Ohigashi Alyne works within the time-honored craft of Tobe ware, bringing her unique voice to this centuries-old medium. Combining traditional techniques with her own distinct designs and glazing styles, she turns the pristine white surfaces of Tobe porcelain into canvases for her vibrant colors and textures.
With a background in agricultural research, Ohigashi excels in botanical and natural motifs and forms. Through a combination of intuition and a deep understanding of technique and materials, she crafts ceramic sculptures and objets d’art that seek to expand the horizons and possibilities of Tobe ware as a medium.
The works in Ohigashi’s Botanical Textures series are art pieces—ceramic sculptures that mark a departure from her more commercial work in tableware. Brightly colored, intricately shaped, and vividly alive, these objets d’art reside on the border between playful and serene, realistic and fantastical.
Richly textured, with a depth of glaze and detail that rewards prolonged and repeated viewing, their forms seem to subtly shift with the angle of the light and the vantage point of the viewer. Their fascination lies partly in their ambiguity. Does a piece represent a cactus, or a flower, a sea urchin, or a seed pod? Perhaps all of the above? Without one simple answer, it is up to the eye and heart of the beholder.