Itsue ITO
Japanese ceramist.

Ito Itsue is a Japanese ceramist resident in Japan and the USA. She is a member of the American Crafts Council, the International Academy of Ceramics, the Japan Association of Artists, Craftsmen and Architects and NCECA.

Ito studied under Yanagihara Mutsuo at Osaka University of Fine Arts, earning a BFA in 1979 and in the USA under Jim Tanner and Roy Strassberg at Minnesota State University, Mankato, earning an MA in 1981 and under Joe Bova at Louisiana State University, earning an MFA in 1983. She established a studio in Miyazaki, Japan in 1988, where she makes slab and coil-built abstract sculpture. Her works are inspired by childhood memories of the blue-green colours (in Japanese ‘AO’) of the landscape of Miyazaki and her childhood home, symbolising ‘shelter’. Underglazes and slips are used for surface decoration and works are fired multiple times.

Her residencies include the European Ceramic Work Center (EKWC) in s’Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands in 1997, the Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park in Japan in 1998, the International Ceramic Studio in Kecskemet, Hungary in 2001, Vallauris, France in 2002 and the Ceramic Development Center, Lampang, Thailand in 2004.

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