As a young woman in Honolulu in 1940, Toshiko Takaezu took a job at the Hawaii Potter’s Guild, where she produced ashtrays in press molds. There she met Carl Massa, a New York sculptor, who gave her books such as Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead and Irving Stone’s Lust for Life. She began to think about making art. Takaezu enrolled in painting classes at the Honolulu Museum of Art’s Saturday school, where instructors Ralston Crawford and Louis Pohl encouraged her to continue her studies on the mainland. She moved to the East Coast, and by the 1960s, Takaezu had embraced Abstract Expressionism. Although ceramics were not in vogue, she saw them as sculpture. “In my life I see no difference between making pots, cooking, and growing vegetables,” Takaezu once said. “They are all so related. However, there is a need for me to work in clay. . . . it gives me many answers in my life.” In this exhibition at Princeton, where she taught, Takaezu’s work is placed in conversation with contemporaries such as Helen Frankenthaler, Isamu Noguchi, and Robert Motherwell. —Elena Clavarino