In 1940, as a young woman in Honolulu, Toshiko Takaezu took a job producing ashtrays in press molds at the Hawaii Potter’s Guild. There she met the New York sculptor Carl Massa, who gave her 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, 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. Ceramics were not in vogue. but as she said, “there is a need for me to work in clay.” She understood that “an artist is a poet in his or her own medium. And when an artist produces a good piece, that work has mystery, an unsaid quality.” Takaezu had a long history with HoMA, which makes it the perfect final stop for this touring exhibition of her work. A retrospective, the show looks at the way Japanese tradition, the land of Hawaii, and the postwar New York art scene come together in Takaezu’s art. —Elena Clavarino