A potter in Kasama since 2014, Monika Furuya fires into her ceramics a gentle charm. A graduate of the town’s ceramic university she is among the many who have found the space to be themselves while living in Kasama.

Much of what Furuya creates is decorated with the icchin ceramic technique of surfaced applied slip. Often she returns to the motif of a beaded flower like shaped connected by lines. These lines are never drawn too straight, or too evenly. The aim she says, is for work that will become part of everyday life, and that will add moments of richness to the days of those who own it. In her lines, her patterns, and her forms, Furuya hints to a more peaceful and happy passage of time.