Toshiaki Noda has been primarily working on ceramic art over the last five years since he realized the potential of the medium. He has been fascinated with the characteristics of ceramics such as the plasticity of clay that gives him many options and a spontaneous approach in building form. The textures and colors he can get only from the alchemy of glazes that he can not have full control over, attracts him. Noda invariably gets his inspiration from the passage of time and visual changes of things caused by both natural and unnatural events over time. Textures, cracks, tears, drips, fades, grooves, organic curves, layers, and built-ups of his works create a feeling of passage of time things have experienced. 

Toshiaki Noda (b. 1982) lives and works in New York City.

He was born in Arita, Saga Prefecture, Japan, a region noted for its remarkable porcelain ceramics dating back to the 1600s. His parents are ceramic dealers, therefore Toshiaki grew up in a unique aesthetic culture, which has influenced his studio practice.

Toshiaki studied ceramics at Arita technical High School ceramic program, and visual arts, with an emphasis on printmaking, at California State University Long Beach. After graduating, he moved to New York City, where he started his artist career with a focus on ceramics as his primary medium. His printmaking education combined with his aesthetic and technical training in Japan lends a unique vision to his ceramic practice.

Unlike the smooth, consistent surface of the Imari wares, Toshiaki uses the plasticity of clay to create gestural forms, and the alchemy of glaze to explore texture and color. His sculpting process includes hand-building, wheel-throwing, carving, stacking, undoing, and redoing with no predetermined endpoint.

Toshiaki’s work is found at the intersection of materiality, pottery, craft, design, sculpture, and the history of ceramics. He experiments with transforming conventional ceramic forms such as flower vases and tea bowls, and combining them with functional objects' forms— including garments, shoes, buckets, stacked egg cartons, bricks, and so on.

Many of his sculptures go through a process where common-object forms are abstracted and become idiosyncratic, thus creating a new sense of realism with irony and transience. Toshiaki questions traditional craft and the boundaries between ceramics, fine art, decoration, and sculpture.

Toshiaki Noda’s recent exhibitions include Patricia Sweetow Gallery in San Francisco, Tomio Koyama Gallery in Tokyo as well as exhibitions in New York and Milan, Italy. His work is included in The William Louis Dreyfus Foundation. He is a recipient of a 2017 NYSCA/NYFA Artist fellowship. Toshiaki’s works have been reviewed in the San Francisco Chronicle and the Sculpture Magazine.