Mathew McConnell (b. 1979, Johnstown, PA) holds an MFA from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and a BFA from Valdosta State University in Georgia. He has held numerous solo exhibitions and his works have been included in group exhibitions in China, Australia, New Zealand, and in many venues across the United States. In 2012, Mathew was granted an “Emerging Artist” award from the National Council on Education in Ceramic Art. He has also been a resident at the Archie Bray Foundation, Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts, and was Artist in Residence and Guest Lecturer of Contemporary Craft at Unitec in Auckland, New Zealand. His work was recently the subject of a profile in the publication Ceramics: Art and Perception. He is currently serving as an Assistant Professor at the University of Arkansas, where he oversees the ceramics area.
My current investigations are based on the works of other visual artists. Often using a singular form or image as a starting point, I recreate the work with alterations to suit my own compositional needs. The resulting forms vary between what could be mistaken as a facsimile of another artist’s work and an artwork with a source seemingly outside any individual reference.
In the construction of these replicant objects, I sometimes find myself trying to pinpoint the exact moment at which the work becomes more mine than theirs. Sometimes this moment occurs in the mere selection of a form, and at other times it does not occur at all. By careful construction of these simulated, manipulated, exalted, and subverted forms, I find, at the best of times, a means of reconciling the difference between what is an art of someone else’s and what is an art of my own.