TOUCH FIRE Artists Biographies

Hoshino Kayoko 星野佳世子
Born in Fukuoka Prefecture, 1945.  Lives and works in Ōtsu, Shiga Prefecture

For most of her career, this veteran ceramist placed emphasis on concepts rather than on the material of the clay itself, until she experienced a change in direction. By hand-pinching and slicing her clay with wires, Hoshino "releases" the forms within the clay to create silhouettes and shapes inspired by the mountain peaks and boulders from the natural landscape of rural Japan. Since turning to the clay for inspiration, Hoshino has been prolific in creating boldly-faceted, powerful works that, at the same time, glisten with exquisite silver luster applied after firing. Surface striations accentuate the movement in her forms, while Hoshino's austere base colors are achieved by the extreme reduction that takes place in her kiln.

Katsumata Chieko 勝間田千惠子
Born in Gotenba, Shizuoka Prefecture, 1950.  Lives and works in Kyoto

Katsumata Chieko is one of a growing number of celebrated Japanese ceramists who first built a following outside Japan, and then, in a sense, were "reintroduced" to the Japanese market on the wave of their international recognition. This is characteristic of a new international trend in Japanese ceramics in the twenty-first century, as an increasing number of Japanese artists test foreign markets. Aside from the fact that Katsumata chose to build her kiln in Kyoto, a city rich in both tradition and the avant-garde, she had virtually no connection with the domestic ceramic scene of Japan. Katsumata is known for her interest in plant life, and her works are often inspired by floral and vegetal forms. Her electric hues are made from clay slip colored with metallic dyes and pigments and applied using a brush and filtering gauze after a work is initially bisque-fired. With multiple firings, depths of color and the metallic patina are amplified.

Kawakami Tomoko  川上智子
Born in Takayama Gifu Prefecture, 1957.  Lives and works in Tajimi, Gifu Prefecture

Kawakami Tomoko was a relatively unknown artist until 2005, when she sent shockwaves throughout the international ceramic community by winning the Grand Prize at the 54th Premio Faenza, the International Competition of Contemporary Ceramic Art held annually at the International Museum of Ceramics in Faenza, Italy. They are minimal, subtle, and serene. They are all formed by hand-pinching, although her earliest works were formed using plaster molds. She creates textured, stone like surfaces by tapping a small rock on the body of the work while the clay is still damp. Kawakami's stoneware surfaces are unglazed, but the rich black glaze of their interiors gives her work infinite depth.

Kishi Eiko 岸映子
Born in Nara Prefecture, 1948. Lives and works in Kyoto

Kishi Eiko uses pulverized pellets of fired, colored clays (chamottes) that are kneaded directly into her Shigaraki base clay before formation. This highly original and intricate technique devised by the artist allows a constellation of colors to show through, both on the surface and in the body of the clay, however she decides to cut or form the clay. Using both slab-building and hand-pinching, Kishi first shapes a generally abstract silhouette. With the use of a kanna knife, she striates the surface of the damp clay, creating linear patterns that sharpen and tighten the work's overall form. Kishi meticulously punctures small holes in the clay with needles, and using a small brush, she applies clay slip of various colors into each hole. Lastly, she applies a transparent glaze to its surface.

Kitamura Junko 北村純子
Born in Kyoto, 1956.  Lives and works in Kyoto

Kitamura's simple geometric forms are first thrown on a potter's wheel. After applying a gray-black slip to the clay body, the artist delicately impresses triangular or rectangular indentations into the damp clay with a bamboo stick. The white slip is inlaid into these indentations after bisque-firing, and a second firing completes the piece. Although Kitamura's works are the product of her experienced hand and keen aesthetic sensibility, they also belong to the creative climate of Kyoto, where contemporary artists continue to be influenced by the traditional techniques of generations of their predecessors. Kitamura originally intended to pursue a career in traditional kimono dyeing, and her simple, yet profound ceramic works seem to reflect the graceful patterns of the textile patterns produced in the ancient city.

