UF Ceramics alumnusi Chris Pickett (MFA ’11) has been offered the position of Visiting Assistant Professor in Ceramics at Idaho State University. Pickett has held a number of successful residencies since graduating from UF School of Art + Art History, including a two-year stint at the Archie Bray Foundation in Montana, a ceramics institution founded in 1951. Pickett calls the Archie Bray Foundation a “wonderful place,” where he was surrounded by 20 other working artists and had the opportunity to work in beehive kilns that were built over a century ago.
Originally, Pickett worked mostly in throwing, but a back injury forced him to reevaluate his approach. Pickett recalled a handbuilding workshop he had attended in 2003 with artist Sam Chung, where he learned techniques he says that he “didn’t touch until 2007.” The evolution of his artistic style happened mostly by chance, and by his second year at UF, Pickett was working almost exclusively in handbuilding.
Pickett’s work is primarily inspired by “childhood experiences, domestic spaces, intimacy, and close social circles and communities of friends.” His functional vessels deal with varying “concepts of comfort.”
Find more of Pickett’s work at his website: http://www.chrispickettceramics.com.
