大竹 利絵子

Rieko Otake was born in 1978 in Kanagawa Prefecture. In 2004 she graduated from Tokyo University of the Arts’ Graduate School of Fine Arts, majoring in sculpture, and completed her PhD in 2007. Currently serves as Associate Professor of Sculpture at Tokyo University of the Arts. Her works have been collected in the Takahashi and JAPIGOZZI Collections.

Rieko Otake’s woodcarvings express such motifs as young girls, birds and deer and even while her work looks somewhat delicate and unstable at times, one senses a unique strength in its universal presence replete with grace. She is affected by the importance of the rhythm of the repeated carving motions: a sincere process of exchange as if the tree and one’s breathing might become joined together, so that the artwork appears as story replete with lyricism.