About Me
Bio
Matthew Wilhelm is a current Masters of Fine Arts Candidate and Associate Instructor of Record in Ceramics at the University of Indiana Bloomington. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Ceramics with a secondary emphasis in Art History from the University of Wisconsin River Falls. After undergraduate Wilhelm taught a small school in North Carolina for two years were he focused on caring for students as whole. He then moved to northern California and became a resident at Cobb Mountain Arts and Ecology Project for seven months where he fired at least one wood kiln a month with other residents and assisted in hosting workshops. His current work is conceptually rooted in the formal aesthetics of the pot and is based in the historical context of the pot. He has exhibited nationally, been a featured artist at the Northern Clay Center and exhibited with NCECA on multiple occasions.
artist statement
artist statement
I consider myself a formalist artist. The foundations of my ideas are based in the elements and principles of art and design. Function is rooted in the aesthetics of form, line, volume, material, texture and color. It is about the truth of the pot and its condition as a vessel's implicit contrivance to hold. The abstraction of the vessel is to assign meaning to that condition of containment, altering from the purpose of holding matter to crafting ideas held by the pot. They are self referential; in my belief to be a pot is to refer to the history of pots. Vessels made to have visual impact, perceived as elegance set in space. Decisively positioned to connect the past and present. Simple in their complexities and loud in their subtleties. They ask me more questions than I have answers and challenge my notions of looking. Pots repeat, in language and ideas, cyclically like they are formed, readdressing ideas from history anew. These are my attempts with my pots, jockeying for space amongst the larger historical cannon prioritising aesthetics and context as concept.
