Small hakeme bowl I made in college.

Medium hakeme bowl made recently in my Cleveland studio.

Hi again.

I started working in clay when I was in college.  I went to a small liberal arts school in Indiana called Earlham College.  My parents are Japanese, but I was born and raised in Los Angeles.  I always had this yearning for all things Japanese as far as I can remember.  When I was in elementary school, our family would travel back to Japan for the summer.  When it was time to go back to LA, I was always seriously depressed.

When I was looking around for college, I found Earlham and a small still voice in me said, “Go There.”  Earlham was known for its strong Japanese Studies program, and I was very excited about majoring in it.  I was enjoying everything I was learning.  Politics, economy, history, sociology, and especially literature and religion.  The second semester in my first year, I took a class called Japanese Arts.  It was team taught by an amazing history professor and a very charming art professor.  These guys really brought the material to life.  I just loved everything about the class.

I found out that the art professor’s specialty was ceramics.  The following term I enrolled in his intensive “May Term” course, as it was called, where I took just one ceramics class for about a month.

I kind of loved it.

I loved the smell.  I loved the feel.  I loved the studio. And I loved firing kilns.

I got hooked.

I changed my major to Art.