I’m half Japanese and half American, born in Japan, raised in California, and now living in Sweden.

Creativity has always been somewhere in my life. Growing up, I was constantly making things — scrapbooking, painting, designing homemade cards, baking, making soap — you name it. My Japanese mother and grandmother are both incredibly creative and talented with their hands, particularly with sewing, so making things has always felt familiar to me.

Then adulthood happened. I built a career in the tech industry, spent most of my days in front of a computer, and somewhere along the way, crafting mostly disappeared from my life.

A couple of years ago, I found my way back to it.

It started with paper flowers. I became fascinated with the art of making lifelike flowers from crepe paper and eventually wanted to create my own ceramic vases to put them in. In 2024, I signed up for an 8-week intro to wheel throwing at a friend’s ceramics studio. I was hooked.

I don’t have formal training in ceramics/pottery. Most of what I know has come from making — a lot. When I left my corporate job in the summer of 2025 to take a year break from my tech career, I spent most days on the wheel at my neighborhood pottery studio.

After years of working behind a screen, there was something deeply satisfying about working with my hands, feeling cold clay and transforming it into a functional object. I especially love the experimentation — seeing how forms, colors, textures, and glazes come together, often in ways I didn’t expect.

Niwa means “garden” in Japanese. The name is a nod to my Japanese roots, but it has also come to represent what making feels like to me: planting ideas, experimenting, letting things develop, and seeing what grows.

Niwa is my little space for all of that — the things I make, the experiments that work (and sometimes don’t), and my ongoing return to a creative part of myself that was there all along.