Dirk Stachke "Still Life Vanitas"

We are pleased to announce that artist Dirk Staschke will be one of the featured presenting artists at this year's California Conference for the Advancement of Ceramic Art. April 28-30, 2017 the city of Davis transforms into a ceramic art mecca with hands-on art demos, artist talks and over 40 art gallery exhibitions.

Dirk Staschke’s work reinterprets Vanitas (“vanity”) still life paintings of 16th-century Northern Europe, which recognize the fleeting nature of life and question the futility of earthly pursuits and acquisitions. Using sculptural form instead of paint, Staschke employs a transgressive beauty that contradicts commonly held convictions about what makes something appealing. Playing on the human impulse to own and consume, his work uses symbols of longing to explore the complexities of human desire. His work has been included in the collections at The Birmingham Museum of Art, The Smithsonian, The International Museum of Ceramic Art, among others.

"I make sculptures based on paintings in what is traditionally considered a craft medium. In this translation, the sculptural representation of still life painting creates abstract forms. The results are beautifully made objects that simultaneously expose the crude structures of their creation.The pieces are both a simple exploration of residual forms derived from representation and a question regarding the merits of an Art object."