Keith Simpson (USA) was born in Washington state in 1979 and grew up in the small farming community of St. John, WA. He received his BFA in 2010 from the Kansas City Art Institute and his MFA from The Ohio State University in 2012. Keith has 10 years experience as a dedicated technician and teacher at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and Alfred University in Alfred, NY. He is currently heading into his fourth year teaching Middle School Studio Arts and Ceramics at Greenwich Country Day School in Greenwich, CT. He maintains an active practice from his studio in the neighboring community of Stamford CT.
The forms of these new sculptural vessels were developed through residency at the Haystack Mountain School of Craft and Alfred University in the summer of 2024 utilizing their clay 3d printers and just glazed this year. I have been building custom 3d printers and creating my own unique coding and methodologies for printing ceramic for more than 10 years, these are among my first pieces to implement these strategies with commercial 3d clay printers. They are glazed in traditional fashion, with my hands and a brush – building and layering glazes through multiple firings to create rich and layered polychrome surfaces.
I’m working to use digital tools to build unique pieces that revel in their materiality and weight, and build them through disordered systems of construction, which are evident in their coarsely textured surface; their substance is in resistance to and separate from the massless data from which they originate. Not replications. Not tidy, clean, or neat. Not precise. They are to be eroded and visceral reflections of pristine data, whose surface reveals interior.