Ceramic making is deeply tied to decision-making, with each choice permanently preserved in the final fired form, accumulating the artist’s own experiences in making. This aspect of the medium is especially meaningful to Usami Shuri (b. 1980, Utsunomiya Japan), an award-winning artist who trained under two celebrated figures whose practices embody distinctly different ceramic traditions: Hayashi Kaku 林 香君 (b. 1953) and the acclaimed Living National Treasure Miura Koheiji 三浦 小平二 (1933–2006). She established her own kiln in 2018.

Usami’s vessels comprise particularly compelling surfaces, allowing for richly layered expressions that embody the passage of time. Their surfaces, created via sgraffito and gradual layers of slip built upon one another, resemble urban concrete walls marked over time: moss, human hands, graffiti, and the residue of lived experience. In this way, her works reward sustained looking. The longer one gazes, the more elusive forms and abstract impressions begin to emerge from the surface, as though the vessel’s history had been partially obscured by the passage of time and the accumulation of countless accumulated layers of strata. This emergent experience mirrors our own memory and more precisely, recollection. This embodiment of temporal depth in her vessels, are fact, the singular result of a series of incredibly successful glazing and firing.

In 2024, the Kikuchi Kanjitsu Memorial Tomo Museum in Tokyo hosted its 10th biannual ceramic competition. Among its award-winners was a vessel by Usami, from her “TOWA” series of vessels, which was awarded the Excellence Award.

“Through the firing process, irreversible marks are inscribed, and between accident and control, surfaces emerge that resemble memory itself. I am drawn to the boundaries where inside and outside, light and shadow, hope and pain, life and ending coexist simultaneously.”

Memory unfolds across Usami’s surfaces, recording countless traces of the artist’s hands and decisions. She expands on this idea further in her work, noting that even “imperfection, fluctuation, and distortion are things I wish to affirm as evidence of having lived.”

After graduating from Bunsei University of Art 文星芸術大学 (Bunsei geijutsu daigaku), where she later became a full-time lecturer and instructor, Usami has steadily gained prominence within Japan’s contemporary ceramic landscape. Her vessels are materially compelling, featuring experimental glaze applications shaped by the making process itself. TOWA references the form of the traditional Japanese wooden potter’s wheel through an abstract lens, recalling the history of Japanese ceramic technologies.