To say that Kent Follette’s pottery is built on the foundation of south Louisiana’s timeless love for cooking and communal eating is as true as stating that the Mississippi River is muddy, but as far as influences go, Japan might hold the most sway over the veteran ceramicist’s work.

That’s where Follette, originally from New Orleans, spent the early 1950s, living in a traditional, 200-year-old Japanese otaku. Follette’s father was stationed there in what was then-called Washington Heights, a housing district for families of servicemen stationed in post-V-J Day Tokyo.

Growing up next to a geisha house and traversing the same parade grounds where the Imperial Army held marches just a few years prior, Folette says he first noticed textures and color as well as the way history married with art, and how both could blend to form something altogether new.