An Interview With Brock DeBoer

When I first started working in ceramics I was producing vessels on the pottery wheel and became very inspired by Peter Volkous. His stacks especially resonated with me and I began to explore the vessels I was making differently creating one piece from multiples. The visceral and tactile quality of the material and its ability to conform to my vision is something I really connected with and have continued to explore throughout my work.

 

I enjoy exploring the idea of time through objects and the memories that they can hold and provoke. I also really enjoy the rich history of porcelain and the incredible craftsmanship that can be seen in historical works. I look to combine these qualities of craft with objects from popular culture or from my personal narrative and blur the line of time and value. I want the viewer to have that first glance of recognizing both aspects of the sculpture but then further investigate and discover the beauty that has been bestowed upon an underappreciated object or an object that can be lost in the everyday.

 

I work primarily with porcelain and sometimes glass and metal. The challenges of porcelain and creating the work that I do with it are what keep me pushing my boundaries as a maker as well as the boundaries of the material. There is also such an amazing history of the material that I can find endless inspiration as well as examples of great craftsmanship and knowledge of a material. There's something about the ability to create these beautiful objects in such a fragile material that cannot be replicated by a machine and can only be executed by hand with care and craft.

 

For me, sometimes technical execution becomes more important than the artistic vision because I really want to execute something at the highest level to become almost a vehicle for artistic vision of the work. There's an eb and flow to these two things for me because it is very important to me to create my narrative with an artistic technical vision that marries both together and allows them to work together.

 

I find inspiration all over and throughout my daily life as well as in other artists and their practices.  Some of my favorite artists are Ron Nagle, Wendel Castle, Geert Lap, and Shio Kusaka all for different reasons but the common thread between them all is their fearless approach to the material. The ease in their execution is something I strive for in my studio practice as well as how each of them carries themselves as a professional and person. I had the opportunity to work for Shio Kusaka and Jonas Wood for several years and I learned so much by just watching how they navigated the aspects of being a studio artist and running a creative business. One of the biggest takeaways for me was to always genuinely be myself and trust the direction of my work and where it is taking me. Both of them carry such a strong trust in themselves and their studio decisions while creating work and it was evident the marks were already mapped out in a way they just had to be applied. Also another impactful takeaway was how they handled the business side of making artwork and carrying the care and execution all the way through to the packaging of work and creating of catalogues.

 

Blue Mojave #2 embodies a lot of where I am currently physically as well as where I am going in my work.  Having my studio in the Mojave desert right outside of JTNP there are endless views and vast blue skies and a lot of rocks as well as a few snakes. Working on the land and my property there has been a lot of rock moving and through that process I quickly knew I had to almost celebrate this endless material that I have. The rattlesnake was important to capture as it is part of life in this area and again was a desert icon that I felt had to be created in porcelain.  The precarious stack almost cascades down from the snake that is on top and even though the rocks are porcelain they still visually carry a weight that makes the stack seem strong but could topple at any moment. The blue and white motifs that are commonly seen in my work as patterns are now loosening up and have become more of a palette of color for me. The coloring in the rocks represent the amazing colors of the sky at all different times of day and of the year, and can be so rich it's hard to process sometimes. In a way this sculpture represents my life currently as I continue to build my practice and work as well as the fearlessness and power of the snake. I want to push myself to be better everyday and build on my past experiences and move into the future with a fearless execution.

 

Usually I can work through an idea that's giving me problems by taking a break and working on something else for a bit. Usually then I'll have the breakthrough moment and can get back to where I was and continue to make progress. Sometimes though the ideas just don't come to fruition like I imagined and I'll have to scrap it but I have gotten much better at accepting this as an outcome. And there are also the times that I may have been ahead of myself and I'll be working on an idea and then will realize what I needed to execute a past concept or piece.

 

I want my viewers to take away a memory or a feeling of nostalgia or a sense of familiarity with the work. I love when I have a collector tell me all about the memories that an object I created evokes for them or how they saw a motif similar to mine on a historical work. Making a personal connection is one thing I really enjoy creating with my sculptures and how the viewer can understand the narrative I've created but also fold in their own history and how that makes the sculpture more significant and bigger than what I have made.

 

I am currently focusing on some larger sculptures in my studio drawing inspiration from here in the desert.  Also learning new materials such as cast glass, cast metal, and metal fabrication to incorporate into new and more complex works. I have an exhibition in November as well as work in group shows, and some other creative projects that will be fun to execute this year.

 

FOR GENERAL AVAILABILITY AND ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON BROCK DEBOER, PLEASE CONTACT THE GALLERY AT +1 (212) 226-8680 OR INFO@GUYHEPNER.COM.