Red Lodge Clay Center – RLCC Staff Member 2014-2016, Short-Term Resident 2013, 2017
Wesley Harvey is originally from Van Buren, Indiana, “the popcorn capital of the world.” He received his BFA in Ceramics in 2002 from Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana and then received his MFA in Ceramics in 2007 from Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas. Wesley has exhibited his artwork both nationally and internationally. His artwork can be found in various publications including Ceramics Monthly, Art in America, 500 Contemporary Ceramic Sculptures, and The Essential Guide to Mold Making & Slip Casting, and more. His artwork is included in permanent and private collections in the United States, South America, China, and Italy. He currently lives and works in Atlanta, Georgia and is a Senior Lecturer in Ceramics and Graduate Director at the Ernest G. Welch School of Art & Design at Georgia State University.
My current body of artwork examines different facets of gay male sexuality and homoeroticism through the lens of queer theory using appropriation of imagery and objects. My artwork is provocative, sexual, deviant at times, and incorporates both nude and naked men draped and dripping in gold. I want to address and question what it means to be gay, queer, and cisgender not only for my own sexuality, but for those around me too, both stranger and acquaintance. I want to examine not only the normative behavior but also the deviant lifestyle, past and present, that often gets neglected and chastised. The AIDS pandemic has become a major focus in my studio practice as this is history in the Queer realm that cannot be forgotten. AIDS IS STILL HERE. With previous artwork, I was examining my surroundings and personal encounters as the influence for the start of the collage process. Recently, I have put myself aside as the starting point and have begun looking at other encounters and relationships in a voyeuristic way, using personal ads posted on dating/sex websites and mobile dating/sex applications. In this online and instant world, I can find both the normative and the deviant behaviors that interest me to create the narratives that often begin as works on paper and transition to ceramics, ranging from functional artwork to vessels and sculpture.
The Baroque and Rococo periods provide a great source of inspiration for me. The use of gold and floral designs in excess gives me a visual overload of imagery and objects that deeply satisfy my tawdry desires. Ancient Greek and Roman pottery are an endless source for my starting point when working with ceramics, both for their form and content. Kitsch and popular culture let me appropriate an endless supply of imagery that teeters from the extreme tacky to the candy-coated sickness that lies in the heart of both kitsch and popular culture. Drag queens share my love of gold, glitter, and excessive prettiness that I adore. Illustrations from 1960’s male physique magazines allow me to appropriate a fantasy male subject who is handsome and extremely physically fit, that interacts with other men in encounters that ride a line between caring and loving to deviant sexual acts. These escapades involve and incorporate disco balls, poppers, handkerchiefs, leather, and much more.