Noe Kuremoto

Japanese artist Noe Kuremoto’s Jōmon Vessels are a love letter to mothers everywhere. Together, they offer up a collective song honoring the full complexity of motherhood: the beauty and brutality; the struggle and devotion; and the ferocity, hope, and joy. 

Kuremoto’s sculptural stoneware vessels are contemporary reinterpretations of some of the world’s earliest known pottery, dating back to the Jōmon period (14,000–300 BCE). Traditionally, these vessels were used in both domestic and ritualistic contexts, and often embraced as objects of protection. Kuremoto’s elegant pieces are recast as both talisman and tributes—homages to the daily moments of light and shadow that together make up a life. Her vessels are an expression of her own experience as a mother, as well as an offering to honor the experiences of women and mothers across generations and cultures. At a time when women’s rights are increasingly under attack around the globe, the artist reflects on navigating motherhood, and raising good humans, in the modern world. For Kuremoto, who is herself a mother of four, these hand-sculpted pieces carry intergenerational wisdom, while also celebrating the act of making as a form of resistance. 

As she observes: “This work insists that creation—of life, of art, of meaning—is still a radical,  triumphant act. Clay remembers. Fire transforms. The vessel endures. I see art and parenthood as vehicles to pass on infinity to the next generation.”