Bryan Hopkins
Bryan Hopkins was born in Philadelphia, PA. He began West Chester University of PA as a mathematics major, and found the ceramics studio in his junior year. Bryan went on to earn an MFA in Ceramics from the State University of New York at New Paltz. He has been studio potter working in porcelain since 1990 and has lived in Buffalo, NY, since 1995. Bryan’s personal research in the field of ceramics centers on the vessel- both utilitarian and sculptural.
Bryan teaches at Niagara County Community College. He has curated ceramics exhibitions both nationally and locally. Bryan’s work has been exhibited in group and solo shows nationally, including the NCECA Clay National Biennial. His work and research in ceramics has been published in Ceramics Monthly, Ceramics: Art and Perception, Studio Potter, and numerous text books and e-books.
Bryan is a founding member of the online ceramics group Objective Clay. He is also a New York Foundation on the Arts Fellow in Craft.
I am interested in ideas of structure, architecture, containment, and permanence. My work takes those interests and applies them to porcelain vessels, adding to the continuum of expressive ceramic containers. Porcelain is my drug of choice. It satisfies and frustrates and I am fully addicted.
Porcelain is associated with the upper class, and is seen as fragile and pure. My use of industrial textures, loose style of construction, and employment of non-white porcelain questions those assumptions. I thoroughly enjoy the effects of luster- that hint at value and worth as well as cultural signifier. The surfaces and designs bring my working class roots to porcelain vessels.
In this series I have added cast concrete bases. They carry with them implications and references to Brutalist architecture, civil engineering, and coastal breakwalls. The base also acts as a floor for the bottomless vessel it supports.
My urban environment, artists Gordon Matta Clark and DeChirico and Serra, Brutalist and Modernist architecture (earlier I.M Pei and Louis Kahn), backyard forts, model cars, 19th century European porcelain, Song Dynasty porcelain, and Modernism all inform and affect the work.
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