41. Sakurai Yasuko 櫻井靖子

Sakurai Yasuko was born in Kyoto in 1969 and studied at Kyoto Seika University after which she completed her ceramics training at the Kyoto City Industrial Research Center. In the late 1990s, she obtained a grant from the French government as Artist in Residence at the ENAD-Limoges (Ecole Nationale d'Art Décoratif de Limoges). She was also a guest designer at the Oribe Institute of Design.

The central theme in Sakurai Yasuka's work is light and shadow. Her first works were of pottery, which she pierced to create a form of reticulated objects. Later, while working as an Artist in Residence at the ENAD, located in Limoges , the center of porcelain industry, she became fascinated by the possibilities of porcelain and would use it as her medium of choice. In her work, she uses tubes that are trimmed into the desired shape around which the object is cast, then removed after firing. The results are objects that have a serene calm  without boring for a moment because the play of light falling through the various openings in the surface makes the work sparkle and seem to change shape. For the viewer, this gives a unique viewing experience: depending on the angle from which one views the work, the openings take on round or elliptical shapes, which rhythmically allow light to pass through and cast shadows on the surface of the obejct itself, as well as on the immediate surroundings.  Sakurai Yasuko is among the top female ceramicists in Japan, she has received several awards and her work is exhibited in prominent galleries and museums, including the Joan B. Mirviss Gallery in New York and the Gardiner Museum in Canada.