ARTIST STATEMENT
My small batch, handcrafted pottery is a functional shrine to the natural world. Nature is embodied in all of my work, both directly and indirectly. My nature imprint line changes with the seasons and incorporates real plant matter primarily grown or foraged on our rural Michigan farmstead. After thoughtfully creating and pressing a composition into the clay slab, I handbuild each form. Nature resonates from my other lines of work as well, and is seen in the various textures used from natural objects such as seeds, feathers, nuts, or lichens; in the glaze colors such as my rustic rainbow or Great Lakes line; and in the organic vibe felt in all of my work.
My handbuilt ceramics welcomes interaction and use, and provides a satisfying tactile experience. It is durable and resilient just like the natural world from whence it originates, yet equally like the natural world, it is easy to destroy if not honored and protected. It is my hope in creating such intentional nature-based art that a connection is made, a memory is sparked, and ultimately that action to protect our planet is launched.
BIO
After having a successful nature photography business for over ten years, Matt was spending a month in the Petrified Forest National Park as a National Park Service Artist-in-Residence, and it hit him that it was time for an artistic pivot. He needed a medium that involved his hands more and his computer less. In the spring of 2016, Matt took a wheel-throwing class at the Lawrence Art Center in Lawrence, KS. He really enjoyed it, but during the next session he took a handbuilding class and that's when he fell instantly in love with the ceramic process!
Over the next four and a half years Matt spent countless hours in studios with various instructors and mentors in KS, NY, and then in Detroit when he and his partner moved to MI in 2020. Throughout those years his artistic voice as a photographer shifted into his ceramic arts. As a photographer, his main subject were flowers and the details of nature. As a ceramic artist he incorporates nature directly and indirectly into his work.
Matt began selling his handbuilt pottery in December of 2020. Since then, Matt has sold his work at art fairs, popups, and a variety of events all over the Detroit Metro, Ann Arbor, Chelsea, and Jackson. He sells online and sells retail at Agricole Farm Stop in Chelsea. Matt also taught a number of workshops and handbuilding classes, as well as worked as a studio technician at Sugar Hill Clay in Detroit from 2021-2023. In addition to his pottery business, he is a full-time public-school educator and is creating and stewarding a 16-acre, varied habitat farmstead. He restored an old pole barn on the farmstead and converted it to his pottery studio where he currently creates all his functional artwork.
