BIO

Oscar Wilde once said that works of art are as useless as flowers, good for just a fleeting moment of joy they may give us. If that’s right, then the pursuit of uselessness in useful ceramic ware—i.e., making something that can both serve a specific function and stand as an object of beauty in its own right—best describes Jim Whitman’s approach to pottery. By twisting, folding, poking, prodding, and sometimes violently assaulting the clay, Jim blurs the boundary between art and utility. Rather than seek perfect symmetry, he purposely distorts his ceramic pieces to capture elusive movements or gestures, sets them off-center to challenge expectations, or juxtaposes incongruent elements to create contradictions. With minimal use of color and glazes, his pottery celebrates the honesty and immediacy of raw, unglazed surfaces, which create a tactile bridge from his hands to yours. He embraces, and tries to encourage, the unpredictability of clay, because the space between intention and chance most often holds those ephemeral moments of joy.

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