595 for a schedule of classes, exhibits, and programs.

> Artist Profile: Kevin Nguyen

Pasadena’s Kevin Nguyen immigrated to the US from Vietnam as a child. Though first pursuing an education in industrial design, he now devotes himself to ceramics, an art he discovered while on a scholarship to study aboard in Europe.

Nguyen shows works from three distinct series in the Muckenthaler exhibition opening April 15.

All have origins in the traditional Asian bowl or vase forms, and each explores a balance between texture and color. The outer surface of a pedestal bowl, for example, appears as parched and cracked as the desert Nguyen says he sometimes visits for inspiration. The inside is almost intoxicating is “a conversation proportion with glazes and surfaces” he says. “Nature is a strong influence, but a crack in a sidewalk registers as much as the bark of tree.”

Nguyen has travelled extensively through-out Europe, and has visited Vietnam twice as an adult. “when artists travel they look at things in a different way than most people,” he says. He tries to understand how colors function from one culture to another. Blue can mean something totally different in one country than it does in another. The inlaid porcelain blues of Nguyen’s work can be found in ceramics from Holland to Korea, where the traditions of is use are legend. Nguyen’s blue are deep and lustrous, like a bottomless sea. Another shallower bowl is jade green inside, while a larger vase’s crackled surface is a study in the subtleties of greys and browns over a blackened core, an effort to reveal the surface underneath a colored glaze on the surface.

His latest project is the Xiem Clay Center, a private workshop, store, and gallery where anyone can sign up to take a class in ceramics. He designed the Center himself to save money and make sure it was exactly what he wanted. Housed in Pasadena building owned by his business partner, The Xiem Clay Center quickly attracted students from all age groups and cultural backgrounds. It is the fulfillment of a dream to be able to work whenever he wants to in professionally outfitted studios, and share the experience with others.

View Full Original Article (pdf 268KB)

Six Degrees of Connection
May/June 2006

2006 Gold Crown Honorees

One would be hard-pressed to find a community in which there is a richer and more diverse arts environment than Pasadena. To Celebrate those whose work has enhanced enhanced our cultural life-whose leadership has inspired a deeper commitment by others, whose artistry has delighted us and whose dedication to young people nurtures our future-the Pasadena Arts Council is proud to announce the Gold Crown Honorees for 2006. These five individuals and one organization represent the best of what we do and who we are, and their contributions are what make this a city where the arts inform us and sustain us. Please join us Sunday, June 4th, as we honor their achievements.

...Learn

Kevin X. Nguyen is an artist, industrial designer and potter whose product design skills were hard-won. On arriving in the U.S. from Vietnam at age 14, by the way of a harrowing sea voyage and six months in a refugee camp off the Philippines, Kevin mastered English and Spanish and ultimately graduated with a degree in Industrial Design from Art Center College of Design. He did not, however, begin a career as a ceramic artist until 1999. “Following a trip through Scandinavia in 2002, where I visited with many ceramic artists, I was intrigued and inspired by their energy, creativity, and devotion as artists." he recalls. What Kevin calls his “Ceramic Journey ” has already transported him beyond the limits of the personal into community consciousness. The modern potter’s studio and educational facility which he opened, in fostering a community of Ceramic artists. Through Xiem Clay Center, Kevin effectively furthers public awareness and appreciation of the ceramic arts with an active program of studio memberships, classes and exhibitions.

View Full Original Article (pdf 602KB)

A Healthy Dose of Hope
July, 2006

Gold Crown Honorees

Over 200 art supporters gathered to sample tapas and sangria and to celebrate the Pasadena Arts Council’s Gold Crown Honorees Sunday, June 4, at the South Pasadena Home of Wendy Munger and Lenny Gumport. Honored for their achievements in artistry and leadership were Mayor Bill Bogaard, musician Billy Mitchell, ceramic artist Kevin Xiem Nguyen…

...Learn

...Pasadena Junior Theatre, dancer Hilary Thomas and Pasadena Playhouse Executive Director Lyla White. Arts Council director Terry LeMoncheck also awarded the 2006 Youth Scholarship awards to four talented high school students.

View Full Original Article (pdf 266KM)

A Tale of Two Cultures
by Priscilla Fleming - August 6, 2004

Kevin Xiem Nguyen's ceramic art represents harrowing escape from Vietnam to the U.S.

Ceramist Kevin Xiem Nguyen’s latest body of work, “Ceramic Journey,” is a reflection, in part, of his journey as a teenager from Vietnam to Southern California. It also is a testament to his love of art, of ceramics, of good design.

...Learn

In an exhibition of work opening Aug. 14 at Xiem Clay Center in Pasadena, Nguyen has used clay as an expression, he said, “of where I am coming from and what I am doing now. I had this idea of doing a series reflecting on the journey, on the experience of growing up in Vietname and in the United States.”

In June 1986, the 14-year-old Nguyen escaped from Saigon along with his parents, three sisters and two brothers. Fleeing by boat the group of refugees and their captain headed for the Philippines, but during the journey they were lost at sea with no water or food. After 10 days, they finally reached a refugee camp but not everyone survived. Eight or 10 people died on the trip and more died on the island, including one brother.

