Red Lodge Clay Center – Short-Term Resident (AIA) 2015, (AIA) 2018
Daniel Murphy is a studio artist and professor teaching ceramics at Utah State University, Logan, Utah. He has presented his work in one hundred thirty exhibitions, including seven in conjunction with the annual conferences of the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) since 2003. Some of his individual exhibitions include works presented at Tong-In Auction Gallery in Seoul, South Korea and at Red Lodge Clay Center, Red Lodge, Montana.
While at Utah State University, Murphy has made forty-four presentations at universities and art centers throughout the world, including “The Red and The Black,” 2017 Stanford Symposium, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California. He has exhibited and presented at four recent wood fire conferences. In addition, Murphy was an organizer and Master of Ceremonies for the international wood fire conference entitled, Twenty + One Years of the Tozan Kiln held at Northern Arizona University Art Museum in Flagstaff, AZ. He’s been awarded Researcher of the Year and Artist of the Year in the college of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences and recently awarded Graduate Advisor of the Year in the Caine College of the Arts at Utah State University in Logan, UT.
Murphy has thirty-seven years’ experience firing wood-burning kilns and recently conducted a wood firing/ soda firing and kiln raising workshops at Banff Center for the arts, Banff, Canada and Anderson Ranch Art Center, Snowmass Village, Colorado.
My ceramic vessels are created swiftly and directly on a slow spinning potter’s wheel. I usually work in series, developing one body of work at a time. My goal is to make gestural vessels that reflect my presence in the finished form. This results in families of pots that are inevitably related, yet each piece stands as a unique one-of-a-kind vessel. After the pieces are made most are fired without applied glazes to stoneware temperatures in wood-burning kilns. Colors and textures on the ceramics result from the interaction of wood, fire and clay. My hope is that each successive generation produces a better piece. I feel a connection to contemporary as well as ancient ceramics, and strive to create objects that will withstand the test of time.