Kitamura Tsuruyo 北村鶴代
Born in Komatsu, Ishikawa Prefecture, 1957.  Lives and works in Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture

Several of the artists featured in this exhibition are respected ceramists associated with historic kiln sites. Kitamura Tsuruyo is closely connected to the ceramic culture and industry of her hometown, Komatsu, although her work is far removed from regional orthodoxy. The feminine emphasis of Kitamura's early works is stylistically far different from the sublime serenity of her more recent works in this exhibition. Her newer works incorporate visible elements of functionality, undoubtedly influenced by Kitamura's experience teaching pottery to both children and adults. Her blunt yet forceful statements in clay have evolved to reveal a more mature style. All her works exhibit the artist's skill in glazing techniques, which one writer has aptly termed "sharkskin glaze."

Koike Shōko 小池頌子
Born in Beijing, China, 1943. Lives and works in Tama City, Tokyo

Koike embodies two important characteristics of leading Japanese female ceramists: access to higher education and openness to influence from other artistic sources outside ceramic art. Koike is very much a part of the postwar wave of Japanese women who were educated in the upper echelons of academia. Open access to higher education in Japan was a liberating opportunity for the great majority of women; their education and continuing affiliation with these institutions propelled artists into the limelight. Many Japanese women ceramists were often inspired by aesthetic influences outside pottery. Koike Shōko's childhood interest in fabrics continues as an influence in her artistic practice and terminology.

Matsuda Yuriko  松田百合子
Born in Ashiya, Hyōgō Prefecture, 1943.  Lives and works in Oshino, Yamanashi Prefecture

Many of the women artists included in this exhibition are independent innovators who work outside the constraints of Japanese ceramic traditions. However, several of the artists, including Matsuda Yuriko, continue to use traditional techniques with skills that rival, if not exceed, those of their predecessors, and in doing so they create new and challenging contemporary ceramic art. They reinterpret the traditional decorative technique for porcelain vessels, called iro-e over-glaze enameling, and transposes its motifs onto nonfunctional objects. Her beautifully enameled iro-e porcelain sculptures are witty odes to two favorite subjects: the female body and Mount Fuji.

Mishima Kimiyo 三島喜美代
Born in Osaka, 1932.  Lives and works in Seto, Aichi Prefecture

Mishima Kimiyo's work is unlike that of other women ceramists in this exhibition. Although Mishima works in Seto, her work is not constrained by the conservative legacies of the so-called Six Old Kilns and also exists outside of other ceramic traditions in Japan. Instead, Mishima uses clay as a material for self-expression and as a medium for her pop-flavored symbolism and wryly critical approach to modern life.

Mishima started her career as a painter. It was not until 1971 that she devised a method for silk-screening ceramic surfaces with actual newsprint. Her ceramic bodies are made from discarded clay unearthed from scrap heaps and tile factories. As "breakable" ceramic newspapers made from waste materials, Mishima's works are metaphors for disposable information.

Miwa Hanako  三輪華子
Born in Hagi, birthdate undisclosed. Lives and works in Hagi, Yamaguchi Prefecture
 

Miwa Hanako only began to work in clay after receiving a degree in Interactive Arts at the University of Wales in 1998. In fact, her artistic beginnings were in sculpture. Hanako's signature source of inspiration is a blooming lotus flower. Love Lotus is an eleven-object installation of ceramic lotus flowers and lotus pads of varying shapes and sizes that are reflected and multiplied in a folding screen mirror of stainless steel. In Love Lotus the artist creates an allegorical world in which the purity of love, symbolized by the lotus, blooms in perpetuity. The folding screen mirror reflects the ephemeral "truth" of the actual world, while also offering a glimpse of an ideal and eternal world.

