JASON WALKER

JASON WALKER

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BIO

ABOUT

American, b.1973, Pocatello, ID
lives and works in Cedar City, UT

Jason Walker’s ceramic sculpture question how we perceive and decipher technology and nature within our changing world. He has exhibited and taught widely including at the Renwick Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C., Haystack Mountain School for the Crafts, Penland School for the Crafts, Anderson Ranch Arts Center, The Pottery Workshop in Jingdezhen, China and the International Ceramics Workshop, Kecskemet, Hungary, South Korea, Ireland and France.

Walker has been awarded a 2009 NCECA International Residency Fellowship and a 2014 Artist Trust Fellowship from Washington State, as well as the Taunt Fellowship award at the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts. His work is included in collections at the Fine Art Museum of San Francisco: De Young, the Carnegie Mellon Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the Arizona State University Art Museum Ceramic Research Center, Tempe, Arizona and the Portland Art Museum in Portland, Oregon.

Walker received a BFA from Utah State University and a MFA from Penn State University and is represented by Ferrin Contemporary, and currently resides in Cedar City, Utah and is Lecturer of Ceramics at Southern Utah University.

ON LIZARD DRAIN

Lizard Drain is a play on how technologies are being developed and advancing quite rapidly, yet as a species our operating system is still the Lizard Brain. Things such as A.I., WiFi, and internet goggles are taking control of our bodies and mediating most of our lives. It has changed our perceptions of ourselves and ideas such as nature. Yet the genie is out of the bottle and these technologies will persist. We need to ask how we want to progress as a species – do we want to continue with our course of self-destruction, war and disembodied experiences? OR, can we somehow change course and become more compassionate and tolerant? It is salient because the way in which we see ourselves will determine the way in which we will model and develop new technologies and our perceptions of nature.

– Jason Walker, 2024

ON HIS WORK

The culture I live in does not emphasize our physical connection and dependence on nature. The current ideology is reliant upon technology, and it promotes disembodied activity such as television [and] computers . . . The gap between man-made and natural is ever increasing.

Light bulbs, plugs, power-lines and pipes that grow from the earth are common images found in my work, juxtaposed with birds, insects, and organic matter such as leaves and trees. Similar to the thinking of the Hudson River School of painting, I attempt to portray nature’s vastness and human-kind as a small proponent of it. Yet I draw the small things of nature large and the huge creations of man small. I want to show how we influence the landscape, or nature. My ideas stem from my own experiences bicycle touring, backpacking and the daily hikes I take with my dog.

In an attempt to explore the methods of early American artists, such as Moran and Cole from the Hudson River School of Painting, I went to an American ‘wilderness’ and backpacked solo with my sketchbook for ten days. The landscape, plant and animal imagery are records from my experience in the Grand Staircase – Escalante National Monument in the desert of southern Utah. The technological imagery is a record of objects in my everyday experience and is used to express the way in which technology has influenced our perceptions of nature.  I developed a narrative based on the historical progression of our changing perceptions of ‘nature’ and ‘wilderness’ in America.  I titled the show ‘Nature Seeker’ because I think we use term nature very loosely in our language today, and as I hiked I felt as though I was seeking a place or an object that embodied the word nature. According to Webster’s dictionary, nature is something in its essential form untouched and untainted by human hand. So here lies the crux of my quest. At the very heart of our own description of nature we exclude ourselves from it. Does this mean I am not natural? Although this argument may seem purely semantic it is not. The way in which we perceive nature inadvertently describes the way in which we perceive ourselves. Ultimately, my quest is a journey to define for myself what it means to be human in the present time.

– Jason Walker

CURRENT + RECENT EXHIBITIONS

Ferrin Contemporary | July 15 – September 2, 2023

FEATURED EXHIBITIONS

OUR AMERICA/WHOSE AMERICA?

2022 | Group Exhibition at Ferrin Contemporary | North Adams, MA

Our America/Whose America? Is a “call and response” exhibition between contemporary artists and historic ceramic objects.

View the exhibition page HERE  & View the historic collection HERE

Featuring  Back Flow and Bristlecone:

HEY! LE DESSIN

2022 | Group Exhibition at Musée de la Halle Saint Pierre | Paris, France

113 artists, more than 500 artwork, and 20 countires

View the exhibition page HERE

Featuring Living in Between & Blooms:

JASON WALKER: Personal Encounters

2018 | Solo Exhibition at Ferrin Contemporary | North Adams, MA

Jason Walker’s solo exhibition, Personal Encounters, presents a new body of work that questions our inter-dependent relationship to nature and technology within the context of today’s world.

View the exhibition page HERE 

SELECT PAST EXHIBITIONS

• HEY! LE DESSIN
• ABOUT FACE: Contemporary Ceramic Sculpture
• LOOKING WEST at The James J. Hill House in St. Paul, MN
• CANARY SYNDROME
• BRIDGE 13: Jason Walker at Society for Contemporary Craft
• A CLAY BESTIARY
• JASON WALKER: On the River, Down the Road at BAM
• CERAMIC TOP 40
• UNCANNY CONGRUENCIES
• Jason Walker at Ceramic Biennalie 2017 in Korea
• Jason Walker: On the River, Down the Road
• 20th SAN ANGELO NATIONAL CERAMIC COMPETITION