Artist: Nick Weddell
Nick Weddell, NEW YORK
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Explosions of color combine with forms that flaunt and flourish. Bulging growths and gargantuan gobs flow, defying gravity in gravitas gestures of movement and mystery. Chemistry is hog-tied and employed to exploit its fullest perplexing potential. Chromatic communication acts as muscle layered upon a porcelain skeleton. A performance by the hands forever frozen by fire, inert, enters the world as a courier to deliver a message encouraging the awareness of joy and the celebration of the mundane.
My work revolts against the borders of what is possible with ceramic material. I wish to study what is feasible and transcend it, resulting in a marriage of surface, form, and color that defies expectation and familiarity. I communicate best not verbally but through tactile gestures wedded to polychrome surfaces that grow and evolve to overcome their clay scaffolding. I explore forms that brandish their ambiguity with a cavalier confidence and proudly wear their glazes the way a coral reef advertises itself to tropical fish.
Symphonies of silica, molten, merging with copper carbonate to form a feast of green glory. The weaving of plastic parts in a concert of flair and form, frozen by fire. Potter as puppeteer, manipulating hexagonal platelets and matrixes of silica into ordered parts, my cast of particles playing positions of simultaneous structure and melt. Making for me is a dance, a whimsical ballet of kinetic gesture and color. A movement of the hands sometimes fast, often slow,
recorded in a soft body that gains strength only through tribulation. Dressed in the sour lemon of vanadium with a bowtie of raspberry cobalt blue all topped in copper maraschino. Gravity performs as the commander, dictating flow and gush. Hot glass harkens but betrays its master upon cooling: an allure forever unfulfilled.
I am magnetically drawn to my personal primal urges. The visceral feelings that originate in the stomach act as my rudder, navigating me and my work towards the provocative, the strange, and the alien. I daydream and night-dream of neutron stars, earthly aliens, and cosmic clouds whose scales exceed millions of parsecs. I utilize utility as a vehicle to transport my work into personal
spaces and places, employing familiarity as a tool to smuggle the strange past the borders of the gallery and into reality. Through my research I have found that there is no hard line between clay and glaze, pottery and sculpture, and surface and form. I am currently exploring the spectrum between these
subjects and along the way am making work that floats between these concrete
and defining characteristics. I am jolted by the possibility of a pot that is a sculpture, clay that is glaze, and surface that is form.
EDUCATION
2017-current MFA in ceramics, New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred
University (NYSCC). Graduation date: May 2019
2016-2017 Special Student, NYSCC
2014-2016 BFA in studio art with a focus in ceramics, Texas State University.
Graduation date: May 2016
2013-2014 Associate degree in Art, Austin Community College.
Graduation date: August 2014
2012-2013 General studies and ceramics classes, Texas A&M University Corpus Christi
EXPERIENCE
January 2018-current Teaching Assistant for Intro to Wheel class, NYSCC,
Alfred NY
August 2017-December 2017 Social Media Czar, Archivist, and Photographer,
NYSCC, Alfred NY
May 2017-August 2017 Summer Intern, NYSCC, Alfred NY
August 2016-August 2017 Glass Loader at Saxon Glass Technologies, Alfred
NY
August 2015-March 2016 Resident artist at Eye of the Dog Art Center, San
Marcos TX
January 2015-May 2016 Texas State University Ceramic Art Student
Association (C.A.S.A.) Historian
October 2014-May 2016 Texas Clay Festival Worker, Gruene TX
August 2013-August 2016 Head Assistant to artist Lisa Orr, Austin TX
January-April 2016 substitute teacher for ceramics classes at St. Stevens
Episcopal School, Austin TX
May-August 2015 Summer Production Thrower at Sunset Canyon Pottery,
Dripping Springs TX
May 2015 Assistant to Bridget Houser, Sunset Canyon Pottery proprietor, for a
throwing workshop held at Eye of the Dog Art Center
August-December 2014 Glaze room technician for Texas State University
July-August 2014 Studio assistant to Ryan McKerley, Austin TX
January-May 2014 Ceramics Studio Technician for Austin Community College
February-June 2013 Employee at Aloe Tile, duties included studio upkeep and
production of decorative custom earthenware tile, Corpus Christi TX
August 2010-August 2013 Team Leader at Chick-fil- A
EXHIBITIONS
2018
Yunomi Invitational, ClayAkar, Iowa City IA
Nick Weddell-New Works, solo show at East Side Pot Shop, Austin TX
Small Scale Bake Shale, part of the Container Show at Standard Ceramics, Carnegie PA
Trestle Draw, NYSCC at Alfred University MFA show for NCECA, Pittsburgh PA
International Cup, the Clay Studio of Missoula, juried by Sue Tirrell, awarded the Juror’s choice award, Missoula MT
On the Rocks, Pewabic Pottery, juried by Pete Pinnell, Detroit MI
8 Fluid Ounces: A Ceramic Cup Exhibition, LSU School of Art – Glassell Gallery, juried by Joanna Powell, Baton Rouge LA
2017
10 Potters you Gotta Know, CFile Foundation, Santa Fe, NM
Mug Shots, LUX Center for the Arts, Lincoln NE
Touch Trophies collaborative show with Ava Carney and Milo
Harper at the Robert C. Turner Gallery, Alfred NY
College Collective Show, Flower City Arts Center, Rochester NY
2016
College Collective Show, Genesee Center for the Arts & Education, Juried by Peter Pincus, Rochester NY
Free Food, BFA Thesis show, Texas State University Galleries, San
Marcos TX
All Student Show, Texas State University Galleries, Juried by Anjali Gupta, director of Sala Diaz, San Antonio. Awarded a Juror’s Merit Award, San Marcos TX
Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, Interim Gallery Space at Texas State University, San Marcos TX
Texas Teapot Tournament, 18 Hands Gallery, Houston TX
2015, 2014 Dirt Dauber Festival, Eye of the Dog Art Center, San Marcos TX
2015, 2014 Home Show, Eye of the Dog Art Center, San Marcos TX
PUBLICATIONS
March 2018 “Nick Weddell Uses Familiarity as a Tool to Deconstruct what you
Believe In.” Ceramic Artists Now. Written by Justin Crowe
Feburary 2018 “These Wild Mugs have Traveled Far for Ceramics Showcase in
Missoula.” The Missoulain. Written by Cory Walsh
January 2018 “9 Potters to Watch in 2018…” Ceramic Artists Now. Written by
Justin Crowe