Peter Yamaoka

Biography

Peter Yamaoka was born in Glen Cove, New York, in 1948. He studied painting at the Rhode Island School of Design and did post-graduate work in printmaking at the Royal College of Art in London. For many years he lived in New York City, where he founded Hudson Street Press in Tribeca with the Dutch printmaker Gerda van Leeuwen, his wife.

The press published portfolios and limited editions of artists' prints from 1985 to about 2001. The couple then moved their printing studio to Roxbury, in the Catskills, where Yamaoka turned to clay. He worked in earthenware, porcelain and raku, and brought a painter's and printmaker's eye to it.

He built ancient ruined cities onto the shoulders of vases, modeled mythological heads into their necks, and made ceramic homages to artists he admired, including Yves Klein, Giorgio Morandi and Alexander McQueen. He saw myth as a shared way of explaining the natural world. He took part in Holland Tunnel Gallery's Framed project (2014) and in Earth & Spirit (2019), a show of Hudson Valley ceramic artists.

He died in Roxbury in January 2022. In 2023 the gallery included his work, among it Gilded Medusa, in Down To Earth with Gerda van Leeuwen and Kent Peterson.

Practice. Ceramic vases, bowls, dioramas and sculptures in earthenware, porcelain and raku that act as both picture and object: miniature ruined cities, mythological figures and homages to other artists, informed by his training in painting and printmaking.