Chris Chaney Ceramics
Geo-emotional inspired explorations in Earthenware
Chris Chaney is a ceramic artist, educator, and curator living in the suburbs of Chicago with his wife and daughter. After graduating from Northern Illinois University in 2001 with his BFA in ceramics, he moved to Chicago to pursue clay work at Lillstreet Art Center. Over the past 20 years, Lillstreet has been pivotal in fostering his development as a contemporary clay artist and educator. By currently taking classes there, he is fortunate to remain rooted within this vibrant clay community. While maintaining a home studio in the western suburbs of Chicago, he studied atmospheric firing as a special student at Waubonsee Community College in Sugar Grove, IL. In 2017, Chris was named one of Ceramic Monthly’s Emerging Artists, an extremely humbling honor. He is currently pursuing geologically and emotionally inspired sculpture as a main avenue of exploration.
My work is an exploration of pressures placed upon a body of clay & body and mind. How do we experience emotion when internal and external forces overwhelm? Clay can representationally manifest these forces by wrinkling, tearing, and shearing. Rock-like shapes are metaphors for stability and strength, formed by pressures originating deep within the Earth. As humans we are formed by the pressures that surround, oftentimes displaying strength, yet ultimately influenced by unseen fissures just below the surface. It is an unattainable quest to control the uncontrollable and move the immovable.The decoration is an examination of humanity’s need to leave its indelible mark upon natural and human made surfaces. Like the simplistic drawings and abstract geometrics of early humankind, the desire to inscribe our immediate surroundings has flourished as modern people leave no corner of the Earth untouched. It is my goal to mark space and time by creating a unique visual language upon these forms that is familiar yet cryptic. Like our thoughts and memories, the designs overlap and appear to erode over time.