Collection: Lauren Sandler - Featured Artist

Clay as archival material tells stories. I utilize the layered and complex history of clay as a place to unearth stories that have been erased, distorted, or rewritten. My practice considers how knowledge, culture, and material are used as tools of storytelling and fabrication often in conflicting ways to regulate, exclude, and decenter narratives and histories. I employ the familiarity and accessibility of ceramic objects to serve as an entry point and engage a closer examination of the layers of context held in my pieces.

My work looks at goods associated with ceramic objects, such as tea, sugar, coffee, salt, and the systems that support their production to examine economies of control that constitute migration, commodification, power dynamics, and labor. Through tactics of ornamentation and accumulation, my pieces strive to challenge the presumptive neutrality of material culture.

From the textile work of my Italian and Jewish immigrant families in New York City to the colonial settler industries of Philadelphia, where I currently live, to the transnational extraction and movement of material as commodity, my work resides in the shared intersection of body, culture, and history to reflect on the intricate narratives contained in the earth.

Bio: 

Lauren Sandler is a ceramic artist and educator based in Philadelphia. Her work examines the myriad narratives told through clay as a means to explore stories that have been erased, distorted, and rewritten. Sandler exhibits nationally, and gives talks, workshops, and publishes work concerning contemporary and historic issues in ceramics. She holds an MFA in Ceramics from Penn State University and undergraduate degrees in Anthropology and Ceramics from Ithaca College and SUNY New Paltz. She served on the Board of The National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts as Director at Large and is currently Associate Professor and Program Head of Ceramics at Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University.

Find Lauren’s Artaxis page: https://artaxis.org/artist/lauren-sandler/

Find Lauren on Instagram: @laurensandlerstudio

** Lauren Sandler's Artaxis Shop has ended. You can find more work available for sale by visiting the other Featured Artist collections HERE