Material inquiry shaped by history, utility, and the geologic logos of clay.

In Tulsa, Akiyama holds a studio co-leadership role at Addis Ceramics and teaches at 3rd Street Clayworks. He serves on the Tulsa Farmer's Market Education Committee, providing clay for youth programming, and has led workshops through 108 Contemporary at the Tulsa Dream Center—working with students to mix local clay and build forms from Oklahoma earth.

His residencies include Toshiko Takaezu's studio in New Jersey, the New Harmony Clay Project in Indiana, and the Shigaraki Ceramic Culture Park in Japan. His work has been recognized through induction into the Homo Faber Guide (Michelangelo Foundation, 2026), representation by Companion Gallery, and an invitation to participate in Oklahoma Contemporary's Art Now: FUTURE/IS exhibition.

Through teaching and public programming, Akiyama extends his material inquiry into community spaces, treating clay as a medium for shared authorship and material discovery. He received the 2022 Founders Award in Art & Design and the 2024 Hogan Visionary Award through 108 Contemporary's regional exhibitions in Tulsa.

My work explores how ceramic form carries environmental and material memory. I am interested in the geologic poetics of clay—layering different clays and minerals to create vessels that sit between function, specimen, and landscape.

In the studio, I emulate geomorphic collisions and erosions, building forms that are punctuated with cavities suggesting cups, bowls, or other functional bodies. These vessels undergo multiple heat treatments to refine their color and surface, blurring the distinctions between texture and form, function and sculpture.

Teaching and public instruction are not separate from this practice. Through workshops and community programs, I extend my material inquiry into shared spaces. I try to create conditions where clay becomes a medium for material discovery and shared authorship, treating public instruction as an extension of the same inquiry that drives the objects themselves.