ARTIST STATEMENT

I grew up in the mountains of western North Carolina in a small community called Poplar. This tiny section of the southern Appalachian Mountains is marked with distinct seasons, from the richness and fullness of the succulent summer hills to the achingly bare and skeletal tree-scattered grayness of the winter. These seasonal changes hold their own agents of growth and decay, visible markers of the cycle of life. I grew up in this greater green world, with my head buried in the comic books that my dad collected. My childhood was a mixture of color and fantasy, filled with super heroes and alien beings, and the lushness of the rhododendron filled mountains. I spent hours leafing through comics, imagining worlds within worlds and encountering alternate universes and secret wars, all the while cicadas were singing and shedding their skin and whirring into the night air.

My ceramics are an amalgamation of the influences of my youth, the natural and the fantastical. My vessels provide a ceramic comic book interpretation of the natural world and its processes of growth and decay. I use thick line contours, a fullness of volume, and areas of exaggerated detail to embellish my functional ceramic vessels. I translate and abstract budding leaves and lichen encrusted bark, and assemble a collage of interpretations of natural phenomena. I like to take bits and parts, magnifying some, diminishing others and assemble them into a vessel worthy of use and destined for contemplation. Through my ceramic objects, I hope to relay a narrative of the natural world, focusing on the overwhelming visual and tactile information that seduces and causes me wonder.

ARTIST BIO

Ronan Kyle Peterson grew up in Poplar, NC, a small community deep in the mountains of western North Carolina. He attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and in 1996 received a Bachelor of the Arts degree in Anthropology, with a minor in Folklore. He was a Core Fellow at Penland School of Crafts in 2000-2001, and has returned to Penland to teach Summer Session workshops. Currently, Ronan maintains Nine Toes Pottery, which produces highly decorative and functional earthenware vessels. His work has been featured in both Ceramics Monthly and Clay Times, and the books 500 Bowls and 500 Plates and Chargers. Recent exhibitions include solo shows at the Cedar Creek Gallery (NC) and Charlie Cummings Gallery (FL) and invitational shows at the Northern Clay Center as part of the American Pottery Festival 2020 and 2021, Akar Gallery Yunomi Invitational 2020, Worcester Center for Crafts in Worcester, MA, and the Carbondale Clay Center in Carbondale, CO.