Ryan Kitson: Suds Ur Duds / Fermentation Elastic
Artist Statement
The Visiting Artist and Scholar in Teaching (VAST) program at Southern Oregon University is the armature for this body of work. Although I am utilizing a material vocabulary that has been developed over the years this specific body of work is a direct reaction to my experience of returning to the rogue valley after 17 years of living on the east coast. I will simply lay out what I have done so far, with the general idea being “absorb all aspects of the experience and react almost passively, letting every day be your guide” The first thing I did was scavenge all the clay I could find that was too firm for the students to use and I threw large thick slabs onto the immediate architecture and trees in between the sculpture studio and ceramics studio. Some slabs were abstract, some contained verbiage(structure to be warped). Some slabs were formed and left to dry and some were formed into tear-away molds in which plaster was poured directly into. Right from the beginning the work split into two channels, the slow drying clay to be fired to stone, and the quick curing plaster to be dyed and supplemented with materials according to the ensuing adventure. These material so far include: Aluminum, Lead, Resin, Harvested Redwood, A Tie-dye t-shirt, commercial kombucha bottles, homemade kombucha, a vacuum sealed cast of a locally harvested blacktail buck heart, maps of Oregon, a found watercolor set, donated glitter, donated wax, steal from the metal shop that I recognize from the 90’s, scrap glass from an old friend and local artisan, and a biodegradable coffee cup lid. There is also a series of digital prints and one oil painting. The painting is of an iPhone picture taken in the artist’s studio in Brooklyn. The image is essentially the elements of a traditional still life with 4 depths of field depicting a hand pointing at a monitor showing a macro shot of a ceramic bowl being trimmed by a model in a fake ceramics studio for a Woman’s Wear Daily video editorial.
Artist Bio
Ryan Kitson was born in the Bay Area in 1977. After graduating from SOU he relocated to NYC and has been there ever since making living in the creative industry selling fine art, designing and fabricating mass market toys and games, and in the past decade designing and fabricating sets and props for the fashion world. He also enjoys the outdoors.
Featured Artist
Ryan Kitson