Red Lodge Clay Center Short-Term Resident (ASPN) 2015
Born 1992, Tucker Claxton is from Lenexa Kansas. They earned their Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in Ceramics and their Bachelor’s of Science in Art Education at Kansas State University, during their time at K-State; Tucker received the Jason Skylar Harper Memorial scholarship, Yoshi and Easter Ikeda scholarship, and Kansas State University’s Department of Art scholarship for their academic merits and artistic prowess. Tucker was a part of the Red Lodge Clay Studio’s first Advanced Student Project Network Residency (2015). After completing undergrad (2016), Tucker accepted a two year residency at the Morean Center for Clay in St. Petersburg, Florida. While in Florida they were awarded the Emerging artist award from Florida Craft Art (2017). Recently, Tucker was Invited to participate in Queeramics (2019) at Louisiana State University as an exhibiting artist and panelist. The artist currently resides in Brooklyn New York.
“My work explores America’s complicated relationship with queer identity and human sexuality. For those who oppose the LGBTQIA+ community, there is little nuance in how non-heteronormative people are looked at and understood. By creating and displaying a mixture of common objects, fetish garments, sex toys, and ejaculate like ooze my work exploits exaggerated aspects of gay culture while also looking at personal queer identity. While mixing common objects and sexual iconography I create installations that often look like a scene frozen in time. These tableaus displayed serve fantasy by using vibrant colors to both attract and disrupt. Where the objects in place tend to be symbols for the figure and self-identity.” – Claxton