Red Lodge Clay Center – Short-Term Resident (AIA) 2022
Dylan Beck is an artist and educator living in Portland, OR where he works from his home studio making sculpture and utilitarian pottery. When he is not in the studio or classroom, Dylan likes to explore the vast natural landscape of the Pacific Northwest where you can find him camping, foraging, and fishing. Dylan’s reading interests lie in topics related to philosophy, environmental justice, and ecology. His artwork explores landscape and the built environment and often vacillates between veneration and admonishment as he invites his viewers to consider human’s role within the ecosystem and our relationship to natural resources.
Dylan Beck has served as a professor and department head at Oregon College of Art and Craft and Kansas State University. He has been invited to many significant national and international exhibitions, including: Korean International Ceramic Biennale , South Korea; Sans Les Main s, France; NCECA Invitational , Nelson Atkins Museum, Kansas City, MO. His artworks are included in several public and private collections including the Everson Museum of Art and Hilton Curio Collection.
My artwork explores the interaction of human activities with the natural environment and the idea that we are currently living in an epoch where human activities have had a significant impact on the Earth’s ecosystems, known as the Anthropocene. In my studio practice, there is no hierarchy of material or method. I believe in a holistic approach to art making–an approach that balances aesthetic judgment, craftsmanship, concept, and material. I employ surrealism and psychedelic imagery to amplify the visual experience as a means of visual intoxication and persuasion. I acknowledge my implicit participation in the Anthropocene and enjoy the benefits of a material culture. Therefore, I situate my work between skepticism and veneration.