Ever since I was a child, I felt uncomfortable doing the same things as other people. When I was in junior high school, I began to feel somewhat uncomfortable in a situation where everyone was studying without question in the classroom. In high school, I sometimes skipped classes and went to see the ocean or read novels at home. I didn't really dislike school, but I had something bothering me inside at that time. I was 21 years old when I left Fukuoka for Tokyo.I moved from Fukuoka to Tokyo when I was 21 years old and thought I would become a vintage clothing shop owner. I like vintage clothing from the 1940s and 1950s. Clothes from that period are very elaborate and creative. Vintage clothes have scuffs and stains from the lives of the people who wore them. I think it is interesting that these things have passed through time and are now in my hands. But as I found out working at a vintage clothing store, vintage clothing from the era I like is rarely available on the market. If you can't stock something, you can't sell it, so I naturally turned my attention to making things. I chose ceramics out of the many other options such as woodworking, metalworking, and textiles because I felt it offered the most freedom.Then, I visited many old kilns in Japan and was attracted by the freedom of Shino and Oribe, so I looked for a school in Gifu prefecture and entered Tajimi City Pottery Design and Technical Center.I was about 27 years old at the time, so it was a very late start.All the people around me were experienced people who had been working on the potter's wheel since their teenage years, such as art college graduates and people from kilns. I always asked myself if it was possible for me to become an artist without any skills, knowledge, or experience. While feeling complex, I thought about what I had that made me better than others, and I realized that "having nothing" was a strength in itself. Because I have nothing, I can question the various rules of ceramics and think from scratch. What I am doing now also starts from that time. In pottery, a work is done when it is fired, but I was not convinced with the fact that it leaves my hands at the end. Then I started thinking, if we must entrust work to the law of nature in the firing process, why not leave it to nature from the beginning ; the forming process? I thought that was something making sense to me, and it was an unprecedented approach to let the law of nature make work in whole process. I just respect and assist it. The current porcelain vessels were started from this idea. I named my vessel brand "pheno”, which meant before the phenomenon begins. Pheno's vessels are made using a technique called casting, in which the clay is not touched by hand, but the natural texture created by the plaster mold absorbing the moisture of the clay is left intact in the work. Something that had been bothering me for a long time seems to have become clear to me with this method so far.The objects I create under the name "Yoichi Shiraishi" are made of raw clay excavated from the mountains, once granulated and placed in molds, and then fired into geometric shapes. Although the visible surfaces of pheno's vessels and Yoichi Shiraishi's objects are different in that they have different purposes and are made of different materials (porcelain clay and raw clay), they are both made with the same core concept of "things made by nature''. My interest has recently shifted from the final product itself to the underlying physical laws and phenomena in the global environment. I think that creating a work of art is a wonderful act that allows me to look at things from a new perspective and enjoy them all over again.