Bio:
Jenneva Kayser is a writer and sculptor living in Michigan. She currently serves as the Arts + Culture Supervisor for the City of Novi, MI, where she oversees the artist in residency program at the Villa Barr Art Park. She earned her BFA from Kalamazoo College in 2010 and has been working in ceramics ever since, as studio manager for the Mesa Arts Center in Mesa, AZ and as an instructor at studios in California and Michigan.
Artist Statement:
I am an alchemist and a forager. I’m interested in processes of change, both in my artwork and myself, and ceramics is a practice in radical transformation. In the kiln, pressure, heat, and time each play a role in the act of chemical change that the piece undergoes. Similarly, a person in the intensity and pressure of new places and experiences can change radically. I’ve lived in the desert, the jungle, big cities and small towns, the edge of the Pacific, and the white pine forests of the Midwest. Geography and geology are recurring themes. Color is a joyful presence in my work, often created by layering homemade glazes over embedded found objects. I look for value in what has been discarded or ignored. As I walk to the park with my daughter, I find sand, broken glass, seed pods and lost jewelry to melt glossy puddles, create voids, or burn black scars into the glazes of my ceramic sculptures. Many of my sculptures imagine traveling into new worlds, either in the future or the distant reaches of space.
