The audio file for this article was produced by the Ceramic Arts Network staff and not read by the author.
When a tree spreads its roots, it begins from one centralized place and reaches outward, extending and expanding its network far and wide into the dirt, rocks, and clay that surround it. Much like trees, our neurons operate in a system called dendritic branching, in which connections are made through an outward-extending system of synapses that form connections, memories, and our understanding of the world that surrounds us.
Matt Wedel’s large-scale sculptural practice— anchored in memory, self-exploration, and caretaking— explores this concept in its conceptual and literal implications through his investigation of recording memory via mark-making across countless bodies of work. “One body of work grows and branches and breaks off and evolves—maybe something happens where you run out of material or you run out of something: constraint. Another branch emerges and goes,” he explains. “The idea [is] that they’re not linear; it’s this continual growing system. If I can find access points back to a body of work, it still can keep going.”
Gardening, painting, making—it all comes down to caretaking. “My work with my kids, or within the community, within the garden, within the body, that becomes the philosophical structure that permeates the practice,” he explains. “The symbols that emerge out of my work are symbols that are harvested within that structure, and they happen to mirror shapes within an ecosystem, whether it be plant forms or neural systems like synaptic structures.”
Early Exploration
Clay has been a familiar medium to Wedel for as long as he can remember; it only seems natural that he would gravitate to it to explore memory and connection-making. Born to a father whose area of focus was functional pottery, Wedel said his earliest foray into art making was “wandering in” to his father’s studio and “squishing clay.” His father’s practice was an “introduction to vessel making” and an “exploration of function as ornament” that fostered a lifelong connection to clay.
In early adulthood, Wedel set forth in creating a studio practice at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he saw himself studying sculpture. He says he saw sculpture and clay as separate areas at the time, but quickly realized that it wouldn’t be as easy to “construct” himself as an artist as he thought.
“In terms of material, everything seemed arbitrary; materials felt arbitrary. I had no connection point, and so I found myself coming back into clay because it was a connection point to my childhood,” he says. Although clay is specific to Wedel’s individual experiences in childhood, he recognized its inherent capacity for exploration in youth because it is so accessible as a natural material.
“There’s a universality to it because I think most people, as children, play with clay because it’s earth and it’s so simple of a medium,” he says. “For me, it functions as this way to access the past. I think heat functions that way too, the visceralness of heat, and touch—those two things allow me to play with going back in time emotionally or connecting with states of emotion that (I’ve had) throughout my life.”
Growth
Much like the way in which growths and attachments seem to emerge right out of Wedel’s sculptures, a clear arc of growth emerges from the artist’s prolific oeuvre. What began as a resistance to visible mark making burgeoned into a practice that embraced it. To Wedel, it’s a journey of awareness and self exploration.
His early work is just as much about touch as his current work is, but the visibility of the hand has since changed significantly. “At first, it was really important to remove my hand from the work,” Wedel says. He was interested in making objects that “seemed like they emerged versus were made.” The mark making imbued in his earlier works was primarily by the kiln through the act of glaze moving, but he became more interested in his own awareness of the body and exploration of the self through mark making. “The point was my own growth as a person, and my own awareness of self was the exploration. Touch started to become this act of awareness. To grip material, there’s tenderness, there’s concern, there’s frustration, there’s worry, there’s grief—all of those have different types of pressure.”
Glaze is intensely important in Wedel’s works, and reflects both a major part of his artistic process and his philosophy as an artist. Glazing is “just pure delight” because it allows him to surround himself with color and use his sculptures as catalysts for his feelings and bodily perceptions. He’s clear, though, that the key to this process is letting go of the post-firing image. “For me, it’s really important to let go of that illusion instead of holding onto it because every time you open a kiln, if you’re projecting onto it, you can’t see what’s there,” he says.
Ultimately, letting go of that image and perception of self is what allows Wedel to better understand himself.
In the Studio
Wedel’s home studio spans multiple rooms with sky-high walls and doors wide enough to fit industrial equipment like forklifts through them. Even more impressive than the space itself is the amount of artwork that fills every inch: works in progress, pieces fresh out of the kiln and on their way into it, unknown objects packed into shipping crates, towering installation sculptures, and his children’s contributions to the studio.
