An Artist’s Statement by Erik H. Gellert

"Detail Large" (clay sculpture detail)

As I begin a new series of work, I ask myself the question: “How do I best represent an experience beyond time and materiality?” My process can then be executed one of two ways:

1. Pull from a place beyond time and space, artifacts of the infinite, which have now, paradoxically, become memory.

2. Create a space in which the infinite itself is given permission to manifest.

Utilizing either methodology, objects emerge with their own inherent sense of materiality, or lack thereof; of time or lack thereof; of maker or lack thereof. There is a space that resides in
between.

This is where I work.

In my “Square” series, I fuse together individually hand-rolled coils of clay, each roughly the size of a pencil’s width, into an object of roughly square dimensions. The process is vigorous—moist clay only adheres to moist clay. Thus, designs that emerge are created in the moment. Pattern becomes structure that supports as it grows. Squares are efficient, and they pack together neatly. People, more like the coils, are going to do what they will. What, then, emerges as the two are melded into one?

Erik H. Gellert is a ceramist based in Lamy, New Mexico. He holds degrees from the University of Michigan as well as Santa Fe Community College where he works as the Ceramics Technician. Born to a German engineer father and an American social worker mother, he creates work that is technically challenging while remaining rooted in the trials of the human experience. Learn more at ehgellert.com or on Instagram @erik_h_gellert