Makoto Yabe trained with Japanese master potters in Kyoto, Japan. He taught at Harvard University and the DeCordova Museum. Yabe’s work is in the collections of museums throughout the US including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, The DeCordova Museum, The Rhode Island School of Design Museum, The Cleveland Art Museum and the Denver Art Museum.

Plum Gallery exhibits both his sculpture and functional ceramics. Yabe’s work is deeply informed by his traditional Japanese training. This formal foundation is the springboard for his expressive work filled with life, wit and movement.


Mary Natalizia delivered this remembrance of Makoto at his funeral:

The first time I encountered Makoto was in 1985. He was demonstrating wheel throwing at Williams College Museum of Art as part of their Japanese Folk Art Exhibition. An onlooker had asked him a technical question about creating the form of the pot. Makoto replied with his impish grin and twinkling eyes "It's the inside of the pot that makes the outside beautiful - just like people." Right then I knew how special he was.

I had the good fortune to take several classes with Makoto at Art New England in Bennington and to subsequently assist him for many more years. Most recently I have had the great honor to show his extraordinary work at my gallery.

Each summer at Bennington, after a week of hard work and pure magic experienced by all, the class would put together a gift and card to say thank you to Makoto for his amazing spirit. One summer I found this poem by e.e. cummings, which expressed so perfectly the camaraderie his generous and fun loving spirit fostered in each class he taught.

Love is a place
& through this place of
love move
(with brightness of peace)
all places

yes is a world
& in this world of yes live
(skillfully curled)
all worlds

Makoto was that place of love and world of yes.

We now know the price of sharing that place of love and world of yes with him. The price is the deep sadness we feel at his passing, a small price to pay for the great opportunity and rare privilege to have known this humble, generous and witty man who was Makoto.

He loved his family. He loved his friends. He loved teaching. He loved food. He loved clay.

Makoto sent me some pieces this fall which reminded me how art often imitates life.

These recent, collapsed, imploded spheres with paddling (or as he would say "sponking"!) to give them lift and wings are so intuitive and heartfelt. They are a culmination of all his expertise and wit. I asked Makoto about what inspired these forms. He told me he had seen a water container he had made years earlier (which was more complex) at Bill Thrasher's tea master ceremony and was inspired to revisit this form in a new simpler fashion. When I first saw these forms I didn't understand them - but when I put them on pedestals side by side they spoke to each other with body language, the spaces between the forms as interesting, subtle and complex as the forms themselves. They simultaneously hunkered down and took flight.

Well my dear friend Makoto - you have taken flight as well