Casey McDonough

My studio practice is and always has been a deep exploration of material, of manipulations and iterations of a thing in order to make it look, feel or seem as though it were another thing, or even an altogether new thing with a life of its own. I am forever seeking contradictory material statements: soft/hard, limp/taut, fluid/solid, and so on. In some small way my artistic endeavors serve as a way to process and compartmentalize the endless contradictions present in our everyday lives as human beings here on this thing we call Earth. My creative investigations often tend toward the polar ends of spatial aesthetic experience. When provided with the opportunity I investigate space on a scale beyond the human body, such that the viewer occupies the work and experiences it from the inside out. These works stretch and attempt to fill a given space, like a gas looking to make the most of a specific volume. I look to combine disparate materials, for example pairing the tactility and softness of clay with the unending slickness of vinyl so that each of these qualities feels amplified. The metaphor for the macro-world lies in the expansiveness of the work, the immersive element that might quietly suggest to a viewer that she look beyond herself and consider something greater. More regularly I create objects of the scale that they can be held tightly and inspected through touch or viewed only close up. Here I hope the intimacy of such a close experience allows these objects to attain the status of everyday, or perhaps provide a doorway into the micro-world that we can’t see or sense but which is nonetheless beyond reason in its complexity. One of many reasons I pursue an art practice is that it allows me to process the dichotomous experience of being human and trying to understand what that really means, of the inward and the outward journeys we each take.

Casey McDonough received a BS in Marine Science and a BA in Studio Art from Eckerd College in 2003 and an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design in 2007. He has been a resident artist at the Morean Center for Clay, Red Lodge Clay Center and the Hjorring Kunstmuseum in Denmark, as well as apprentice to Don Reitz. He has also maintained several art teaching positions at the college and grade school level; currently he teaches 9th through 12th grade at Shorecrest Preparatory School. Casey lives in St. Petersburg, Florida, where he maintains a studio practice as well as a design collaborative with his wife and creative partner, photographer Laura Dante.