Akio Takamori (1950 – January 11, 2017) was a Japanese-American ceramic sculptor and was a faculty member at the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattl ...

Seattle, Washington Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest region ...

Biography

Takamori was born in

Nobeoka, Miyazaki is a city located in the north of Miyazaki Prefecture, Japan. As of June 1, 2019, the city has an estimated population of 119,521 and a population density of 138 persons per km². The total area is . History The city was officially founded on F ...

, Japan in 1950 October 11. The son of an

obstetrician/gynecologist Obstetrics and Gynaecology (also spelled as Obstetrics and Gynecology; abbreviated as Obs and Gynae, O&G, OB-GYN and OB/GYN) is the medical specialty that encompasses the two subspecialties of obstetrics (covering pregnancy, childbirth, and ...

who ran a clinic, Takamori was exposed to a wide range of people from an early age. At home, his father’s extensive library of both art and medical texts became a fascination for Takamori, who relished everything from Picasso reproductions to anatomical charts. Takamori’s interest in the arts persisted into early adulthood and upon his graduation from the Musashino Art College in 1971, he apprenticed to a master folk potter at

Koishiwara, Fukuoka was a village located in Asakura District, Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan. The village gave its name to a style of pottery called Koishiwara ware. In 2003, the village had an estimated population of 1,193 and a density Density (volumetric ma ...

, Kyushu –

Koishiwara ware , formerly known as Nakano ware, is a type of Japanese pottery traditionally from Koishiwara, Fukuoka Prefecture in western Japan. Koishiwara ware consists of utility vessels such as bowls, plates, and tea cups. The style is often slipware. His ...

. While learning the craft of industrial ceramics in a factory setting, he saw a traveling exhibition of contemporary ceramic art from Latin America, Canada, and the United States. Blown away by what he describes as the “antiauthoritarian” quality of the work, Takamori began to question his future as an industrial potter. When renowned American ceramist Ken Ferguson visited the

pottery Pottery is the process and the products of forming vessels and other objects with clay and other ceramic materials, which are fired at high temperatures to give them a hard and durable form. Major types include earthenware, stoneware and ...

, the two had an immediate rapport and Ferguson encouraged Takamori go to the United States and study with him at the

Kansas City Art Institute The Kansas City Art Institute (KCAI) is a private art school in Kansas City, Missouri. The college was founded in 1885 and is an accredited by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design and Higher Learning Commission. It has approx ...

. In 1974 Takamori made the move to the United States, receiving his B.F.A. from the

and later attending Alfred University in New York for his M.F.A. After working as a resident artist at the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, Montana, he moved to

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...

in 1993, where he took his current teaching position as associate professor of the ceramics department. Akio Takamori died of pancreatic cancer on January 11, 2017.

Work

Takamori’s evolution as an artist began as he worked with Ferguson to break free of the constraints of industrial pottery and find new ways to express himself in clay. Since those first years at the Kansas City Art Institute his work has changed greatly, but it has always been figurative, based on the human body and expressive of human emotion and sensuality. In the 1980s, Takamori worked innovatively with the vessel form and its structure, creating flat envelope shaped pots formed from slabs. Once the ceramic piece was finished, he would paint onto the surface adding details of the figures that he was representing. These figures often explored human relationships. His work in this format lasted about ten years. In the mid-1990s a visit to the European Ceramic Work Center in the

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resulted in a shift from vessels back to an early interest in sculpture and the figure. Takamori created groupings of standing figural sculptures. The figures portray historical characters, contemporary society and rural villagers recalled from the artist's childhood in Japan. Most of Takamori’s work has been strongly influenced by his Japanese heritage. He has translated traditional Japanese prints into three-dimensional porcelain sculptures, he recreated his hometown in Japan from memory using clay, and he has translated Peter Bruegel’s paintings into sculptures of Japanese people. Takamori collaborated with Master Printer Mike Sims, o
The Lawrence Lithography Workshop
in Kansas City,

Missouri Missouri is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking 21st in land area, it is bordered by eight states (tied for the most with Tennessee): Iowa to the north, Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee to the east, Arkansas t ...

, to create
series of prints
that combine digital images of his ceramic sculptures with more traditional

lithography Lithography () is a planographic method of printing originally based on the immiscibility of oil and water. The printing is from a stone (lithographic limestone) or a metal plate with a smooth surface. It was invented in 1796 by the German a ...

printing techniques.

Awards

2011

United States Artists United States Artists (USA) is a national arts funding organization based in Chicago. USA is dedicated to supporting living artists and cultural practitioners across the United States by granting unrestricted awards. Mission The organization' ...

2006 Joan Mitchell Foundation
2003 Flintridge Foundation Awards for Visual Artists
2001 Virginia A. Groot Award
1996 Fellowship at Keramisch Werkcentrum,

's-Hertogenbosch s-Hertogenbosch (), colloquially known as Den Bosch (), is a city and municipality in the Netherlands with a population of 157,486. It is the capital of the province of North Brabant and its fourth largest by population. The city is south of th ...

, Netherlands
1993 Fellowship at Keramisch Werkcentrum, 's-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands
1992

National Endowment for the Arts The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal ...

