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In a little more than a decade New York-based sculptor Noriko Kuresumi has amassed an impressive list of awards and honors. Last year she won the People’s Award at the 15th Tokyo-New York Friendship Ceramic Competition. In 2013 she took the grand prize at that same competition and received an honorable mention at the Cheongju International Craft Competition in Korea.

Above image: Noriko Kuresumi, Sea of Memory 023, 2011. Photograph by Shin Ono. Courtesy of the artist.

She works mainly with biological forms that draw their inspiration from the sea. Her artist statement about this is elegant in its simplicity, saying as much about her work in three sentences as other artists do in pages.

The sea is the origin of life.
All lives are connected and have been supporting each other.
I create my work by imagining the source of harmony and balance of the ocean.

We like her small-scale sculptures for their poise, they have grace juxtaposed against their thin, fragile forms. Like the life forms they draw their inspiration from, they are balanced between poles of elegance and frailty. Spoon & Tamago, a blog about Japanese art, states:

While mind-numbingly detailed, I find myself in an odd, calming trance while gazing at her work. The fluidity and airiness that Kuresumi is able to achieve through porcelain is astonishing.

Bill Rodgers is the General Editor of CFile.

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