Weathering Scape: Tomoko Amaki Abe
January 7 - February 11, 2012
 Clay Art Center is proud to present Weathering Scape, a collection of recent ceramic and mixed media installations that explore the tension between transience and permanence by Rye, NY artist Tomoko Abe.
Having majored in painting and sculpture in college, Tomoko has always been interested in the intersection between planar and sculptural media. In recent years, she has been working primarily with clay, but continues to be interested in exploring the kind of experience clay pieces situated in space as a whole afford the viewer. Individual pieces merely provide “clues”, which, when put together into an installation, may lead to a world beyond our imagination.
Her use of found junk and other materials that may go unnoticed to most people brings to us an awareness of our surroundings on a different level. She incorporates into her installations metal, glass, rubber, tree bark, pieces of shellfish, and other non-essentials, and they become invisibly small particles spread into the cosmos, numerous stars scattered in limitless space. She brings to us notions that our existence is like a small particle in the scale of the universe, and our time just a split second. Hence, with a change of viewpoint, small particles in space may be viewed as rich and special as our own existence. She is telling us that all that exists in this world has a spirit and life of its own, encouraging our reverence and respect.
About her work, Tomoko states, “I use ceramic and mixed media installations as a means of exploring the tension between transience and permanence. Recently I have become particularly interested in the process of deterioration as an artistic motif - how subtle forces in the environment can destroy seemingly robust objects over time, how lost objects can regain life and recover inner energy, and how reminiscence of what used to exist may be sensed in the remains.”
Tomoko Abe of Rye, NY graduated from the Edinburgh College of Art and obtained BA in painting with First Class Honour, during which she also spent half a year at Escuela de Bellas Artes in Salamanca, Spain, on the ERASMUS scholarship. She has shown her works in many exhibitions both domestically and internationally and has received various awards, including First Class Honour Prize for distinguished work and Helen A. Rose Request at Royal Scottish Academy (Edinburgh, UK). Her works have been featured in the media, including 500 Raku, New York Times and Ceramics Art and Perception. Her work ranges from painting, ceramics and sculpture, but recently most of her work has been around ceramic installations. Tomoko draws on inspirations from evolving and decaying elements of nature and their spiritual imprints. Her studio is at the Clay Art Center, in Port Chester, NY.
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