BIO
Jake Boggs was born and raised in a small coal mining town in rural Kentucky. His Appalachian upbringing instilled in him a great respect for the natural world and an appreciation of finely crafted objects. In the pursuit of his craft he earned an MFA from the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa and a BFA from Eastern Kentucky University, both concentrating in ceramics. His interest in ceramics has provided him with opportunities to experience clay traditions of various cultures, weaving a tapestry of influences that are expressed in his work. He is the Ceramics Studio Coordinator at the Donkey Mill Art Center in Holualoa, Hawai’i where we works to serve the community through ceramic education and programming. He also serves on the board of Hawai’i Craftsmen, a statewide non-profit that works to enrich the community through contemporary craft.
STATEMENT
My work is a reflection of my curiosities, a synthesis of past and present. My process distills topics from the arts, sciences, and humanities, breaks them down into a visual language and imbues these signs onto the surface of volumetric forms. I am interested in how objects can serve as a means for personal conceptual exploration. I am particularly interested in ceramic objects which carry a utilitarian function. Though the service of these objects may be symbolic in some cases, the duality of a beautiful vessel that can also be used as a tool fascinates me. I’m intrigued how artworks throughout ceramic history have bridged the worlds of utility while serving as substrates for graphic adornment, and how these objects reflect the values of those who made and owned them. In my work I attempt to harmonize volumetric form and layered surface to create objects that can be a catalysts for thought.
I see the objects that I create as stepping stones on the linear path of ceramic history. Though the work is drawn forward through time, a cyclical pattern is present just below the surface, where the past recirculates and feeds the present in a multigenerational call and response between object and maker. I am in constant awe that the works of my ceramic forbearers exist to this day where they can be held, appreciated, and continue to influence contemporary ceramic culture. I feel a personal responsibility to those past potters to continue the craft, innovate, and adapt it to the needs of current society. I am drawn to the idea that my work will out live my own body, my family, my culture, and that the art in the far distant future will serve as a reminder of this time and place.
Through my artwork I navigate streams of consciousness, probing and questioning the world I experience through a visual language of composition and content. I want to get to the bottom of things, and this exploration is both what feeds my conceptual practice while also creating a need to escape away into making. The processes I engage in create their own space in time. When I am behind the wheel or behind the brush my attention is there, and inescapable. Those pestering questions of life, death, and the meaning of all of it in between temporarily fade away while form, line, color, shape, and value take precedence.
Inevitably my existential pondering is translated into my work, as both a way to make physical representations of the intangible and as catharsis. Tangled in the layers of content that exists in each piece, you will find my joy, consternation, and search for meaning.
I am drawn to the anthropological nature of ceramic art, and ceramic technologies as they have advanced over human history. I find a deep well of information in the millennia long journey humankind has undertaken as we have experimented with and refined the earth beneath our feet. When engaged in the design process I look back across ceramic history and amalgamate aspects of objects from disparate times and places to compose a hybridity of forms. These uncanny vessels bear the accumulated information of human creativity, while the modified structures engage in contemporary visual discourses. I hope that when encountering the work one initially feels a kinship with the familiar forms to then be drawn in to further examine the complexities of the aspects of each piece.