Toshiko Takaezu

Toshiko Takaezu is an American ceramic artist. She was born to Japanese immigrant parents in Pekeekeo, Hawaii in 1922. She studied at the Honolulu Academy of Arts and at the University of Hawaii under Claude Horan from 1948-1951. From 1951-1954 she continued her studies at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where she befriended Finnish ceramist Maija Grotell, who became her mentor. In 1955, Takaezu traveled to Japan, where she studied Buddhism and the techniques of traditional Japanese pottery, which continue to influence her work. She taught for ten years at the Cleveland Institute of Art, and then from 1967-1992 she taught at Princeton University, where she was awarded an honorary doctorate. She retired in 1992 to become a studio artist, living and working in Quakertown, New Jersey, about thirty miles northwest of Princeton. In addition to her studio in New Jersey, she made many of her larger sculptures at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York. She continues to live and make pottery in New Jersey.

Toshiko Takaezu made functional wheel-thrown vessels early in her career. Later she switched to abstract sculptures with freely applied poured and painted glazes.

The Addison Gallery of American Art (Andover, Massachusetts), Bloomsburg University (Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania), the Butler Institute of American Art (Youngstown, Ohio), the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Currier Museum of Art (Manchester, New Hampshire), the Detroit Institute of Arts, Grounds for Sculpture (Hamilton, New Jersey), the Hawaii State Art Museum, the High Museum of Art (Atlanta, Georgia), the Honolulu Academy of Arts, Kresge Art Museum (Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the New Jersey State Museum (Trenton, New Jersey), the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, D.C.), the University Art Museum (Albany, New York), the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College (Saratoga Springs, NY), the Racine Art Museum (Racine, Wisconsin) and the Allentown Art Museum (Allentown, Pennsylvania) are among the public collections holding works by Toshiko Takaezu.

References

* Clarke, Joan and Diane Dods, Artists/Hawaii, Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press, 1996, 98-103.
* Haar, Francis and Murray Turnbull, Artists of Hawaii, Volume Two, University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, Hawaii, 1977, 79-84.
* Takaezu, Toshiko, Portfolio in Bamboo Ridge: Journal of Hawai'i Literature and Arts, Spring, 1996, 26-30.
* Takaezu, Toshiko, Toshiko Takaezu, Four decades, Montclair, N.J., Montclair Art Museum, 1989.
* Yake, J. Stanley, Toshiko Takaezu, The earth in bloom, Albany, NY, MEAM Pub. Co., 2005.
* Yoshihara, Lisa A., Collective Visions, 1967-1997, Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, Honolulu, Hawaii, 1997, 61.

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