Biography
Ayumi Horie is a full-time studio potter in Portland, Maine. She is recognized as a leader in craft through her work pushing the ceramics field to be more expansive and politically engaged. She has won numerous honors including a Distinguished Fellow in Craft grant from United States Artists, inaugural Ceramics Artist of the Year, Maine Craft Artist Award, and an Honorary Member of NCECA in 2020 for her contribution to the field. Her collaborative projects include Handmade for Japan, Portland Brick, The Democratic Cup, and Highfire Feminism. More recently, Horie seeded the vision and helped create the Craft Archive Fellowship at the Center for Craft to support scholarship and archival research around underrepresented and non-dominant craft narratives. Horie’s work is in numerous public and private collections, including the Museum of Art and Design and the Farnsworth Art Museum. She has taught and lectured nationally and internationally for the past 25 years and has served on the boards of the Archie Bray, the American Craft Council, and Haystack Mountain School of Crafts.
Artist Statement
My work attempts to deepen connections between people and their communities, serving both a physical purpose and as a vehicle to open the softer side of a person. While my primary work for the last twenty years has been that of a studio potter, I have also expanded my practice to include video, social activism, curatorial work, and public art. This desire to deepen connections between people is what knits together my ceramic practice and I am interested in the anti-masterpiece and the anti-monumental as a means to create meaningful connections to an object, a narrative, a person. Daily interactions are what drive change whether they’re in intimate domestic spaces or out on a public sidewalk.
More information about Ayumi can be found at: ayumihorie.com
IG : @ayumihorie