Baltimore, Maryland

Islesford, Maine

As an artist my work is inspired by landscapes, urban and waterfront. I am interested in the beautiful crust, decay, layers of pressure and the marks of time. I seek to express the grit and truth of what I observe and experience.

My work is currently functional handbuilt tableware, made with mid-range porcelain fired to cone 6, and occasionally terracotta fired to 04. I love the feel and experience of working with wet clay. My decorating technique is a series of painted layers, stenciled and monoprints with ceramic underglazes that are applied to the clay when it is wet and soft.

Throughout my career I spent many years as a teaching artist, facilitating groups for large installations. I am drawn to places where the community and the landscape are working together, where there is connection to water and respect for the natural world.

MDI, Maine

After a lifelong interest in photography and eventually working in photojournalism, I returned to school to study photography, but discovered instead the field of book arts, printmaking and papermaking at the University of California Santa Barbara, where I earned a B.A. in Book Arts at UCSB’s College of Creative Studies.

I have enjoyed the many processes of book arts, printmaking and papermaking—namely the tactility and repetitive motions involved. There is something very satisfying about carving wood, pulling a sheet of handmade paper from a vat of pulp, rubbing a baren on the back of the sheet to print a woodblock, especially with a specific result in mind. The outcome of the work is visually satisfying as well, but the labor and repetitive motions involved with these processes seem to go relatively unseen. I have been fascinated by these things we cannot see and the things we are not seeing, and have been interested in transforming these concepts into the tactile and visual experience.

My name, Chiori, translates from the Japanese into Thousand Weavings. As I weave each new layer of experience—I am beginning to see the different textures of my fabric develop and tie into one another.

When I moved to Maine in 2007, my book projects turned into house projects and family. However, in 2010 I had the tremendous opportunity to attend the Paper and Book Intensive in Machias and took a course coloring paper pulp with Katie MacGregor. That my seemingly meandering path lead me to work with Katie, is so natural to me. I love the synchronistic connections that have brought my life and work as an artist together. I find that in working this way, one thing usually leads me to another, and eventually everything seems to come together. In the past 4 years, health issues have left me unable to do my previous work, but now as I regain strength I know my next path—the next textures—will reveal themselves.

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