Gerard Ferrari
My family and I live in the country in an old farmhouse that we are slowly refinishing and modernizing to current energy standards. My studio and our house’s electricity are fed by the recent addition of a 6,000-watt solar tracker system. In addition to making artwork, I am occupied as a stay-at-home parent, micro-homesteader, and an adjunct professor.
I have earned an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University and a BA from Berea College. With the help of my professors, artist friends, and personal creative endeavors, I have reinterpreted standard clay forming techniques to create visually complex artworks. I make my sculptures by combining multiple hand-built parts, which are each formed and finished separately. Then, I assemble the pieces into a cohesive whole.
My art practice tends toward serials: The five series that I have created’, all have different conceptual endeavors. At the moment, I am currently maintaining two of these serials: the Orphaned Teapots, and my most recent, the Visitor Series, that like my other bodies of work, share a wide array of visual influences including insects, toys, mechanical objects, natural objects, masks, and more.
I view my sculptures, as highly crafted, complex three-dimensional clay collages that embody disparate influences, forms, and conceptual ideas. I playfully construct my sculptures and painstakingly develop their surfaces over several firings, which results in personified individual sculptures with unique identities.
