Artist Statement
I choose to look at the world with the eye of an artist, finding profound and poetic content in the simplest facts of nature. My ceramic works are my engagement with material as I find beauty in observing and placing my hands into the phenomena of the earth. It is about curiosity and the joy of wonderment in discovery. Physical accumulations and changes over time are as much my media as ceramics is. I provoke sensitivity to a material dynamic that is ever present in the world, yet often goes under-considered. My work provides a visual sensation as opposed to information per se. There is no decoding or understanding to be revealed by a viewer, only phenomena that can be taken in with openness toward discovering meaning.
— Jonathan Steele
Bio
I always thought I was going to be a scientist. It wasn’t until I had a physics degree and was thinking about an internship in a lab that I realized that I was an artist because instead of tightly controlling variables in my experiments for the sake of repeatable data and the logical development of theory, I prefer to pile on variables for the sake of aesthetic poignancy. I earned an MFA from Oregon College of Art and Craft in Portland, OR in 2016 and am currently the Artist in Residence at Pleasant Hill Pottery in Pleasant Hill, OR where I organize woodfirings for the community and make my work. I grew up in Seattle, WA.
— Jonathan Steele