Red Lodge Clay – Center Short-Term Resident (AIA) 2016, Short Term Resident (AIA) 2024
Joe Batt is originally from South Dakota, in the U.S. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of South Dakota and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Montana. Currently, Joe is full time art faculty at South Puget Sound Community College in Olympia, Washington. He has also taught at California State University, Chico, California; the University of Montana, in Missoula, Montana; Lower Columbia College in Longview, Washington; and Metchosin International Summer School of the Arts in Victoria, B.C.
Recent work includes narrative clay figures, installation, and mixed media pieces which feature hares and children as the main characters. These works are part of an ongoing exploration of innocence, endurance, and our relationship with technology and the natural world.
Joe has been a McKnight Artist in Residence at the Northern Clay Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He has also done residencies at Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts in Newcastle, Maine, and Otago School of Art in Dunedin, New Zealand.
My work includes narrative clay figures, installation, and mixed media pieces which feature hares and children as the main characters. These pieces are part of an ongoing exploration of innocence, endurance, and our relationship with technology and the natural world. Figurative forms and mixed media are mainstays of my approach to clay sculpture and 2D works. For the sculptures I hand build with stoneware clay and add colored pencils or pastels after the firing. Sometimes there is a smoke-firing step before color is added.
Some of my influences have been the Chicago Imagists of the late 1960s such as Gladys Nilsson and Don Baum; Robert Arneson, Arthur Gonzalez, and Funk art ceramics of California; the quirky and mundane figures of Jack Earl; and the rich charcoal drawings of Tony Hepburn. Lately I have enriched my curiosity about our place in nature through the writing of Robert Micheal Pyle, Kathleen Dean Moore, Christopher J. Preston, and Barry Lopez.