Jeremy Brooks was born and raised in a suburb of Detroit, MI. He has been working with clay and ceramic materials for over ten years receiving his BFA from Grand Valley State University in 2001 and his MFA from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 2007. Upon completion of his MFA, Jeremy was juried into the Resident Artist Program here at The Clay Studio. Here he worked full time as an artist and educator. He left The Clay Studio in the fall of 2008 to return to academia. He currently holds a position as an Assistant Professor of Art and Design at Michigan State Univeristy. His work and practice as a Studio Artist is too actively and passionately pursued.
Regarding his studio practice and work Jeremy states, "seriousness and humor are inextricably and cleverly connected. Material and conceptual process are ripe opportunities to question what does or does not matter, how perception forms experience, where the poetic emerges from the quotidian, and ultimately, what makes anything meaningful anyways. The work touches lightly but definitely. Impeccable, meticulous and adventurous workmanship and smart, considerate, compassionate questioning of the human condition, his small objects / moments have large intention and impact."
The stories people tell are entangled; weaving between what is immediately available as a story and what their imaginations are reaching toward. Stories inadvertently become pretext for the relater to conjure images of dissolution and fluidity. My aim is to dismantle the border between narrative arrangements, to establish new connections.
My solo exhibition at The Clay Studio, RE: Work (malaprops, homophones, tangents, and turquoise), will testify to a shifted use of form and narrative, wrought by a search for tension between the iconographic source and the abstract form.
Jeremy Brooks
