John Born
Artist's Statement
My work often begins without any real intention beyond asking the question, “What
would happen if?”. The meaning of the work is buried in the subconscious and
revealed through the action of making. Recently, it has been an additive process,
combining the leftover bits and pieces saved—sometimes for months—from the
creation of other pieces. The process began as a way to create order out of what
seemed like, and still seems to be, the continual chaos of contemporary life. It was
both practical—less waste—and therapeutic.
The pieces in this show have expanded, or maybe unfurled, from a central axis to be
more like portals or webs. They’re not just sculptures you look at but sculptures you
can look through. They openly reveal the myriad, tenuous connections that give them
structure and keep them from collapsing. To me, there couldn’t be a more apt meta-
phor for where the world is right now.
As writer and poet Cole Arthur Riley says, “Every wound is connected. And we won’t
settle for a partial healing.” It’s easy to forget that the pain of others is also our pain.
Just as the happiness and success of others is also our success. That’s what it means
to be part of a community, part of humanity. That’s the structure that keeps us from
collapsing. Yes, we have differences. Yes, there are spaces in between us. But without
these spaces, how would we be able to see how we are all connected?
Biography
John Born (Humble Matter) is an artist from New York who began making ceramics in 2012 as an escape from his career in advertising. “I’d been working in the industry for 15 years. It was a career that I fell into and turned out to be good at; however, it also made me deeply unhappy. Ceramics saved me because I started making real things—objects you could pick up and run your hand over and feel the texture and the warmth or cold of. There is a real joy in envisioning something and then being able to bring it into the real world as a beautiful object.”
John holds a BFA from the University of Wisconsin and was a student at Greenwich House Pottery (the oldest non-profit ceramics studio in the US). He lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
At the heart of functional ceramics is the creation of proxies for humans – vessels that reference the original vessel. They become the tools which improve upon or do the work we cannot do: carry water, store food, display items of beauty or value. These are jobs as old as time, and bonds which connect the past to the present; the present to the future; and ultimately, the future back to the past. Says John: “My work uses a vocabulary of repeated shapes in an attempt to create archetypal forms that feel like an inevitable part of this continuum. They not only serve a purpose as functional pieces, but as talismans that ground us in the magic and importance of everyday objects and rituals in an increasingly inhuman and digitized world.”
John’s inspiration includes Cycladic pottery and early 20th century modernist sculpture, with reference to Constantin Brancusi, Hans Coper, Ettore Sottsass and Ruth Duckworth. John holds a BFA from the University of Wisconsin, and was a student at Greenwich House Pottery (the oldest non-profit ceramics studio in the US). He lives with his family in Brooklyn, NY, and works out of his studio at Brickhouse Ceramic Art Center in Queens.
