Narrative Biography (page 2/2) I was also accepted as an Associate Professor of Art at Philadelphia College of Art and Design of The University of the Arts and began teaching in the Ceramics Program upon my return in the Fall of 1990. In 1993, I worked as a resident artist at Togei no Mori, the Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park, in Shigaraki, Japan. During the same academic year, 1993/1994, I received a Professional Fulbright Fellowship to Japan. I initially worked as an artist-in-residence in the Ceramics Program at Seika University in Kyoto and later moved to the pottery producing city of Tokoname where I secured a small temporary studio with the help of a friend, Kazuko Yamanaka. Toward the conclusion of my time under Fulbright, I was able to arrange a long-term agreement for use of the studio and now return each summer. I had inadvertently established a second studio in Japan.          During the same year, my work was featured as the cover article in American Ceramics magazine. In 1997 I was promoted to Professor of art. That same summer, I was invited to participate in the JICA workshop and spent a month working in Masan, South Korea. During the 1998/1999 academic year, I received my first sabbatical leave of absence, and used the time to travel extensively throughout South and Southeast Asia to visit pottery and other craft villages, archaeological sites and art museums.          I currently live in the Soho district of Manhattan in New York City, commute to Philadelphia where teach in the Ceramics Program of the Craft Department at The University of the Arts. I work in my Manhattan studio during the Academic year, and travel to Japan to work in Tokoname for the summer. I still delight in making functional ware and use the feelings, impressions, and accumulated sensations from my travel to enrich the formal sculpture arrangements.          My work is represented in museum collections in the United States and abroad, including The Philadelphia Museum of Art; The Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution; The Everson Museum; The Los Angeles County Art Museum; Museum Boymans-van Bruningen, Roterdam; The Kruithuis Museum, s-Hertogenbosh; The North China University of Technology Museum, and Togei no Mori Museum, in Shigaraki, Japan. — James Makins, July 2009