Featured Artist Dallas WootenAug 09, 2024 - Aug 31, 2024

Dallas Wooten was born in Louisville, Ky, where he earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Ceramics from Indiana University Southeast, right across the river. Upon graduating, he attended Ohio University’s graduate program. Wooten completed his Masters in Fine Arts from OU in 2020. Following his time at OU, Wooten was a long-term Artist-in-Residence at Hope Center for Arts and Technology, Inc., where he taught classes at HopeCAT as well as Youngstown State University. Wooten was awarded as a 2022 Ceramics Monthly Emerging Artist and was featured in the ArtStream Nomadic Gallery expo at the 2023 NCECA conference. Wooten founded Wooten Clayworks in 2020 which has recently opened its physical location in Hackettstown New Jersey. Wooten currently teaches and curates high quality ceramic exhibitions/workshops at Wooten Clayworks where he’s working to build a community to share his joy for pottery with.

Wooten utilizes the flaws, blemishes, and marks created in the process of making, and recontextualizes them within intricate patterning inspired by traditional status-imagery, patterns, and materials. Wooten’s work explores historically utilitarian and simple forms. These pots are then adorned with process and gestural marks abstracted into status-based patterns, such as vine scroll and floral imagery. The work aims to take process and residual information left by the hand to emphasize the importance of the human mark within the context of status-informed pottery. There are aesthetic and conceptual ties to both Japanese ceramics and modernist design that are considered within the work, both visually and metaphorically. Form and silhouette are of the utmost importance, as they serve as the canvas and frame in which these explorations take place. The pots, although functional and minimal, then serve as both objects of desire and functional vessels for consumption or display.