Visual Artists Fellowship Grant
1988 National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artists Fellowship Grant
1986 National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artists Fellowship Grant

Museum collections

American Craft Museum, New York City
Archie Bray Foundation, Helena, MT
Arizona State University Art Museum, Nelson Fine Arts Center, Tempe
The Arkansas Arts Center Decorative Arts Museum, Little Rock

Boca Raton Museum of Art Founded by artists, the Boca Raton Museum of Art was established in 1950 as the Art Guild of Boca Raton. The organization has grown to encompass an Art School, Guild, Store, and Museum with permanent collections of contemporary art, photography, ...

, Boca Raton FL

Boston Athenaeum Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- most ...

, Boston, MA
Carnegie Institute Art Museum, Pittsburgh
Hallmark Art Collection, Kansas City, MO

, MO
Johnson County Community College, Overland Park, KS
The Kinsey Institute, OH
The

Kinsey Institute The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction (often shortened to The Kinsey Institute) is a research institute at Indiana University. Established in Bloomington, Indiana, in 1947 as a nonprofit, the institute merged with Indi ...

, Bloomington, IN
Kruithuis Museum, 's-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands

Los Angeles County Museum of Art The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Page Museum). LACMA was founded in 19 ...

The Museum of Contemporary Ceramic Art, Shigaraki, Japan
The Museum of Ceramic Arts, Alfred, NY
National Museum of History, Taipei, Republic of China
Racine Art Museum, Racine, WI
Rhode Island School of Design Museum

Seattle Art Museum The Seattle Art Museum (commonly known as SAM) is an art museum located in Seattle, Washington, United States. It operates three major facilities: its main museum in downtown Seattle; the Seattle Asian Art Museum (SAAM) in Volunteer Park on Cap ...

, Seattle, WA

Spencer Museum of Art The Spencer Museum of Art is an art museum operated by the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas. Accredited by the American Alliance of Museums, the Spencer Museum seeks to "...present its collection as a living archive that motivates object-c ...

, Laurence, KS

Taipei Fine Arts Museum The Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM; ) is a museum in Zhongshan District, Taipei, Taiwan. It is in the Taipei Expo Park. The museum first opened on August 8, 1983, at the former site of the United States Taiwan Defense Command. It was the first ...

, Taipei, Republic of China

Victoria & Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...

, London

Winnipeg Art Gallery The Winnipeg Art Gallery (WAG) is an art museum in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Its permanent collection includes over 24,000 works from Canadian, Indigenous Canadian, and international artists. The museum also holds the world's largest collect ...

, Winnipeg, Canada
Max Romeo Museum of science and discovery

Selected solo exhibitions

2017 James Harris Gallery, Seattle
2013 Red Star Studios & Belger Arts Center, Kansas City
2004 Frank Lloyd Gallery, Santa Monica
2003 Garth Clark Gallery, New York
2002 Grover/Thurston Gallery, Seattle
2001 Frank Lloyd Gallery, Santa Monica
2000 Garth Clark Gallery, New York
1999 Grover/Thurston Gallery, Seattle
1998 Frank Lloyd Gallery, Santa Monica, Robert Else Gallery, California State University, Sacramento
1997 Cohen/Berkowitz Gallery, Kansas City, Missouri, Trax Gallery, Berkeley, Garth Clark Gallery, New York
1996 Tempe Arts Center, Arizona, Hiestand Galleries/Miami University, Oxford, Ohio
1995 Habitat/Shaw Gallery, Pontiac, Michigan
Garth Clark Gallery, Los Angeles
1994 Garth Clark Gallery, Kansas City, Missouri, Garth Clark Gallery, Los Angeles
1993 Garth Clark Gallery, New York
1992 Garth Clark Gallery, Los Angeles, Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild, Pittsburgh
1991 Garth Clark Gallery, New York
1990 Garth Clark Gallery, Los Angeles
1989 Garth Clark Gallery, New York, Everson Museum, Syracuse, New York
1988 Garth Clark Gallery, Los Angeles
1987 Garth Clark Gallery, New York
1986 Garth Clark Gallery, New York
Esther Saks, Chicago
1985 Garth Clark Gallery, Los Angeles
1984 Garth Clark Gallery, New York, The Morgan Gallery, Los Angeles
1983 Garth Clark Gallery, Los Angeles
1980 Himawari Gallery, Miyazaki, Japan

Books

''Akio Takamori: Ceramic sculpture'', by Akio Takamori, Garth Clark Gallery (2000)
''Between Clouds of Memory Akio Takamori, a Mid-career Survey'', by Akio Takamori, et al. Univ of Washington Press, Oct 30 2005

References

Sources

Flintridge Foundation
''500 Figures in Clay: Ceramic Artists Celebrate the Human Form'' by Veronika Alice Gunter, Sterling Publishing, September 2004, ''Figure in Clay: Contemporary Sculpting Techniques by Master Artists'', by Suzanne J. Tourtillott, Sterling Publishing, August 2005,

External links

Review of career retrospective show

Brief biography

AskArt page on Takamori

ArtNet page on Takamori {{DEFAULTSORT:Takamori, Akio 1950 births Japanese sculptors Japanese ceramists American ceramists People from Miyazaki Prefecture Kansas City Art Institute alumni 2017 deaths