2024, 22" × 16" × 12.5", Media: Stoneware, Firing Process: Electric, Oxidation, Surface: Engobe / Slip / Underglaze, Glazed
“DROID No. 2” was created alongside “DROID No. 1,” conceived as part of a cohesive yet individually distinct series. I wanted the forms to exist in dialogue with one another, each maintaining its own unique presence while contributing to a larger, interconnected narrative. By exploring more dynamic shapes, I aimed to push the interplay between structure and fluidity, emphasizing their shared visual language while allowing each piece to stand on its own.
2024, 16.5" × 18" × 12", Media: Stoneware, Firing Process: Electric, Oxidation, Surface: Engobe / Slip / Underglaze, Glazed
“DROID No. 3” was created alongside its counterpart, continuing the exploration of form and presence within a shared lineage. While envisioning them as a collective, I designed this piece to maintain a distinct identity—its dynamic shape echoing the visual language of its DROID family while asserting its own unique voice. The interplay between these forms reinforces a sense of connection and individuality, expanding the dialogue between structure, movement, and identity.
2022, 79" x 22" x 22”, Media: Earthenware / Terracotta, Firing Process: Electric, Oxidation, Surface: Glazed
“Neo Gothica” was the first piece I created upon entering graduate school—a continuation of my undergraduate work, but amplified in complexity and ornamentation. I pushed myself to make it twice as intricate, embracing a more beautifully elaborate aesthetic, particularly through the use of ceramic chains. This piece draws direct inspiration from Neo-Gothic architectural elements, which I meticulously slab-built, transforming structural motifs into a sculptural language that bridges architectural historical grandeur with ceramic sculpture.
2025, 45" × 22" × 22", Media: Stoneware, Firing Process: Electric, Surface: Engobe / Slip / Underglaze, Glazed
“Insectile Circuitry” was the catalyst that defined the trajectory of my thesis, embodying the core themes that would shape both my writing and sculptural exploration. This work exists in the liminal space between binaries, merging traditional craft with speculative futurism. By constructing a hybrid sculptural form that fuses Greek vessel shapes, architectural motifs, and armor-like, insectile extensions, I sought to create an object that feels simultaneously ancient and futuristic. Defined by aggressive ornamentation—sharp spikes, curved extensions, and intricate surfaces—this piece blurs the boundaries between organic and synthetic, beauty and violence, fetishism and sacredness. It represents my ongoing investigation into the fluidity of identity, power, and transformation within a speculative, post-human framework.
2025, 87" × 21" × 21", Media: Stoneware, Firing Process: Electric, Oxidation, Surface: Engobe / Slip / Underglaze, Glazed, Lustre
“VICIOUS FIXATION” floats like it was summoned into being. Insectile, alert, supernatural in its stillness. It’s not here to be touched. It’s here to be worshipped. A lure wrapped in gold, spikes and gleaming gloss, designed to captivate your attention and viciously Fixate. Every detail is a trap. Every angle, a dare. A sibling to Grand Descension, but a younger adolescent version. Born to seduce with an instinct to strike.
2025, 48" × 20" × 20", Media: Stoneware, Firing Process: Electric, Oxidation, Surface: Engobe / Slip / Underglaze, Glazed
“XenoWeapon” is a sculptural piece composed of three interlocking sections arranged in a tripod formation. In this work, I pushed the role of glaze beyond mere surface treatment—using it instead as a tool of accentuation, empowerment, and armor. Much like lingerie or battle gear, the glaze frames and enhances the form, emphasizing both vulnerability and strength. The piece embodies a charged tension, balancing desire and danger, while constructing a visual language deeply rooted in queer aesthetics and speculative design.
2025, 50" × 25" × 25", Media: Stoneware, Firing Process: Electric, Oxidation, Surface: Engobe / Slip / Underglaze, Glazed
“DROID No. 5” is part mech/tech, part altar, part relic/reliquary, part glam cyborg nightmare. It’s not just a sculpture—it’s a creature mid-transformation, claiming space like it was always supposed to be here .
