Chris Gustin
Wood fired stoneware
33″ x 18″ x 18”
Wood fired stoneware
21″ x 17″ x 18”
Wood fired stoneware
21” x 9” x 11”
Wood fired stoneware
26″ x 16″ x 13”
Stoneware
23″ x 24″ x 19″
Wood fired porcelain
7″ x 22.5″ x 20”
Wood fired porcelain
7″ x 22″ x 19”
Wood fired porcelain
8.5″ x 23″ x 17”
Biography
Chris is a studio artist and an Emeritus Professor at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. Chris received his BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1975, and his MFA from Alfred University in 1977. Chris lives and works in South Dartmouth, Massachusetts.
Chris’ work is published extensively, and is represented in numerous public and private collections, including the Renwick Gallery of the National Museum of American Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the World Ceramic Exposition Foundation in Icheon, Korea, American Museum of Ceramic Art, the Currier Museum of Art, the Yingge Museum in Taipai, and the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art.
With over fifty solo exhibitions, he has exhibited, lectured and taught workshops in the United States, Caribbean, South America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. He has received two National Endowment for the Arts Artist Fellowships, and four Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowships, the most recent in 2017. He is a member of the International Academy of Ceramics and was elected to the American Craft Council College of Fellows in 2016. He was awarded the Masters of the Medium award from the Renwick Alliance in 2017.
Chris is cofounder of the Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts in Maine, and currently serves as Honorary Trustee on its board.
Artist Statement
My work explores the vessel form on a human scale, taking simple, historical pottery forms and jumping them up in scale as a vehicle for abstraction. By increasing pottery form to the scale of the human body, I’m altering the expected dialogue between the object and user from that of the hand to one of the body. This ”body” scale speaks on a subliminal level to the entire histories of our experience. By using forms and glazes that evoke generosity, sensuality, fullness and humility, I am asking the viewer to make connections on a deeply personal level. This is what I depend on: the desire in all of us to reach out and touch, and by doing so, to trigger memory that is both felt and connected, memory that quietly waits to come to consciousness. This innate connection is for me the primal language of ceramic vessel form. It has the potential to reflect our universal human story, regardless of politics, culture or history.