They made their way to the United States. Once in Costa Mesa, where an older brother lived, Nguyen set about learning English and getting a high school education. From there it was on to Cal State Long Beach and then Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. He studied industrial design and began a career in that field before he fell under the spell of the ceramics in early 2000.

“I learned to work from the wheel, how to throw a pot on the wheel,” he said, “and the process from start to finish, where you can see the shape form before your eyes, the instant gratification, I very much enjoyed the process. I really enjoy design, but my passion is clay. It was incredible and I can’t even describe how I felt.”

So he began more serious study, this time in clay, moving on to a position as a teaching assistant at Santa Monica College. He began exhibiting his work and then in 2003, opened the Xiem Clay Center in Pasadena. It has been nonstop ceramics ever since.

Nguyen’s work is very contemporary, featuring one-of-kind textured clay works, each bearing his special sense of design. Two connected pieced in the exhibition, entitled “the Survival,” relate to his life in Vietnam and the family’s escape from Saigon. Working with soldate clay, the artist fashioned the works of clay, literally carving them by hand. One symbolizes a house in Vietnam where he had been badly burned as a child, while the companion piece, an abstract work with a boat image etched on it, speaks of his sea journey and the family’s escape from oppression.

“Both were dark periods in my life,” he said.

Nguyen has created about 20 new pieces for this exhibition, including both wheel-thrown objects and hand-built pieces constructed with coils. Many of the works are about healing and about relationships, and the artist often incorporates found object in his work, ranging from wood to metal and leather. One large bottle-shaped work is decorated with windows representing the opportunities in this country, he said. Another is tall contemporary vase, called “Garden of Flowers.”

“My signature,” he said, “is a rough edge. It does not matter what the shape or form is, but the piece always has rough edges.”

After a piece is built but still wet, Nguyen will often work in impressions, building on the texture of the work. Usually he uses no glaze, just a little color that forms during the oxidation process.

In addition to the larger pieces on exhibition, the artist is showing a number of small works created during a trip to Joshua Tree.

“I climbed into the mountains and wanted to express the wilderness,” he said. “I found lots of rocks, and a friend had a bag of clay so I worked on capturing the texture of the rocks. I call the work “The Experience,” he said. “it doesn’t matter where I go, I work on capturing the essence of the area with either drawings or clay. Whatever I have or find, I work in, toilet paper, newspaper, chalk, pen, whatever captures that moment. And every day, in some way, I work in design or drawing.

View Full Original Article (pdf 148KB)

The Shape of Things to Come
by Susan Heeger - November 30, 2003

In Pasadena, the Wheels are Turning.

Kevin Xiem Nguyen looks like the art student he once was, complete with clay-smeared shirt and glaze chip under his nails. But instead of throwing pots in some dim garage, he runs the Xiem Clay Center, a modern, light-washed space that opened last month in Pasadena. When he’s not shaping his own graceful vessels out of porcelain or black mountain clay, he oversees the classes, workshops, shows and other activities offered by the center, which has 24 new wheels and three state-of-the-art kilns.

...Learn

That a boy who began life in a Vietnamese village, fled in a boat to the Philippines and arrived in the U.S. never having watched TV, slept in a bed or seen a refrigerator could reach this point is almost beyond Nguyen’s comprehension—on the rare occasions when he stops to think about it. Since1986, when landed in Orange Country with his parents and five siblings, he has been going to school or working. After graduating from Costa Mesa High School, where his first job was learning English, he studied math, engineering and physics at Orange Coast College and Cal State Long Beach before discovering industrial design. He won a scholarship to Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, and when he finished in 1997, began drawing computer parts, cameras, furniture and graphics for industrial design firms.

One day, a colleague brought a pot that he had made in a ceramics class in Santa Monica. Its shape, glaze and practical, had-made beauty moved Nguyen profoundly—enough to join his friend’s class, take another and seek out a mentor, Richard McColl, who teaches ceramics at Santa Monica College. “I felt an instant, obsessive love for clay.” Nguyen says, “and for the instant gratification of the process. Within minutes, a ceramic piece takes shape before your eyes. In product design, going from concept to production can take a year.”

He studied, practiced, joined clay societies, went to conferences and entered competitions. His pieces, with their simple forms and striking glazes, began attracting collectors. Two of these, Pamela Simpson, a marketing expert, and Brian Fees, a software consulting company CFO, offered to back Nguyen in starting his own ceramics center on the east side of L.A., where such facilities are lacking. They bought an unfinished Pasadena building, modified and completed it, and on Oct. 11, May Bill Bogaard cut the ribbon on the new 4,500-square-foot Xiem (pronounce “sim”) Clay Center.

Artists and aspiring clay-makers can choose from among three memberships levels: Premier, which offers 24-hour access to all facilities for $130 a month; regular, which permits Tuesday through Saturday use from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. for $105; and firing, which provides access to glazes and kilns for $90. Members also get discount on classes taught by well-known ceramics instructors in such skills a s wheel-throwing, tile-making, color and surface design and glaze calculation. The gallery space features monthly ceramics shows, and an adjoining store sells materials.

“My vision,” Nguyen says in his musically accented English, “was for a place where artists and students can come anytime to work, share knowledge, inspires each other and grow through practice, practice, practice. More than listing to hours of lectures, you just get your hands on it and do it.”

View Full Original Article (pdf 266KB)

1563 N. Lake Ave. Pasadena, CA 91104