Artist Bio

Born and raised in Tokyo, Japan, Misako Kambe inherited a great artistic mind from her blood line.  Her great-grandfather was a great calligrapher, well-known in both China and Japan, who also was a philosopher and an educator.

Strong influenced by the Mingei-movement, Misako adored the world of the artisan so much in her 20’s that she joined a traditional Kimono studio in Kyoto, as an apprentice specializing in stenciling(paper cutting) for two years.  There, she was exposed to the magnificent beauty of the historical Kimono collection in contrast to those worn in everyday use.  Besides her brutal apprenticeship, she studied enthusiastically, the design of Kimono and how to make a Kimono in diverse ways.

In 1997, she immigrated to the United States with her husband who founded a nanotech venture company in Silicon Valley.

Here, her passion for the art remained intact.  Since 1999, she has attended several art courses at Foothill College in California.  Finally, she found her way to live as a ceramic artist.  Under strict instruction by Bruce George who was a great ceramic artist, mentor, and wonderful teacher at Foothill College, she quickly developed her skills and sophisticated the technique to refine each art work.  She has received a couple of awards.

Since these 10 years she fired her pieces mostly in wood fire kiln.  She uses mostly Porcelain and carved with three different styles.  One is line carving,  second is deep relief carving, and third one is water erosion.  Most of her pieces are fired for about 30 hours in Noborigama kiln and others are fired for three to four days in Anagama kiln.  Both firing are very high temperature firing around 2400F.  She has been experimenting with the various effects of ashes and soda deposition onto her carved uneven surface.

She belongs to the tree differnt wood fire kiln  sites.  One is “Hikarigama-kiln” in Elkton Oregon, one is “Spring Valley Anagama” in Milpitas California and “Richard Carter Studio” in Pope Valley California.  Wood firing is such a labor intensive firing that it takes 6 to 10 people cutting and stacking wood for preparation, then loading the pieces and stoking the wood for many hours.  Waiting till the kiln gets cool enough then unloading and cleaning the kiln.  Even those process requires long hours of hard labor, the rustic and natural results are worth it.