The practice of Momoko Takeshita Keane unfolds between the Japanese tradition of kogei and the language of contemporary sculpture. Born and raised in Kyoto, her work emerges from a deep attentiveness to ceramics as craft, yet evolves into an exploration in which gesture binds matter, time, and fire into an ongoing conversation. Through this synthesis, she carries inherited knowledge into a distinctly contemporary sculptural vocabulary.

Her methodology is manual and deliberately slow. Each piece begins through ancestral coil-building and pinch-building techniques: rolls of clay layered and shaped upward from the base, allowing the form to grow organically. There are no molds and no wheel; the body of the object retains the rhythm of the gesture and the pressure of the artist’s hands, preserving the intimacy of its making.

Once the structure is defined, the surface is worked with bamboo and metal tools, creating incised textures that evoke woven textiles. This almost fabric-like quality—one of Keane’s distinctive signatures—introduces a subtle tension between solidity and fragility. The surfaces seem at once resilient and delicate, grounding the work in material presence while suggesting softness and movement.

The decisive moment in her process arrives in the kiln. Influenced by her experience working with anagama wood-fired kilns, Keane embraced wood firing as a central element of her language. The works are placed in the kiln as greenware—unglazed and without prior bisque firing—and subjected to three to five days of continuous firing. Flame and ash transform the surface; color is not applied, it emerges. As the artist states, “I design the form, and the kiln designs the color.”

Within this methodology, her series articulate distinct yet connected explorations. In the Hozuki Series, each sculptural vessel embodies a direct collaboration with fire, its surfaces marked by natural ash deposits and subtle tonal shifts determined entirely by the movement of flame. In the Embrace Series, the gesture becomes even more intimate: circular motifs result from fireclay discs placed as resist elements, while occasional bluish streaks—what the artist calls “Angel’s Tears”—appear serendipitously through falling ash that melts upon contact. In both bodies of work, structure is deliberate, yet surface remains contingent—an equilibrium between intention and chance.

Keane’s work has been presented internationally, including the Gyeonggi International Ceramic Biennale, the Smithsonian Craft Exhibition, the Taipei Yingge Ceramics Biennale, and the Triennale of Kogei in Kanazawa. In 2024, her work was featured at the ADI Design Museum in Milan in the exhibition Origin of Simplicity: 20 Visions of Japanese Design. Works from the Embrace Series have entered major institutional collections, including the New Taipei City Yingge Ceramics Museum and the Cincinnati Art Museum. In 2025, her work will be presented by Side Gallery at Design Miami/ Paris, further consolidating her presence within the international contemporary design scene.