Tony Marsh
BIOGRAPHY
Tony Marsh earned his BFA in Ceramic Art at California State University Long Beach in 1978. After graduating, he spent 3 years in Mashiko, Japan at the workshop of Living National Treasure, Tatsuzo Shimaoka. He completed his MFA at Alfred University in 1988.
Marsh has taught, lectured and exhibited extensively throughout the US, Asia and Europe. He currently teaches in the Ceramic Arts Program at California State University Long Beach where he was the Program Chair for over 20 years. He is also the first Director of the Center for Contemporary Ceramics at CSULB.
In 2018 Marsh was awarded a United States Artist Fellowship. His work is included in many private and permanent collections around the world such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Mad Museum of Art in NY, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Everson Museum, Syracuse, Oakland Museum of Art, Gardiner Museum of Art, Toronto, Museum of Fine Arts Houston.
artist statement
The ceramic vessel has always been my primary vehicle of artistic expression. I am fascinated by its deep and unparalleled history and position between nature and culture. While the vessels that I make are not utilitarian nor do they explicitly refer to a historical pottery type or style, I believe that I use them as a device to address the essential. On a simple level they do attempt to pay homage to what pottery from around the world has always been required to do, hold, preserve, offer, commemorate and beautify.
Marriage, fertility, creation, death and the difference between the numinous and pure materiality are the essential primary subjects related to human experience that occur and reoccur in my work.
Much of the work is dichotomous in nature; being both sensual and cerebral, organic & geometric, solid & weightless, masculine & feminine.
In the end, whether it might be a vase on a table, an empty coin bank, the bowl on the night stand, a burial urn or a ballot box, what could be more natural than to put something.....meaning....... in a vessel?
PAST EXHIBITS
