Daniel Cavey

In his work, Daniel Cavey has always been concerned with the relationship between human beings and the natural world. Throughout his career as a potter, this relationship has manifested as an intimacy between the artist, his materials, and the tools he employs. An environmentally and socially conscious artist as much as an Old World craftsman, Cavey has consistently sought to remove technological and institutional interference from his work, minimize waste, and maximize his efficiency and impact through ongoing acquisition of skill and vision. The artist’s steadfast principles have also appeared as an emphasis on past and place in the ongoing creation of narrative pottery inspired by pottery traditions that the artist recreates with superior technical acumen.

In his sculptural work, the artist focused on the metaphorical and conceptual substance of the relationships that continue to be a foundation for the content of his work. In recent exhibitions such as Descent Proposals and Feather as Light, Cavey’s often-acrimonious expressions underline the effects of a continuously widening gap between humanity and the natural world, where the former’s foundations lie. Balancing these elements, the astute potter and sculptor continues to explore irony, tension, and despair, eliciting emotions and provoking serious thought about imperative issues. Cavey maintains that such responses may be uncomfortable but are also necessary components of change in the individual and social consciousness. Thought and emotion establish ethical guidelines for action, which the artist feels it is our responsibility, as the dominant species on earth, to self-impose.

Daniel Cavey was born in Baltimore, Maryland USA in 1977 and grew up on a small farm in an outlying county. Cavey received a BFA in ceramics from Maryland Institute college of Art in 1999. That fall, Cavey accepted a formal invitation to a ceramic symposium in Riga, Latvia, which he attended for two consecutive years. In 2002, eager to leave his studio in Baltimore, Cavey applied for an artist residency at La Meridiana and moved to Italy. In Tuscany, Cavey began working with terracotta on a large scale at the Antica Fornace Montecchio, a manufacturer of garden ceramics. He began working with a landscape architect and his architectural ceramics and sculpture can be found in a number of both public and private gardens throughout Tuscany.

Cavey currently works out of his studio near Avellino in southern Italy. He has attended symposia throughout Europe, including the European Artists symposium held in Essen, Germany, and continues to teach and work in the United States. His work was featured in Marie Claire Maison and Ceramics Monthly. Cavey has exhibited in the Museum of Foreign Art in Riga, Latvia, in the Keramikmuseum Westerwald of Hohr-Grenzhausen, in the Museu de Ceramica de L’Alcora, Spain, and elsewhere.