Hitomi Shibata is a Japanese native ceramic artist based in Seagrove, North Carolina, USA and has studied Fine Art & Craft at Okayama University in Japan. She lived and worked as a potter in Shigaraki, an old pottery village in Japan, until a Rotary International scholarship brought her to the USA to study ceramics at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth. With her husband, she later moved to North Carolina to set up a permanent pottery studio and now build wood kilns together.

Hitomi has been artist-in-residence at Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park, Cub Creek Foundation for the Ceramic Arts, and North Carolina Pottery Center; organised workshops and lectured at Peters Valley School of Craft, Penland School of Crafts, and NCECA; won international ceramics competitions at Yingge Museum of Ceramics, Taiwan, and Yixing Teapot Competition, China; and is a member of the International Academy of Ceramics (IAC).