Tyler Gulden is a ceramic artist, art educator and administrator. He studied ceramics at Alfred University and University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and has been a resident artist at notable craft centers like Peters Valley Craft Center, Haystack Mtn School of Crafts and Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts.
A ceramic artist, arts educator and arts advocate, he has conducted workshops throughout Maine for children and adults, in addition to professional development workshops for teachers and artists, through the Watershed Mudmobile program. Other teaching includes workshops and lectures at Bowdoin College, Hartwick College, Maine College of Art, and a position as Lecturer in Visual Arts and Culture at Bates College.
Tyler worked for 12 years in arts administration at Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts in Newcastle, Maine ending his tenure as Executive Director in October 2012.
Tyler’s functional ceramics are exhibited internationally in group and juried exhibitions. His current work follows the tradition of salt firing, in combination with the contemporary process of soda firing, capitalizing on the unique color and surface variations that are a natural product of the process.
Attention to function plays a critical role in creating wares used in conjunction with the preparation, serving and consumption of food and drink. That creative process relies on generating intuitive connections between the clay and the maker. Questioning function and the process of making is important to the development of those connections. The answers to the questions lie somewhere between my hands and the clay and fall elusively in the space between control and abandon.