Updates from the Ceramic and Design Studio of Christopher St. John
05/12/2024
It has been three years as a graduate student in the nationally ranked ceramics program at Ohio University and last Friday I finally graduated with my Master of Fine Arts degree in ceramics. What will these clay hands do now?
As I transition from one studio to the next, I wanted to update you on where I am exhibiting and selling my work, new collaboration projects in the works, and writing about clay and my life. I am excited about using this platform for my work and writing, and I thank you for the gift of your time.
NEWS
In April, I began exhibiting with Adamah Ceramics in Columbus, Ohio. The contemporary ceramics gallery carries a selection of my ceramic sculptures and drawings. On June 08, I will be hosting a hand-building demonstration and artist talk about the evolution of my practice from painting to my current multifaceted ceramics practice. I am excited and thrilled to be working with such a great team. I will spend the summer making work in preparation for my solo exhibition at the gallery in October.
I continue to exhibit and sell my ceramic and 2d work at Riversea Gallery in Astoria, Oregon. Astoria has been so important to my life and my practice, and I am grateful to be working with the folks there. In addition, Higher Art Gallery in Traverse City, Michigan, and Childhood’s End Gallery in Olympia, Washington also exhibit and sell my ceramic sculptures and plates.
The gallery Biz’Art Biz’Art in Le Vaudioux France is exhibiting my work in their annual summer exhibition. Some of the large drawings made from the soot of several of my firings are in this summers exhibition. Part of a series called “Touch” that had several iterations during my tenure as a graduate student, they depict enormous hands grappling with the edges of the space of the paper. There is a tenderness in this work that surprised me, and Francoise has paired these drawings with the work of Patrick Everus and Jerome Galvin.
I will also be teaching again this summer. The Summer Studios Pre-College Program is an amazing 2 week fine arts intensive for high school students that provides them with a taste of a University Fine Arts Program. Meant to be expansive and intensive, this program brings students from all around the country to the Ohio University campus. This program is special to me because I participated in a similar program as a high school music student in Tennessee, and the experience demonstrated to me early on that a life in the arts was possible. Having an opportunity to give back to younger generations of artists as an arts educator and mentor is one of the reasons why I returned to graduate school.
FROM THE STUDIO
Some of the last work that I will produce in my OU studio…I have only had this studio for one academic year, and my feelings have been complex. While I am certainly ready to move on, this sunlit space helped give birth to my thesis exhibition, and it is a space where I solved so many technical problems in the development of my animal work in clay. Yes, that is a Clary Illian mug on my work table. You can also see a Jason Wang and Tom Bartel if you are playing spot the potter…
This piece, Rupture and Repair, features my field recordings and audio work, animation, and work with AI.
My friend and collaborator, the composer Dario Duarte, have begun a new multimedia project together. This project is a culmination of much of the environmental work that the two of us have focused our creative work in the last three years since our first collaboration together. You can see that project here .
AFTER-a biweekly musing on my journey from grad student back to practicing artist…
I had it all planned out. I would go back to graduate school following the pandemic, and I would get an academic teaching job to better support my practice. I also wanted to better support a life that my then partner and I were envisioning together. It involved a move to Montana, buying property, and setting up a pottery studio. Ultimately, that decision to go to grad school tanked my relationship, but I still had high hopes in school providing me with a pathway toward a steady job to better support my practice and goals. What made it easy to decide this during pandemic was that nothing was going on. Our respective careers had stopped in their tracks. And no one knew how long this would last or how things would change. I assumed there would be a need for teachers following a global flu pandemic, and I still believe that.
I did well in school, despite the perceived disadvantage of being older. Most of the grads thought I was some quiet oddball, maybe autistic, maybe queer, super nice, awkward in conversations, a real artist. I was awarded a prestigious fellowship and the other people who won the fellowship were researching black holes and molecular biology. Not bad for a queerdo.
After the 50 applications I stopped counting, and I stopped being mad at the rejections. I would have waves of bitterness still hit me like getting whacked with an oar, but otherwise, I was managing my outrage and growing bitterness. A lot of the planning I had done revolved around getting a job somewhere and moving. What I did not plan for was staying. Yes, I applied (and was accepted) to the PhD program, not out of pride or vanity. I know what brutal work goes into a doctoral, and I applied at the last minute thinking well if everything else tanked, I have a backup. It is still an option. That was practical. But in my heart of hearts, as the semester wound down, I knew that what I wanted was to be back in my practice again, making art, and making connections. I just wanted to be an artist again.
While grad school did not provide me with that long-sought-after teaching job, it did provide me with enough grit and determination to know when I needed to pull myself out of the mud. I didn’t want to lose any more time. So I looked at my options and I started a business plan…to be continued!
See you in two weeks!