Visiting Artist Feature: Andréa Keys Connell
This month’s Meet the Maker feature is a look into the life of this month’s Visiting Artist, Andréa Keys Connell.
Sign up for Andréa’s workshop this weekend, May 9th & 10th.
“At the heart of Andréa Keys Connell’s work is a search—an effort to understand how the things we make can hold us, mark time, and carry memory. Her ceramic sculptures, often emotionally charged and materially rich, explore what survives in us and through us—especially in the aftermath of rupture. These are not portraits in the traditional sense, but vessels of feeling. Connell’s figures do not represent specific people so much as they evoke presence: fleeting, weighty, and difficult to name.” - A Map of Care
Learn more about Andréa below and sign up for the artist talk! Andréa’s Workshop has one spot available.
HT: A brief bio about you! (Can be a couple of sentences about yourself, your work and where you’re from)
AC: Andréa Keys Connell (b. 1980) is a Professor of Ceramics in the Department of Art at Appalachian State University. Her work has been widely recognized and featured in national and international publications including Colossal and The New York Times. She has exhibited internationally in galleries and museums, from the Jane Hartsook Gallery in New York City to the Gaya Culture and Art Center in Goryeong, Korea. Since 2009, she has presented more than 20 solo exhibitions and is represented by Blue Spiral 1 in Asheville, NC, Visions West in Montana, and J. Mackey Gallery in the East Hamptons.
In addition to her studio practice, Andréa is deeply engaged in public art commissions and collaborative projects. Most recently, her collaboration with Susan Alexandra in New York City was featured in Wirecutter. Andréa loves to teach and has led figure-sculpting workshops at institutions such as Penland, Haystack, Arrowmont, Centre d’arts Rozynski, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and has been invited to demonstrate at major conferences including NCECA, the Women Working in Clay Symposium, and The Bascom’s Annual Clay Symposium.
Andréa really loves to make things 🙂
HT: Tell us about your work!
AC: My work revolves around themes of motherhood and care.
HT: What originally drew you to working with clay?
AC: The community and the challenge of the material. I was not naturally good at working with the material, but it kept me coming back. I loved the physicality of it- still do!
“Care is a central ethic in Connell’s work—not as sentimentality, but as a radical act of attention and endurance. Her figures are born not only of sculptural labor, but of lived experience. She has spoken openly about the challenges of making work as a mother, as an academic, and as someone deeply attuned to the weight of what is inherited. Her sculptures are not declarations but offerings— objects that hold, rather than explain. They propose that care, like pattern, can be repeated without ever being identical. The gestures we make—toward others, toward the past, toward the materials in our hands—carry meaning even when words fail.” - A Map of Care
HT: You have a special connection to Hand / Thrown, can you talk about it?
AC: Emily Wicks (Co-Owner of Hand / Thrown) was one of my students when I taught at VCUarts! She also assisted me on a few major projects, and Nannied my new baby. I love her to pieces.
Boreas 2015, One of the projects where Emily Wicks was a Studio Assistant.
HT: What type of clay do you like to work with, why?
AC: I primarily use my own recipe. It’s a very heavily grogged clay body- 50% sand and grog! I love how gritty and strong it is.
HT: Who are some artists you admire, why?
AC: I saw an exhibition of Madeline Donahue’s work a few years ago, at Hesse Flatow Gallery, NYC. Her work inspired me deeply. The way she incorporates the tender, humorous, and absurd themes of motherhood so apologetically in her work inspired me at a pivotal moment in my practice.
HT: Do you have a favorite step within your process?
AC: That’s a tough one. I love when I am about midway into a piece, and I realize it’s doing something I don’t expect, and that flow state kicks in. I also really love surfacing my pieces. I use primarily underglazes. My foundation is in painting, and I love painting the surfaces, exploring pattern and color.
HT: Describe your favorite piece of pottery (currently).
AC: I don’t know if I have a singular answer to this- so many!! If I had to choose one, it would be a plate that my partner, Matt, commissioned Molly Anne Bishop (another former student) to make for me when we moved to Boone, NC. It has an illustration of our family on it and it’s just such a precious object to me.
HT: What’s your sign?
AC: Scorpio
HT: Cats? Dogs? Or other!
AC: 1 dog, Sammy. 2 kitties, Fuzz (aka Fuzz Aldrin) and Violet. They are the newest additions to our family. Matt got them for us for Christmas, and they are showing up in a lot of my work. (Sorry Sammy)
HT: Tell us about your workshop - who should sign up?
AC: Anyone can sign up! We are going to make heads on the first day, and the next day we will underglaze them. Together we will make colorful heads! And it will be so much fun.
