Studio Residency: 2020
Tomoko Abe lived in Japan, the United States, and the United Kingdom, before settling in the greater New York area. Abe obtained BA with first class honor in painting from the Edinburgh College of Art, during which she received an ERASMUS scholarship to study at the Escuela de Bellas Artes, Salamanca, Spain. She has been working with translucent materials such as porcelain, paper and glass with her interest in creating artworks that are suggestive of objects that lie behind what can be visibly observed. Her artistic inspirations are often drawn from evolving and decaying facets of nature and their spiritual imprints, both natural and man-made, such as wind, soil, water, industrial wastes and debris. Many of her works concern the ambiguous state of being transient and permanent, reflecting our ephemeral yet enduring existence in the environment.
Abe’s work has been shown both domestically and internationally. In 2017, Tomoko was commissioned to work on a large scale public art at Westin hotel, Sarasota. She has been expanding her range of media at institutions such as Clay art center (NY), Dieu Donne paper making studio (NY), and has been artist in residence at Bullseye Glass (NY) in 2018 and at UrbanGlass (NY) in 2020. Her work has been featured in publications including 500 Raku, The New York Times, and Ceramics Art + Perception.
