Judd Schiffman

Judd Schiffman (b. 1982) is a Providence, Rhode Island based artist working primarily in ceramics. He has lectured at Harvard University Ceramics and Brown University Hillel, and participated in residencies at the Zentrum Fur Keramiks in Berlin, Germany and Arch Contemporary in Tiverton, Rhode Island. Schiffman received his MFA from the University of Colorado in 2015, and his BA from Prescott College in 2007. Schiffman’s work has been exhibited in Los Angeles, CA, Portland, OR, Boulder, CO, Beacon, NY, Providence, RI, Fall River, MA, and Berlin, Germany. In 2016, he received an emerging artists award from the National Council for the Education of Ceramic Arts. Schiffman is currently the Visiting Assistant Professor of Ceramics at Providence College.

STATEMENT
Using clay as a drawing material, my ceramic wall sculptures evoke a psychedelic concoction of real and imagined experiences that ponder the power of our personal stories. As social and political tensions continue to build in the world, there seems to be little room for compromise as we all become more identified with our own story of how things should be. Through exploring narrative, my work seeks to look beyond the story in order to find the space where collaboration can happen. The framed narratives open up a common ground where the viewer can enter into dialogue as a participant among the characters, objects, and landscapes.

Interview with Judd Schiffman

Questions by Emilia Shaffer-Del Valle

Tell us a little about your background. How did you come to make art?
I grew up in Providence RI and then spent a good portion of my adult life in a small town in the high desert of Arizona. These two locations and all that came with them have had a strong influence on my development as an artist. East coast Jewish culture, my eccentric and religious grandmother, 90s alternative and hip-hop music, mixed with vast desert wilderness, meditation retreats, solitude in nature and spiritual rites of passage have really influenced my approach to art making.  I think that all through my life I’ve been grappling with my own spirituality and psychological issues and that manifests itself as a deep need or longing to make art.

Have you always worked with clay? What draws you to this medium?
I was making large, (bad) paintings in my garage in AZ for a few years, and then I met my wife Athena who introduced me to ceramics. I fell in love with the process of ceramics and with Athena at the same time. I love how bound ceramics is to time, and to the elemental properties of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water….haha. I’m really not a hippie anymore, but I AM sentimental about getting my hands dirty and working with clay. I love it. I love the different stages of building, drying, firing, glazing, etc. It suits my personality in that I can be impulsive at certain stages, and then have had to develop a quality of patience when it comes to waiting for clay to dry, and handling it carefully while loading it into the kiln, etc. I enjoy the limitations and I feel like I am pushing it to do something slightly new, particularly with my more recent work.

What is your approach to working with clay? Does the material guide the forms you create?
I love clay because it can mimic any medium..you can build with it like wood, or fold it like fabric, it’s extraordinarily versatile and there are endless avenues for exploration. My approach to working with clay is very much split between physical and spiritual. I know it sounds cheesy but my experience in the studio is very romantic. I always begin my artistic process with weird and endless drawings. Choosing from the imagery I create, I move to clay. I work primarily with the slab roller, They have these great big wheels to turn the presses, and I like to pretend I am steering a ship on my Hero’s journey as I roll out a slab of clay. I then meld my drawings with the clay and that is the most exciting part because there is so much room for unexpected things to happen.  I’ll find a smushed up piece of clay on the floor and stick it on a tile, or something’s not working so I cut it in half and re-attach the pieces in a new configuration, or something breaks in the kiln and becomes something new, or the glaze comes out wrong after the second firing, and so the tile goes on the shelf and enters into a new composition later on. So the material is driving, I’m driving, and then there is something very quiet and subtle bubbling underneath throughout the whole process.

You’ve described your approach as “using clay as a drawing material.” Ceramic as drawing feels especially true about your Outline series – the white wall space and ceramic “frames” resemble a piece of paper on which you display the ceramic scenes. How does clay better convey your stories and goals than more traditional pencil or pen on paper?
Ceramics is ancient and has an ingrained history within it. I love existing within that framework, within that lineage. A clay circle on the wall becomes a vessel, the quintessential ceramic form, and the metaphor of person as vessel, or earth as vessel, starts to seep into the narratives as a backdrop. The colors and variation of glaze, the multiple levels of relief, the intimacy of touch, the power of the material, and the possibilities of improvised moments are all intuitive to me with clay and in this way I think clay really brings my drawings to life.

It’s kind of funny because I spent so many years sitting at a table or out in nature by myself drawing, and feeling so personally attached to and in love with my work and there was something I was missing, which was community and connection. Clay naturally lends itself to collaboration, it’s part of the history of pottery studios, and it’s also just practical considering the amount of equipment and labor that goes into it. I’ve been sharing my studio with the artists Scott Alario, and Heather Leigh McPherson, and our conversations and proximity inform my work.

The Outline series has also been a big brainchild of my wife and I. Athena is an artist as well and we have been in conversation, collaboration, and disagreement for the past 10 years. The outlines have so many pieces that can move and shift that we are able to work together and play around with them in a way that is really productive and, again, leads to moments that are unexpected and exciting for me. 

