Andy Shaw
Ceramics
MFA, The New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University
shawan24@ecu.edu
101 Jenkins Fine Arts Center
252 328-1292
artaxis.org/artist/andy-shaw/
Teaching Assistant Professor at East Carolina University and former Associate Professor at Louisiana State University, studio potter, co-coordinator of the Mid-Atlantic Keramik Exchange in Iceland, former director of the LSU Ceramics Factory, and co-director of the first Queeramics Symposium. His curatorial practice includes the award-winning exhibition, The Boneyard: The Ceramics Teaching Collection and The Shaping of Us: Queerness in Ceramics, both exhibited at the LSU Museum of Art. Artist residencies include the Royal Danish Academy, SÍM Residency and Íshús Hafnarfjarðar both in Iceland, McKnight Residency at Northern Clay Center, Arrowmont, Evelyn Shapiro Fellow at The Clay Studio, Archie Bray, and Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. His work is part of several permanent collections including the Garth Clark and Mark Delvecchio Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Crocker Art Museum, the LSU Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Sanbao Ceramic Art Institute in China.
Courses taught:
BFA and MFA Ceramics
Artist Statement
In 2015 my work entered a transitional period, one which I’ve termed The Bridge. As an examination of creative practice, The Bridge intentionally positions between the two points away and towards, one point that acknowledges known, acted upon resolutions and another that feels its way through process and outcome towards shifts in artistic identity. The Bridge tests what I carry forward as well as what I can release.
The trays, as my most recent body of work, is a position on the Bridge, one that presents aspects of both points. In moving away, I sought to change clay body color, to adopt handbuilding forming methods, and to develop a mold-based system. The trays begin with bisque ring molds that I carve from thick slabs of clay. Designing shapes for the rings is my favorite part of this work and serves as an aspect of moving towards by innovating a new formal language. During the Mid-Atlantic Keramik Exchange in Iceland I allowed the rings to exist for the wall, liberating them from being used as molds for shaping functional trays. As much as I love and have loved function, The Bridge presents broader applications that, in time, will transform the clay work, its display, and subsequently how I align my creative practice with outcome.
Each tray holds an intrusion of color. During a 2016 sabbatical, the word Interference represented the idea of a perception that can undermine, obscure, and reconfigure the experiencing of reality. I felt this while in Narsaq Greenland, which sits at the confluence of ice-filled fjords. Hearing the sound of icebergs calving echoing off the water and mountains, I wanted to investigate. I walked to a rocky outcrop to sit for an hour to watch a large iceberg that was grounded a short distance from shore. As I sat, looking at water trickling off the ice into the fjord, I said out loud, “I wonder what it’s like to be here?” This was my first instance of interference as I was physically there on the rock with Greenland all around me, but my awareness of being a visitor created a kind of barrier. What my mind was looking for was familiarity with place, the sense of knowing that only comes from living and participation over time. As a visitor, I did not have that. I was as aware of this fact as I was of the ice in front of me.
Throughout my career, my work feels best when these internal conversations sneak out and align in the work. Seeing color on the trays act within a dynamic relating to what I felt as interference indicates that time on The Bridge is leading somewhere.
