Josh Schutz ( He/They )

My ceramic sculptures are self-portraits that explore power, performance, and self-image in an age defined by spectacle. Through the figure, I investigate how identity and belief are shaped by the aesthetics of control, desire, and narcissism.

Clay, with its dual associations to everlasting monument and the handmade, becomes a language for contradiction. The figures I create are confident yet fragile, sacred yet absurd. They are icons caught mid performance. Their glossy, textured surfaces evoke both glamour and decay, exposing the tension between authenticity and display.

Each work acts as a stage for self-reflection, where sincerity and performance blur. Some reference the choreography of politics and media, while others suggest devotion, ritual, and the human need to believe in one’s own image.

Through excess, distortion, and seductive surfaces, I push clay toward emotional exaggeration. The work becomes a record of gesture and ambition-a reflection of how the self is built, performed, and consumed in public view.

Josh Schutz (b. La Crosse, WI) is a figurative ceramic sculptor based in Champaign, Illinois. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Art at Parkland College, where he teaches ceramics.Schutz received his BA in Art History and MA in Ceramics from Minnesota State University before earning his MFA from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 2020. After completing his graduate studies, he lived and worked in Brooklyn, New York, exhibiting nationally and teaching workshops at community art centers throughout Minnesota and New York.His work uses the figure as self-portrait to connect art history with contemporary technologies and culture. Drawing from both ancient and digital methods, Schutz maps a life through many processes throwing on the wheel, hand-building with coils, 3D printing clay, and making slipcase molds often merging these processes into a single expressive form.