His morning routine is a practice he describes as “tending,” which fuels his studio practice later on in the day. Each morning, Wedel makes lunches to send off with his family for the day before he walks to the studio situated behind his house in the rolling hills of rural Ohio. He feeds his pets and wanders through a lush, verdant garden to see what’s grown overnight. In the evening, he returns to his home and makes dinner with his family, often using the day’s crop of vegetables straight from the garden.
“My practice is sandwiched between family, ecosystem, garden—work is in between that. Those things bookend my practice, which I’m super grateful (for),” he explains.
Wedel doesn’t see his practice as being confined to the making of art, but as being a living practice and a practice of living.
“My work is an act of gardening within the self, a way of navigating our shifting ecosystem and trying to create room for symbols and images to emerge that can help me navigate my own awareness. There’s something about a celebration of the phenomenon of being alive and a celebration around the act of awareness of the ecosystem we inhabit,” he says.
What’s Old is New
As much as Wedel’s work seeks connection and shared experiences through caretaking and tending, it also contends with mourning. Mourning the loss of biodiversity, mourning vulnerability, and mourning the fallibility of the mind all come to fruition within the kiln’s ability to destroy work just as much as its ability to create it.
“As memory fails, for me, that’s a point of vulnerability. Having these non-verbal media that can access things that I’ve forgotten becomes a necessity, like a media that I use to access the past (and) parts of myself that I’ve forgotten,” Wedel says.
Wedel works fast, but he often finds that introspection after the piece has been made, glazed and fired can reopen a piece or a body of work entirely in a new way. He frequently finds himself reflecting on what he was grappling with when he made a piece, and that can open new and adjacent paths of exploration.
“Sometimes they’re lures. They’re waiting for you to pick them up again,” he said.
the author Julia Weber is an arts journalist and ceramicist currently based in Western New York. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Journalism through Ohio University’s Honors Tutorial College, where she conducted research on the role of the artist-journalist in contemporary visual art and cultural criticism, and a Master of Arts Administration through Ohio University’s Chaddock + Morrow College of Fine Arts.
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The audio file for this article was produced by the Ceramic Arts Network staff and not read by the author.
When a tree spreads its roots, it begins from one centralized place and reaches outward, extending and expanding its network far and wide into the dirt, rocks, and clay that surround it. Much like trees, our neurons operate in a system called dendritic branching, in which connections are made through an outward-extending system of synapses that form connections, memories, and our understanding of the world that surrounds us.
Matt Wedel’s large-scale sculptural practice— anchored in memory, self-exploration, and caretaking— explores this concept in its conceptual and literal implications through his investigation of recording memory via mark-making across countless bodies of work. “One body of work grows and branches and breaks off and evolves—maybe something happens where you run out of material or you run out of something: constraint. Another branch emerges and goes,” he explains. “The idea [is] that they’re not linear; it’s this continual growing system. If I can find access points back to a body of work, it still can keep going.”
Gardening, painting, making—it all comes down to caretaking. “My work with my kids, or within the community, within the garden, within the body, that becomes the philosophical structure that permeates the practice,” he explains. “The symbols that emerge out of my work are symbols that are harvested within that structure, and they happen to mirror shapes within an ecosystem, whether it be plant forms or neural systems like synaptic structures.”
Early Exploration
Clay has been a familiar medium to Wedel for as long as he can remember; it only seems natural that he would gravitate to it to explore memory and connection-making. Born to a father whose area of focus was functional pottery, Wedel said his earliest foray into art making was “wandering in” to his father’s studio and “squishing clay.” His father’s practice was an “introduction to vessel making” and an “exploration of function as ornament” that fostered a lifelong connection to clay.
In early adulthood, Wedel set forth in creating a studio practice at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he saw himself studying sculpture. He says he saw sculpture and clay as separate areas at the time, but quickly realized that it wouldn’t be as easy to “construct” himself as an artist as he thought.
“In terms of material, everything seemed arbitrary; materials felt arbitrary. I had no connection point, and so I found myself coming back into clay because it was a connection point to my childhood,” he says. Although clay is specific to Wedel’s individual experiences in childhood, he recognized its inherent capacity for exploration in youth because it is so accessible as a natural material.
