BIOGRAPHY

Beck is a potter and third year Master of Fine Arts candidate at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln where he is studying ceramics. His current research focuses on the process of soda firing, which utilizes sodium carbonate, and its volatilization inside the kiln at peak temperature to glaze his wares. After completion of his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in ceramics at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls in 2019, Beck spent two years living and working in Saint Paul and Minneapolis, Minnesota. During this time, he continued to make pottery and research soda firing, work in the Sales Gallery at Northern Clay Center (NCC), and taught classes. Beck has been a resident artist at the Cub Creek Foundation in Virginia and Faenza Art Ceramic Center in Italy, was awarded the 2020 Jerome Ceramic Artist Project Grant through NCC, was a 2023 Ceramics Monthly Emerging Artist and has taught firing and making workshops internationally. Outside of the studio, Beck takes pleasure in using handmade pots and eating delicious home cooked meals off of them with his friends while listening to music fitted for each experience.

ARTIST STATEMENT

I make pottery not only out of a passion for my material, clay, and for the complex processes of wheel throwing and atmospheric firing, but also out of a passion for living with, using, and sharing handmade objects. For me, using pottery daily is an act of celebration. My philosophy of making pots comes in part from the particular history of utilitarian pottery that has developed over the last sixty years in Minnesota and Western Wisconsin, where I went to school and began my career as a potter. More recently, the form language that I employ in my work has developed out of a study of historical pottery, glass, and metal vessels, along with architecture and my daily habits. My crisp forms are contrasted with enigmatic surfaces that undulate around the vessels, speaking to a sense of timelessness and ephemerality.

Tinkering drives my studio practice. I tinker with my clay bodies, firing schedules, and pottery forms. Ten new clay bodies are formulated and mixed at one time, all with varying amounts or types of clay, silica, or flux. In each new firing, one variable is manipulated from the last. I sit down at my Leach-style pottery wheel with fifteen lumps of clay and make fifteen pots that each spring from a particular set of ideas, characteristics, and formal problems I am seeking to further understand. I am slow in my evolution as a maker yet make many pots. I find meaning in the numbers. Through the permutations, the pots become more nuanced and genuine. Quantities of truthfully made pots suggest a sense of optimism and yearning for use. My pots are accessible for everyday use yet can also be used in and as an act of celebration. I strive to uphold the traditions of the studio pottery movement and follow those who came before me. Utilitarian pottery induces mindfulness and facilitates gathering and celebration. I, as the maker, do not look for recognition, but look for the pots to be recognized in meaningful acts. 

Website: beckpots.com
Instagram: @beckpots