Ogawa Machiko 小川待子
Born in Sapporo, Hokkaidō Prefecture, 1946.  Lives and works in Yugawara, Kanagawa Prefecture

Ogawa Machiko is one of the most distinguished artists in contemporary Japanese ceramics. Ogawa belongs to the first wave of women artists who were born and educated during a time in Japan's history when higher education became accessible to a greater number of women. Like Koike Shōko she was educated at the Tokyo University of the Arts, perhaps the most influential art institution in Japan. It was in this creative climate that Ogawa and her contemporaries entered the forefront of contemporary Japanese ceramics.

Ogawa's aesthetics are not directly rooted in the traditions of Japan. Rather, her primal works of broken fragments of jars and egg-shaped pieces appear as if they were freshly excavated from an archaeological dig. Her works address eternal themes associated with nature, in particular the precious resources of water and earth.

Ono Hakuko 小野珀子
Born in Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture, 1915-1996.  Lived and worked in Ureshino, Saga Prefecture

At a time when the term "woman ceramist" was virtually nonexistent, the emergence of Ono Hakuko on the Japanese ceramic scene in the early 1970s, when her elegant porcelain works were embraced by the mainstream. Her acceptance would help bring about a sea change in the way Japanese society as a whole perceived the work of women ceramic artists.

Ono mastered the formidable technique of yūri-kinsai, or the application of gold leaf patterns underneath a layer of glaze. The decorative broken circular motifs on her two vases in the exhibition were cut from sheets of gold and platinum leaf that were then attached to Japanese paper and applied to the lacquered surfaces of pre-fired, pre-glazed porcelain bodies spun on a potter's wheel. A closely controlled low-temperature firing fused the leaf to the surfaces of the vases while burning away the excess lacquer. As the final stage in the process two separate coats of soda glaze were applied with two separate firings. Up to six individual firings were required.

Sakurai Yasuko　櫻井靖子
Born in Kyoto, 1969.  Lives and works in Kyoto

Sakurai Yasuko first encountered ceramics during her early lessons in the tea ceremony (Chanoyu) at the Urasenke School in Kyoto. Although her ceramics have developed into conceptual objects rather than functional tea wares, Sakurai plays with light and shadow as she seeks to explore the ma - the space between things - in her porcelain works, in which form is paradoxically created by a delicate skeleton of porcelain. She first forms a number of unfired porcelain "pipes" from plaster casts, binds them together, and then pours porcelain slip over them. She uses an ultra-sharp blade to carve a form from the still-soft porcelain clay to produce an openwork lattice of porcelain bound together by slip. After the finishing touches are added, the work is fired in an electric kiln for up to 18 hours.

Shibata Mariko 柴田眞理子
Born in Aichi Prefecture, 1957.  Lives and works in Seto, Aichi Prefecture

Shibata Mariko is emblematic of a generation of women artists who studied the basics of working with clay at regional pottery training centers instead of acquiring ceramic techniques through a university education. Her Still Life porcelain works have vaselike silhouettes and razor-thin walls penetrated by openings that blur the divide between surfaces and what lies within. As the artist says, "It is only inevitable that ceramic vessels held and used by human hands will some day break. It is this fragility which makes them beautiful." Shibata's porcelain objects are formed in plaster molds, and their interiors are often glazed with various pigments and over-glaze enamels.

Shigematsu Ayumi 重松あゆみ
Born in Toyonaka, Osaka Prefecture, 1958.  Lives and works in Kobe, Hyōgō Prefecture

Shigematsu Ayumi belongs to the second wave of postwar female ceramists who received a college education in the arts. Common themes shared by this generation of women artists are allegorical representations of female sexuality and works that draw on the beauty of nature. All of Shigematsu's works pose tensions between the external and internal as forms are turned inside out, revealing fluidly interconnected surfaces. Shapes are discovered subconsciously by the artist as they evolve from clay coiling and hand-pinching. After a basic form is "found," Shigematsu brushes an original mixture of differently colored slip made with various pigments upon her clay surfaces. (She does not use traditional glazes.) Before a work is left to dry, the artist polishes its entire surface with a carefully selected stone, and then quickly fires the object at a relatively low temperature to retain the moist, milky textures that are her trademark.

