My work brings together a nerdy love of clay, a structural engineer father, a mother with good stories, several entertaining siblings and growing up third generation Japanese American in warm, multicultural Hawaii. The figures are constructed voluminous and hollow following age-old building methods: pinch, coil and slab with a lot of tweaking, paddling, pushing and cutting as needed. They are as individual and alive as I can make them in collaboration with the clay. Surface finishing mostly involves scraping, smoothing and sanding with touches of glaze and underglaze color and a light airbrushing of ceramic color to finish. I want them durable and true to their pottery roots — unencumbered by hairdos or fashion.
