Jeremy Anderson Creates Ceramic Pieces With Fantastical Flourishes
Meditative make-believe.
Ceramic artist Jeremy Anderson pictures his pieces as creatures that he dresses, each taking on its own unique identity in a fantasy world. His anthropomorphic vessels, lamps, and furniture pieces exude personality, each lovingly adorned with fantastical flourishes such as earring-like fringe, curving petalled shades, and painted stripes. For Anderson, making art is a way to tap into what he calls “meditative make-believe,” a type of childlike play that is its own type of therapy. “There’s something about that moment when it looks like it’s going to talk to you or look at you, or maybe it’s going to walk off the table—those are the things that really resonate to me,” he says.
Anderson was introduced to clay in high school, but he didn’t see ceramics as a viable career option until many years later. In 2012, he founded the furniture and lighting design studio Apparatus alongside Gabriel Hendifar. But after nearly a decade of building the brand, which now has showrooms in New York, London, and Los Angeles, Anderson felt it was finally time to delve fully into his own creative practice. “My time at Apparatus opened up this opportunity for me to have design and making be part of my career,” he says.
Anderson’s solo explorations began with his Piccolos, legged vessels with bulbous bodies adorned with stripes and lichen-like ripples inspired by the black-and-white photographs of Bernd and Hilla Becher. He threw cylinders, closed forms, and bowls on the wheel before landing on the three-legged form with an off-centre opening. “It became alive. It ended up looking like a little creature,” Anderson says. “That really opened up a whole world of possibilities.”
Now, the 49-year-old crafts an ever-expanding world of vessels, lighting, and furniture in his Brooklyn studio. “I’m always being pulled back into some kind of fantasy world,” he says. The unifying language of his work is a sense of whimsy that lends itself to pieces that would look
at home on a strange planet or in a sea queen’s palace. He conceptualizes his creations as “little characters who became playmates” in his studio.
Represented by Gallery Fumi, Anderson has had exhibitions in the United States, U.K., and Australia. Most recently, he showcased experiments with slip-cast porcelain, bronze, and wood at New York’s Salon Art + Design. More lighting and furniture pieces are in the works, and he’s looking forward to exploring forging and casting. Whatever the material and method, Anderson’s new pieces will be created with humour and personality. “I come to my studio to have it be a place to play,” he says.
