🎧 2025 Emerging Artist: Joël Brodovsky-Adams, Brooklyn, New York Ceramics Monthly

Appears in the May 2025 issue of Ceramics Monthly.

The audio file for this article was produced by the Ceramic Arts Network staff and not read by the author.

Ceramics Monthly: How do you develop the forms and surfaces that are prevalent in your work?

Joël Brodovsky-Adams: My gateway into the world of ceramics was through tableware. I first started taking wheel-throwing classes in Montreal as a hobby alongside my undergraduate studies, and after several years of classes, I started working part time as a production potter. This entryway into the medium still informs my current work. I have held on to the idea of making utilitarian objects, even if only in a loose sense. Now working in the realm of furniture and related objects, the ideas of a lamp or a chair, for example, serve as much as a utilitarian goal for the work as they do sculptural subjects. 

All of my work is made on the wheel or through the assembly of wheel-thrown components. This process has helped me to generate a visual vocabulary determined by very specific ways of manipulating material. My work has a strong relationship to the body. The process engages my whole body in a very literal sense, and in their rounded volumes, the objects I produce are themselves bodily. I often think of McKenzie Wark’s writing about Queer club culture and raving, where she describes being on the dance floor as an “edgeless” experience. I can’t help but draw connections between the flow states of the dance floor and of wheel throwing, both deeply embodied experiences. Ever since reading Wark’s writing, I’ve been attracted to the idea of making edgeless forms. The highly patterned surfaces I build up are often inspired by fashion and textiles, as if I am dressing the forms up.

CM: How do you incorporate experimentation into your studio practice? 

JBA: My current experimentation process in the studio might best be described as remixing. I have developed a particular set of forms that make up the central and auxiliary components of much of my work, and I am constantly exploring ways to recombine them, slice them up, stack them, and slot them together. This practice of remixing is relevant in my approach to surface as well. Rearranging elements of both surface and form is an incredibly generative exercise, with limitless potential. I’m very drawn to the fluidity this approach affords me in the studio.

CM: Who is your ideal audience?

JBA: Hedonists. People eager to rush into the lushness of all things ornamented, over the top, and camp.

Learn more at jbaceramics.com.