APRIL 4 – 30
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Doug Casebeer, Brian Geier, Jeff Oestreich, Will Swanson, Jewelry Spotlight: Kristen Cliffel
Doug Casebeer, Brian Geier, Jeff Oestreich, Will Swanson, Jewelry Spotlight: Kristen Cliffel
April’s Featured Artists showcase an expansive depth of glazes. Doug Casebeer investigates the correlations between storage, shelter, and nourishment while expressing beauty, balance, and grace. His forms are influenced by rural archetypes of western landscapes and all of his many globe-spanning experiences. Brian Geier focuses on making decorative and functional ceramic pieces using porcelain and crystalline glazes. Geier’s background in geography is the main source of inspiration for his crystalline glazes, specifically the mineral ocean jasper. Jeff Oestreich is well known for his functional stoneware pots. Wheel-thrown and altered, the minimally-glazed work is fired in a soda kiln at his residence and studio. Will Swanson wants to make pots that attain satisfying simplicity while allowing the character of the earth materials and the hand-making process to be evident. Kristen Cliffel’s bird jewelry is a form returned to throughout her body of work, both wearable and sculptural.
About the Artists
Doug Casebeer
Doug Casebeer is a lecturer, kiln builder, and ceramic artist from Carbondale, Colorado who has exhibited worldwide. Casebeer is now a full-time resident artist at the University of Oklahoma (Norman). He previously served as the artistic director for ceramics and sculpture at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass Village, Colorado, where he has been making work for the past 34 years. Casebeer has served as pottery consultant to the United Nations and the German government and was elected to the International Academy of Ceramics in Geneva, Switzerland, in 2009. Through his ceramic work, Casebeer investigates the correlations between storage, shelter, and nourishment while expressing beauty, balance, and grace. His forms are influenced by rural archetypes of western landscapes and all of his many globe-spanning experiences.
Jewelry Spotlight: Kristen Cliffel
Kristen Cliffel received her BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art (OH). In 2015, she was awarded the Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council. There was no shortage of artistic imprint during Cliffel’s childhood: art lined the walls of the family home and there was a castle in the basement where live mice ran around in tunnels. Now identifying as both a wife and a mother, Cliffel engages themes of domestic mythology through her ceramic practice. Central to her exploration is the unfolding of intimate relationships and the fear, hope, belonging, security, and connection associated with them.
Cliffel uses visual metaphors and unexpected combinations of sculpted objects to dissect these domestic fairytales and expose their prescribed notions of happiness, fulfillment, and success. The bird is a form returned to throughout her body of work, both wearable and sculptural.
Brian Geier
Brian Geier is a studio potter working out of Lakewood, CO. He focuses on making decorative and functional ceramic pieces using porcelain and crystalline glazes. Geier’s background in geography is the main source of inspiration for his crystalline glazes, specifically the mineral, ocean jasper, which is part of the quartz family. His beautiful surfaces and the process behind achieving such wonderful surface variation is what interests Geier most—no two crystalline pieces are ever the same. Geier received his AA from Waubonsee Community College (Sugar Grove, IL) and his BS in geography from Northern Illinois University (DeKalb).
Jeff Oestreich
Jeff Oestreich received his education at Bemidji State University, the University of Minnesota, and at the Bernard Leach Pottery in St. Ives, England. He has exhibited and taught throughout the United States, as well as in New Zealand. Oestreich is well known for his functional stoneware pots. Wheel-thrown and altered, the minimally glazed work is fired in a soda kiln at his residence and studio near Taylors Falls, Minnesota.
Will Swanson
Will Swanson uses stoneware and porcelain clays to create dinnerware, baking and serving dishes, vases, and other useful pots for the kitchen and table. His pots are individually wheel-thrown, and often are altered or assembled from wheel-thrown parts. In all his work, Swanson wants to make pots that attain a satisfying simplicity while allowing the character of the earth materials and the hand-making process to be evident. Swanson shares his studio with his wife Janel Jacobson and together they welcome potters and visitors to the annual St. Croix Valley Pottery Tour.