Chris Corson

About the Artist

EXHIBITIONS   2017 Speak to Me, Studio Gallery, Washington, DC 9th Annual NUDE, Manifest Gallery, Cincinnati, OH Art of Engagement, Touchstone Gallery, Washington, DC Rituals (member show), Studio Gallery, Washington, DC Emulsion 2017, East City Art, Washington, DC Recent Wood-Fired Figures, Studio Gallery, Washington, DC   2016   Love (member show), Studio Gallery, Washington, DC Cartes Blanches, Washington Sculptors Group at the Delaplaine Center, Frederick, MD Flesh + Bone II, Hillyer Art Space, Washington, DC Off The Wall, Maryland Federation of Art, Annapolis, MD   2015   Art in Clay III: Origins, Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition, Brooklyn, NY Wide Open 6, Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition, Brooklyn, NY 35th Anniversary Exhibition, Baltimore Clay Works, Baltimore, MD   2014   Art in Clay II, Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition, Brooklyn, NY (awarded 3rd place monetary   prize) Looking at Ourselves, A Survey of Contemporary Figurative Sculpture, Baltimore Clay Works, Baltimore, MD       Williams College, Williamstown, MA AB cum laude with Highest Honors in the History of Art, 1974   Art League, Alexandria, VA Handbuilt Ceramics — Classes and open sessions — 2008 to 2015 Drawing, Life Drawing, Watercolor — mid-1990s   Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, Gatlinburg, TN Figurative Association Symposia — 2010 and 2014 Figurative sculpture workshop — 2015   Anderson Ranch, Snowmass, CO Handbuilt vessel workshop — 2012   CRITICISM     Mark Jenkins in the Washington Post, September 10, 2017: Style Section, "In the Galleries" — review of my show “Speak to Me” at Studio Gallery, Washington, DC: "Offering an inadvertent contrast to Sarna Marcus's eggy paintings [discussed earlier in the column], Chris Corson crafts ceramic nudes, all of them clearly male and all but one headless.  There's even a figure that peels open his skin and muscle, splitting his chest like one of Marcus's fleshy sacs. "Corson says he focuses on the torso because it 'shows the essence of who we are.'  Yet the local artist also is intrigued by the surfaces, varied in texture and hue because he employs three firing methods.  Most of the skins glimmer with sooty, metallic blacks.  One is white, the better to serve as at the billboard for a few choice words from Emma Lazarus's 'The New Colossus.' "The selection includes six large photographs of Corson's work by Stuart Diekmeyer.  Each is different, yet all show the same sculpture, which Corson fired repeatedly to yield different patinas.  Without altering the form, the sculptor and his collaborator write a tale of metamorphosis.”   Jonathan Kamholz in AEQAI, September 23, 2017: “The Place of the Nude” — review of 9th Annual NUDE: Exploring the Uncovered Human Form at Manifest Gallery, Cincinatti, OH: “It is easier to see what the other sculpture here, Chris Corson’s ‘Self-Confidence’ (2015), is doing in this company. A raku-fired torso, there is something forensic about the piece, which is missing arms, legs, and—of course—head. It ends up being both monumental and mysterious. Like a number of works in the show, it seems allusive to earlier works—it has the prominent, muscular belly of Rodin’s naked, striding Balzac. Interestingly, even with all of the most telling parts missing, it suggests an abbreviated version of a complex self that both can’t be avoided and doesn’t want to be seen.”   John Shipman, Executive Director of The Delaware Contemporary, in the catalog for “Cartes Blanches,” Washington Sculptors Group, 2016: “I am especially drawn to the works of artist Christopher Corson.  In ‘Fire’ and ‘Self-Confidence’, I celebrate with Mr. Corson these aged vessels, tested and pushed forward by the heat of transformational experiences, or frozen and crazed by what we hold under our skins, which always bubbles to the surface.  The older we get, the more we understand these works, yes?”     Lily Wei, ArtNews contribution editor and independent critic, awarded “Best in Show Bronze” monetary award to my piece Brave New World in “Art in Clay II: Figuratively Speaking”, Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition, 2014.   REPRESENTATION       Studio Gallery, Washington, DC     PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS       Washington Sculptors Group (WSG)     Maryland Federation of Art (MFA)     National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA)     James Renwick Alliance (JRA)  

Artist's Statement

For me, sculpting the human form is exploring the human condition. Inner emotions are always reflected in the body.  Most honest is the torso, where the essence of who we are gets manifested in the physical core — and shown through contour and gesture. To put such oneness of form and emotion into my clay, I work deeply from my own inner senses of body and feeling.  This allows me to tap sources truer than my intellectual mind, and the resulting pieces often surprise me with more honesty and nuance than my initial feeling.  What has come forth are themes of growth and liberation. My forms need equally expressive surfaces.  Over the years, I have developed raku, pit and wood firing methods to give my pieces evocative ceramic skins.  By the time a piece has been formed and fired, it has experienced its own life transformation and can express mine.  And when other people find a part of themselves in my work, I believe I have reached into the universal.