Nicholas Bird

Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA

Artist statement

I am a full-time ceramic artist, a title I have only claimed for the past two years. Drawing on a lifetime of artistic training and curiosity, I have begun to understand the kind of artist I want to be. My practice moves across three overlapping areas: sculptural lighting, functional ware, and technology-enhanced ceramics. At first glance, these may seem disparate, and for a while I thought so too; I thought I had to choose a lane and stay in it. But ceramics has always occupied a space between art and utility. Rather than seeing these as forks in a road, I think of them as different ways of asking the same question: What can a ceramic object do? My technology-enhanced work draws on my somewhat technical background (I was a math major in college) and my formative years in Science Olympiad. I am interested in what happens when ceramics, a medium with thousands of years of history, interacts with technologies that are constantly changing. I have made a lamp for a tea ceremony that changes color and intensity when tea is served within its line of sight; a ceramic “panopticon” that follows viewers around with a red light as they move around the piece; a voting machine with animated elements that serves as a piece of political commentary. In these works, technology unlocks a new element of ceramics and how the viewer experiences it. My functional work takes a more direct approach to the relationship between ceramics and daily life. This year I started a series, IHTCI (Improving...

Artwork