Peter Yamaoka lives and works in Roxbury, New York, in the heart of the Catskill Mountains. He studied painting at Rhode Island School of Design and did post-graduate work in printmaking at the Royal College of Art in London. His training as a painter and a printmaker is evident in his approach to his ceramic practice. He builds ruins of ancient cities onto the shoulders of his vases, molds the heads of mythological figures into the necks of the vases, and creates ceramic sculptures that are homages to some of the artists whose work he admires—Yves Klein, Giorgio Morandi, Alexander McQueen. His vases, dioramas, bowls and sculptures are all simultaneously both picture and object, walking a fine line between the surreal/phantasmagoric imagery and the everyday nature of ceramic objects.