2025, 112" × 41" × 41", Media: Stoneware, Firing Process: Electric, Oxidation, Surface: Engobe / Slip / Underglaze, Glazed
“GRAND DESCENSION” enters like a spectacle of control—part shrine, part weapon, part apparition. Suspended between earth and sky, it commands reverence while bristling with threat. Its surface is not simply coated, but adorned. Glaze functions like ornament on a body: emphasizing curves, sharpening edges, highlighting every swelling form and piercing spike. The finish doesn’t disguise the structure—it exaggerates it. Gloss slides across protrusions, matte swallows shadow, metallic flickers draw the eye like a spark across armor. It is dressed to seduce, and to enforce.
2025, 77" × 30" × 30", Media: Stoneware, Firing Process: Electric, Oxidation, Surface: Engobe / Slip / Underglaze, Glazed, Lustre
2024, 19" × 12" × 15", Media: Stoneware, Firing Process: Electric, Oxidation, Surface: Engobe / Slip / Underglaze, Glazed
“DROID No. 1” was a side quest that emerged during my second year of graduate school—a departure that allowed me to explore a more intuitive, rule-driven approach. By relinquishing rigid planning, I focused on spontaneous decision-making, which led to the creation of industrial-looking forms rooted in science fiction and transformation. This piece set the stage for a series that embodies a balance between structure and fluidity, evoking objects that feel both functional and otherworldly.
Artist Statement
My work explores the tension between power, protection, and desire by blending organic and synthetic forms into hybrid sculptures that defy traditional boundaries. Influenced by ancient Greek vessels, architecture, and weaponry, I create pieces that are both aggressive and seductive, using ornamentation to exaggerate sharp, spiked, and curved extensions. These forms blur the line between the natural and the technological, merging craft with the aesthetics of sci-fi and fantasy.
I utilize wheel-thrown forms while also integrating hand-building techniques to construct additional sculptural elements. I then use molds to ensure precise replication and assemble these segments onto complex structures. Once my structures are built, I focus on surface ornamentation, spraying and brushing layers of glaze and underglaze to enhance the tension between the organic and synthetic. Metallic finishes and bold underglaze patterns, these treatments mimic industrial, sci-fi motifs and circuitry while fetishizing specific parts of the sculpture, much like high fashion accentuates the human body through adornment and form.
Through these hybrid forms, I engage with themes of fetishism, futurism, and transcending the constructs of traditional pottery. The work's aggressive, highly ornamental details invite viewers to question the boundaries between the human, the technological, and the sacred. By merging craft, speculative design, and queer fashion aesthetics, I challenge traditional notions of identity, power, and beauty, imagining a post-human future where ceramics stands at the intersection of craft and high art.
Bio
Brady Fanning is a ceramic artist from Fort Wayne, Indiana. He is the 2025 Lormina Salter Fellow at Baltimore Clayworks, where he is currently in residence. Brady graduated with his MFA from the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design at Indiana University Bloomington and earned his BFA in ceramics from Purdue University Fort Wayne in 2021. With teaching experience in ceramics and 3D design, Brady combines technical skill with speculative design to create intricate sculptures that explore power, protection, and queer identity. He is currently represented by ADC Fine Arts in Cincinnati, Ohio.His work has been exhibited nationally, including Currents and Charges at the 2023 NCECA in Cincinnati, The State of Clay in Indiana at the Indianapolis Arts Center, and Brilliant Hues & Intimate Forms with Second Story Studio and the Kinsey Institute. Brady received Best in Show at Hot & Sweaty Summer National in 2024 at Backspace Gallery, Bloomington, IN, and at the 2025 NSAL Exhibition at the FAR Center for Contemporary Arts, where he was also awarded the “Chapter Career Award”.Most recently, Brady presented his MFA thesis exhibition on April 8th, 2025, at the Grunwald Gallery in Bloomington, IN, and is now continuing to develop his practice through his fellowship and gallery representation.