Osa Atoe (Ah-toy) is a Nigerian-American ceramic artist living in Sarasota, FL. Her studio grew out of her kitchen in New Orleans in 2015 and has since expanded to a full-sized workshop adjacent to her home. She holds a bachelor's degree in Sociology and has been a volunteer and community organizer all of her life, but her first passion was music. She grew up playing violin and performed in various punk bands for fifteen years, touring all over the US and Europe. Aside from music, she wrote a zine (turned book) about Black punks & outsider artists called Shotgun Seamstress. Atoe took her first pottery class at age 34. A few years later, she completed a year-long post-baccalaureate program for ceramics at Louisiana State University and has pursued various alternative learning opportunities since. She encourages others in their path to ceramics by leading Kaabo Clay, a community for Black clay artists.

Osa Atoe’s pottery builds on the legacy of midcentury Nigerian studio ceramics, tracing the innovations of Ladi Kwali and Michael Cardew at the Abuja Pottery Centre, a hub that brought together ceramicists from across Africa and beyond. Drawing from African, American Indigenous and Western ceramic traditions, her studio practice contributes to the ongoing development of an African studio pottery movement. Atoe revisits historical techniques and technologies, evaluating their continued relevance and potential for contemporary life. Functionality is central: each vessel is designed for use, to be held, poured from, or filled, creating a direct and tangible connection between the land, maker, object, and user. Through this practical engagement, her work transforms utilitarian objects into vectors of memory and cultural reflection. Her pieces, also inspired by the Florida landscape, operate in the intersection of utility and expression, offering forms that are immediately useful yet carry broader ideas about resilience, care, and balance. In Atoe’s work, functionality is the lens through which history, innovation, and human need converge. The resulting objects manifest as symbols of idealism, and provide a visual and tactile respite from violence, division, cynicism and injustice.