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Akio Takamori
Queen, 2003, stoneware with underglazes, 42 x 32 x 17.” Promised gift of Sara & David Lieberman. Photo courtesy of the Garth Clark Gallery, New York.

Akio Takamori was born in Miyazaki, Japan, in 1950. He initially trained as an industrial potter in the tradition of Japanese ceramics. His father was a doctor, so in the aftermath of the bombing of Japan, Takamori saw the ravages of war imprinted on the human body. He poured over his father´s library of art books and medical texts. After a meeting with Ken Ferguson, he came to the United States in 1974, studied with Ferguson at the Kansas City Art Institute, and at Alfred University New York State College of Ceramics from which he received an MFA in 1978. Akio Takamori is Associate Professor of Art in the Ceramics Department at the University of Washington. He lives and works in Seattle.

His characteristic work in the 1980s and 90s was the envelope vessel. Depicting figures intertwined in sensual embrace, these slab-built works are painted both inside and out to show both exterior and interior meanings. His recent work is free-standing three-dimensional figures: a mother with her daughter leaning against her, a sleeping figure, a seated Buddha, and famous figures such as General MacArthur. The work shown here appears to be a composite of two portraits by Diego \Velasquez\. The face is from The Infanta Marguerita (1659) but the dress from the portrait of The Infanta Maria Therese (1632). Both, as infantas, were destined to be queens. Takamori captures the stance of the royal child whose dress and coiffure define her.

In 2005, the ASU Art Museum presented a retrospective of the artist´s work which is currently on tour in the United States.

Marilyn A. Zeitlin