“There’s a universality to it because I think most people, as children, play with clay because it’s earth and it’s so simple of a medium,” he says. “For me, it functions as this way to access the past. I think heat functions that way too, the visceralness of heat, and touch—those two things allow me to play with going back in time emotionally or connecting with states of emotion that (I’ve had) throughout my life.”
Growth
Much like the way in which growths and attachments seem to emerge right out of Wedel’s sculptures, a clear arc of growth emerges from the artist’s prolific oeuvre. What began as a resistance to visible mark making burgeoned into a practice that embraced it. To Wedel, it’s a journey of awareness and self exploration.
His early work is just as much about touch as his current work is, but the visibility of the hand has since changed significantly. “At first, it was really important to remove my hand from the work,” Wedel says. He was interested in making objects that “seemed like they emerged versus were made.” The mark making imbued in his earlier works was primarily by the kiln through the act of glaze moving, but he became more interested in his own awareness of the body and exploration of the self through mark making. “The point was my own growth as a person, and my own awareness of self was the exploration. Touch started to become this act of awareness. To grip material, there’s tenderness, there’s concern, there’s frustration, there’s worry, there’s grief—all of those have different types of pressure.”
Glaze is intensely important in Wedel’s works, and reflects both a major part of his artistic process and his philosophy as an artist. Glazing is “just pure delight” because it allows him to surround himself with color and use his sculptures as catalysts for his feelings and bodily perceptions. He’s clear, though, that the key to this process is letting go of the post-firing image. “For me, it’s really important to let go of that illusion instead of holding onto it because every time you open a kiln, if you’re projecting onto it, you can’t see what’s there,” he says.
Ultimately, letting go of that image and perception of self is what allows Wedel to better understand himself.
In the Studio
Wedel’s home studio spans multiple rooms with sky-high walls and doors wide enough to fit industrial equipment like forklifts through them. Even more impressive than the space itself is the amount of artwork that fills every inch: works in progress, pieces fresh out of the kiln and on their way into it, unknown objects packed into shipping crates, towering installation sculptures, and his children’s contributions to the studio.
His morning routine is a practice he describes as “tending,” which fuels his studio practice later on in the day. Each morning, Wedel makes lunches to send off with his family for the day before he walks to the studio situated behind his house in the rolling hills of rural Ohio. He feeds his pets and wanders through a lush, verdant garden to see what’s grown overnight. In the evening, he returns to his home and makes dinner with his family, often using the day’s crop of vegetables straight from the garden.
“My practice is sandwiched between family, ecosystem, garden—work is in between that. Those things bookend my practice, which I’m super grateful (for),” he explains.
Wedel doesn’t see his practice as being confined to the making of art, but as being a living practice and a practice of living.
“My work is an act of gardening within the self, a way of navigating our shifting ecosystem and trying to create room for symbols and images to emerge that can help me navigate my own awareness. There’s something about a celebration of the phenomenon of being alive and a celebration around the act of awareness of the ecosystem we inhabit,” he says.
What’s Old is New
As much as Wedel’s work seeks connection and shared experiences through caretaking and tending, it also contends with mourning. Mourning the loss of biodiversity, mourning vulnerability, and mourning the fallibility of the mind all come to fruition within the kiln’s ability to destroy work just as much as its ability to create it.
“As memory fails, for me, that’s a point of vulnerability. Having these non-verbal media that can access things that I’ve forgotten becomes a necessity, like a media that I use to access the past (and) parts of myself that I’ve forgotten,” Wedel says.
Wedel works fast, but he often finds that introspection after the piece has been made, glazed and fired can reopen a piece or a body of work entirely in a new way. He frequently finds himself reflecting on what he was grappling with when he made a piece, and that can open new and adjacent paths of exploration.
“Sometimes they’re lures. They’re waiting for you to pick them up again,” he said.
To learn more about Matt Wedel and his work, visit www.mattwedel.com or follow on Instagram @mattwedel.
the author Julia Weber is an arts journalist and ceramicist currently based in Western New York. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Journalism through Ohio University’s Honors Tutorial College, where she conducted research on the role of the artist-journalist in contemporary visual art and cultural criticism, and a Master of Arts Administration through Ohio University’s Chaddock + Morrow College of Fine Arts.
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