Stephanie Kantor

Artist Statement

My work explores the paradoxical aspects of culture both local and global. I’m inspired by family heirlooms, the landscape of my childhood home, and idiosyncratic collections I’ve encountered along the way. I disrupt my exploration of intimate experiences by pairing them with outside cultural traditions that intrigue me. In this way, every object I create becomes a hybrid, a synthesis of my unique experience as a ceramicist, and more fundamentally as a human being. These hybrid objects are most often sculptural ceramics that are placed within created environments, transporting the viewer to an alternate, artificial reality. I utilize ornamentation and decoration to create a facade of culture, where my objects speak to multiplicity, diversity, and artifice.

-- Stephanie Kantor

Bio

Stephanie Kantor (b. 1985, Pittsburgh, PA, USA) received her MFA from University of Colorado Boulder (2015) and BFA from Penn State University (2009). Kantor is currently the Zeldin Fellow at The Clay Studio in Philadelphia, PA and she is represented by Gildar Gallery in Denver, CO. She was a Black Cube Nomadic Museum Fellow in 2016 and has completed residencies at RedLine Contemporary Arts Center, Bunker Projects, and Belger Crane Yard Studios. She has exhibited internationally at Salon Acme 7 (Mexico City), Calico Gallery (NY), Paragraph Gallery (MO), Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art (KS), Sala Diaz (TX), Bunker Projects (PA), and Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (CO).