73300 El Paseo
Palm Desert, CA 92260
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Artist

Jason Walker

Becoming Prey
Becoming Prey
Ceramic
10x15x8
Becoming Prey - View #2
Becoming Prey – View #2
Ceramic
10x15x8
Angle of Repose
Angle of Repose
Ceramic
16.5x18.5x5
Chasing Our Tail
Chasing Our Tail
Ceramic
16x16x5
The Day Before
The Day Before
Ceramic
13x8x3
Application Transfixation
Application Transfixation
Ceramic
13x8x3
Running Away
Running Away
Sold
Wildflowers
Wildflowers
Ceramic
23x20x20
Cruciflying
Cruciflying
Ceramic
15x9x13

In my ceramic sculpture, I have been exploring American ideas of nature and how technology has changed our perceptions of nature. Besides the obvious advantages technology may bring to our lives, there lie unintended consequences and underlying messages behind every creation that forever change our perceptions, our social interactions and our relationship to nature. The word nature itself has become an overused term in our present ideology to the degree it has altogether lost its meaning. What is nature exactly? How do we perceive and define it, and why? In Webster’s dictionary nature is defined as, “something in its essential form untouched and untainted by human hand”. Here lies the crux of my narrative. At the very heart of our own description of nature we exclude ourselves from it and place human beings outside of nature. In America we hold tightly to this dualistic view. A view that has created two separate worlds – the human made world and the non-human made world – or in other words the dichotomy between culture and nature. The way we perceive nature speaks volumes about the way we perceive ourselves and becomes a major component in defining what it means to be human at this precise moment in history. A place that embodies our most ideal perception of nature is wilderness. Speaking of wilderness William Cronon wrote, “For Americans wilderness stands as the last remaining place where civilization, that all too human disease, has not fully infected the earth. It is an island in the polluted sea of urban-industrial modernity, the one place we can turn for escape from our own too-muchness.”

Paradoxically, from our ‘own too-muchness’ our ideas of wilderness are conceived. I have come to realize my own appreciation for nature has come from the culture of which I belong. Ultimately, ideas of nature and/or wilderness are human constructs ever changing through human cultures at different moments in history. Presently, It is time to rethink our perceptions of nature, culture, wilderness and civilization, and perhaps we may once again reinstate our own naturalness and, one day, find balance between the planet and ourselves. Ultimately, in doing so we may come to a better realization of what it means to be human at this present time.

I am currently a studio artist and Bellingham, Washington has been my home base since fall of 2004. Since winter term of 2012, I have served as Sessional Faculty in ceramics at The Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. I received a BFA from Utah State University and an MFA from Penn State University. After schooling I served as the lab technician and  a ceramics and drawing instructor at Napa Valley community College for two years. After two years in Napa, I moved to Helena, Montana where I was accepted as an artist in residence for two years at the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts and was the recipient of the Taunt Fellowship Award. Since then, I have taught and lectured at numerous places nationally and internationally, such as the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C., Carnegie Museum of Art Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Ceramics Ireland International Festival, Thomastown, Kilkeny Co., Ireland, Haystack Mountain School for the Crafts, Penland School for the Crafts, Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver, Canada, the Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute in Jingdezhen, China and the International Ceramic Studio in Kecskemet, Hungary. In 2009, I was awarded an NCECA International Residency Fellowship for a residency in Vallauris, France, and my work is included in major collections such as the Fine Art Museum of San Francisco: de Young, the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and the Arizona State University Art Museum, Ceramic Research Center, Tempe, Arizona. I am currently represented by Ferrin Contemporary Cummington, Massachusetts and Abermeyer + Wood in Seattle, Washington.