Red Lodge Clay Center – Short-Term Resident (AIA) 2026
Brian Chen is a New Jersey based artist who discovered clay early during college. He apprenticed with Simon Levin for 2 years, nurturing his voice in wood firing and pottery. As a resident artist at Carbondale Clay Center he began his exploration in atmospheric fired sculptural forms. He’s now a studio artist in Pittstown, NJ.
My studio practice is the catalyst for my self healing. Through clay I am able to feel safe, introspective, and tethered. I apply the concept of form following function to a blend of anatomical and architectural design. I make forms that pull the viewer’s eye with a sense of familiarity, awe, and curiosity. The goal of my studio practice is to create a moment of pause and self reflection about our bodies as vessels that carry one through the world.
My interest in anatomy stems from an existential curiosity about my identity and its relationship to the world. One world will never let me forget about stereotypes attached to the color of my skin. The other nurtured self hatred through abuse and unachievable standards. There is a body gripping tension when my two worlds collide. The most invisible I’ve ever felt was in a home that punished me for not succeeding within a community that told me I didn’t belong. I find comfort in the anatomical ubiquity. Not dissimilar to the way a doctor dehumanizes a patient once they are on the operating table. Dissociating and hiding in the body flattens the human experience into the physicality of what we are and makes us all more or less the same. It lets me shove aside perceived differences and combats the internalized racism I had learned in childhood. It also lets me hide inside the physical pain of familial abuse but fails to resolve the nuance of generational trauma.
My work is ongoing and self exploratory. Making has helped me attach words to my feelings when reflecting on the past. The idea of many units making one functioning whole exists everywhere in the world. Physically, culturally, it scales infinitely larger and smaller than us, within every organism and the ecosystem it lives in. What am I made of and what am I a part of?
My work has become a personal dissection trying to answer questions from the past in an attempt to rearticulate it in a way that feels comfortable in the present and ready for the future.