
January 10, 2020
Join us at the gallery on Friday, January 10 at 6 pm for the opening reception of our Contemporary Ceramic Group Exhibition, featuring some of the top ceramic artists working today. These contemporary ceramic artists include Christopher David White, Erika Sanada, and Calvin Ma.
CHRISTOPHER DAVID WHITE
Christopher David White is an American artist currently living and working in Richmond, Virginia. Born in Bedford, Indiana in 1976. He began his career in the arts through drawing and painting. It wasn’t until 2008 when he started to work heavily with clay and received his Bachelors of Fine Arts in Ceramics from Indiana University in 2012. He went on to receive his Masters of Fine Arts in Clay from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2015. He was the recipient of the Center of Craft, Creativity and Design Windgate Fellowship in 2012 and later was awarded ‘Most Environmentally Conscious’ at INLight 2014, juried by Denise Markonish. His work has been featured on several prominent art publications including Juxtapoz, Beautiful Decay, My Modern Met, and This is Colossal. Christopher David White’s work has been shown both nationally and internationally and held within numerous private collections. His sculptural works are handmade predominantly from clay and rendered with acute attention to detail, often resembling decaying pieces of wood, rusted metal, and other objects in various stages of deterioration. His current works explore the relationship between humanity and nature and humans’ apperception of their environment.
ERIKA SANADA
Erika Sanada is an American artist whose work reflects the weird and the creepy. She is fascinated with the dark side.
“In my current body of work, “Odd Things,” I’m using the ceramic medium to create my bizarre creatures. My animals have extra body parts such as multiple arms, legs, teeth, and ears. Clay allows me to create what’s in my head. These animals with their small deformities help me express my sensitive side. A troubled childhood and constant “life” anxieties are all expressed in “Odd Things. Beautiful and disturbing are terms I hear when people talk about my work and I love that these two terms are not often used together.”
Life: beautiful and disturbing.
CALVIN MA
I utilize the action figure form in my sculptural work to explore personal issues and struggles with social anxiety. As an adult, I face difficulties in the social environment. Meeting new people, being in the company of strangers, crowds, peers and intermittently among friends and family brings about a heightened nervousness that takes over and impedes my ability to function socially. Even as a child I was reserved and apprehensive, so I turned to toys to keep me entertained. I believe the tactile activity of playing with them coupled with my active imagination helped establish this passion for the action figure early on. There was something about picking up your favorite hero or villain and creating stories and adventures that captivated me. It felt only natural to tap into this childlike sense of exploration and storytelling through my artwork.”