Takano Miho 高野美帆
Born in Osaka, 1971.  Lives and works in Osaka

Taking their cue from anime, Takano Miho's ceramic figures are comical yet colored with a touch of melancholy. Her engaging works are a synthesis of contemporary Japanese pop culture and the world of ceramic art. Takano formed the bodies of Chattering Girls in Spring in the exhibition from whitened Shigaraki clay in half-circular molds, while the legs were made by clay casting. The lips of the figures were hand-pinched. Takano's trademark pastel slip was sprayed onto the clay bodies after the components were attached together, and the works were then bisque-fired. Black glaze was applied as a next step, and the works were fired again. Lastly, red and white enamels were applied. The same process was used for Robot Girls, whose Japanese name is "Spring Melancholy."

Tashima Etsuko 田嶋悦子
Born in Osaka, 1959.  Lives and works in Osaka

Tashima Etsuko belongs to the generation of influential women ceramists after Tsuboi Asuka. This "second wave" of artists expressed an openly feminist approach and feminine aesthetic in their work. In the 1980s Tashima spearheaded an artistic movement later called the Chō-Shojo Genshō (Super-Girl Phenomenon), a term coined by Todate Kazuko in 2004. This movement posed open-ended questions concerning constructions of the feminine. Tashima combines stoneware with colored glass, formed by the technique of pâte de verre (crushed glass that is kiln-cast), which counter-balances the opacity of her delicately glazed, pastel ceramics. The stoneware and glass elements are fired separately and then attached.

Tomita Mikiko 富田美樹子
Born in Osaka, 1972.  Lives and works in Osaka

Tomita Mikiko's ceramic objects, with their glistening gold- and rouge-enameled surfaces, convey an exoticism far removed from traditional Japanese motifs. As the artist has said, "When I was small, my father's profession moved my family to Portugal. The Islamic culture and the arabesque patterns I experienced there, as well as the photographs of tiny cells and organisms I saw while reading through my father's science magazines...left a great impression on me. I wish to emulate these flowing patterns of life within the over-glaze motifs of my works."

Tomita is one of a new generation of young Japanese artists who possess extraordinary technical abilities to create forms or designs with the utmost precision. Tomita's prowess with traditional iro-e over-glaze enamel painting is apparent in the immaculately elaborate patterns that embellish her forms. Tomita's forms are hand-pinched from semi-porcelain clay. After over-glaze is applied, the work is fired. Enamels are painted onto the ceramic surfaces with a paper-thin brush, with gold decorations applied in the final stage.

Tsuboi Asuka 坪井明日香
Born in Osaka, 1932. Lives and works in Kyoto

Tsuboi Asuka's influence on the ceramic arts of Japan cannot be overstated. As one of the first women to aggressively challenge the male hierarchy, she forged a role for women ceramic artists that previously did not exist in Japan. Tsuboi was the charismatic leader of the influential Kyoto women's ceramic group Joryū Tōgei (Women's Association of Ceramic Art) when it was first formed in 1957. This group was pivotal not only in providing a platform for women to participate as artists in their own right, but in giving them the opportunity to present their challenging work to the public.

Like many other prominent women ceramists, Tsuboi is inspired by traditional Japanese textiles and the beauty of nature. As Tsuboi says of her work, "I am deeply interested in cloth and paper. I find that both happiness and sorrow, together with every other human emotion found in one's life, is expressed within these materials."

Ueba Kasumi 植葉香澄
Born in Kyoto, 1978.  Lives and works in Kyoto

Ueba Kasumi is considered one of the most gifted Kyoto ceramists of her generation, and she is the youngest artist featured in this exhibition. The artist's sculptural porcelain works borrow scenes from nature but are also deeply inspired by Greek mythology and fairy tales. Ueba embellishes her unconventional forms with layered enamels that imaginatively reinterpret iro-e over-glaze traditions. As the artist states, "Strangely enough, I enjoy matching clashing colors together, or even over-decorating a work, to see if they match. I find that they often do."