I see allusions to the natural world and elements of fantasy in your figures. What are your visual references?
My references are generally an amalgamation of the objects and associations around me. Photos I’ve taken, flowers, branches and rocks found on walks, nature field guides, my daughter’s toys, my wife’s textiles, etc. Like many artists I have the overwhelming urge to critically view everything around me and include it in my work.  I am also, as everyone in my family is, extremely sentimental about keepsakes so I have a backstock of those that I utilize a lot in my work:  hockey trophies, handkerchiefs, keychains and grandma’s old clocks, stuff like that. Finally, I often integrate paintings and artifacts from museums into my work. All these different genres of objects and images get blended together and regurgitated into a kind of fantastical explosion. It makes me happy to be able to transform the things I see and interact with into new, weird, narratives. 

Relatedly, do you draw from personal memories and experiences to create your scenes?
Yes, I often am reflecting on my own personal experiences as a starting point for my work. It’s a fine line making self-obsessed work that is for nothing but my own indulgence, and making work that feels like it has a strong purpose in the world. My need to make art is commensurate with my need to tell stories, to approach memories again, to fictionalize them, to make them into something new.

How do you hope viewers engage with your work?
Oh, I just hope that people have a chance to see my work in person, in a quiet atmosphere where they can alternate looking, closing their eyes, looking, and touching. There is so much texture! Going back to your earlier question, I think this is another reason why ceramics is so important to me. I leave my imprint on what I make, it’s a way of connecting with the earth and other people, but even if you can’t touch my work, I hope the sentiment of intimacy comes across. I think my work also exists best when there is lots of it, and the outlines can touch and intersect at certain moments. This idea of overwhelm in a sea of quiet is important to the work. 

At the last show I had there were a group of five toddlers running around, touching my work and laughing, and this was ideal.

Is there a thematic thread between your bodies of work? Or do you approach each series uniquely? How has your work developed and changed over the years?
I suppose I can’t really escape this theme of psychology and spirituality because it is my baseline for living. We’re all stuck in bodies for the brief period of our lives and nobody is exempt from physical and psychological suffering. I don’t mean this in a cynical way, instead I relate it to the Buddhist idea that suffering is endless, but that there is a way to find freedom and that is through transforming your relationship to suffering. I think the ways in which the content of my work has changed has been directly correlated to the things I was confronting at that time: family dynamics, the stickiness of identity, losing a connection to nature, relationships, etc. The development of my approach has benefited greatly from conversations and critiques with peers and other artists.

What is your process like in the studio?
I try to make things that feel significant and simultaneously let go of trying hard to make something important. My collaborative relationship with Athena is incredibly helpful in this regard. She might say, what if you turn that tile upside down? or what if you cut that one up? Athena helps me to remember that nothing is sacred.

I spend a couple of months looking at things, gathering resources, having anxiety attacks about what I will make, drawing, taking photos, printing them out, talking to Athena about what to make, drawing more. Then I cut out selected drawings, move them around on the wall. Then I start making the clay tiles, letting things change as I go, dry, fire, install on the wall, glaze, fire,  arrange the outlines with Athena on the floor, re-arrange, re-arrange, and then install on the wall.

Who are some of the artists, writers, musicians, thinkers that you find inspiring?
There are so many, I love to look at art and art books, I love to read and listen to music. I like work that is sad, funny, poignant, ridiculous, political, and just straight up beautiful. To name a few: Leonard Cohen, Rachel Cusk, Phillip Roth, Phillip Guston, Tashiko Takaezu, Viola Frey, Charles Burchfield, Betty Woodman, Elena Ferrante, Sanford Biggers, Caroline Wells Chandler,  John Steinbeck, Robert Gober, Julie Curtiss, Diedrick Brackens, Matt Wedel, Caitlin Keogh, Joko Beck, Suzuki Roshi, Phillip Glass, Sanya Kantarovsky, Liz Magic Laser, Kara Walker, Anselm Kiefer, Francis Alys, Nina Simone, Agnes Martin, Bernard Pallisy, David Hammons, Ben Lerner, Ilan Harari, Betye Saar, John Fante, Georg Baselitz.

What are you working on now? Which upcoming projects are you especially excited about?
More Outlines. I really do love making these. This fall, I have a solo exhibition at Maake Projects coming up, and a group exhibition at 1969 Gallery about memory and I’m very excited about both of these. At this very moment, I am trying to work and teach while hanging out with my daughter a lot so Athena does the important work of making protective face masks while our puppy chews my toes off. It’s a really weird time to be doing anything and I am trying to continue the momentum in my studio and allow for all of this chaos to enter into my work. I love my work, and my family and the way the two are tied together, and I feel lucky to have the opportunity to make art that feels close to the truth of who I am. Working in the studio is such a gift.

To find out more about Judd Shiffman and his work, check out his website.