Carey Nathanson

2024 Bray Fellow, 2025 Lilian Fellow
Artist Website

Carey Nathanson’s work is primarily hand-built cups, platters, bottles and other vessels made with the intention of being fired in the wood kiln. The goal is to fire 5 to 7 days to saturate the work with fly ash, encourage local reduction effects by building large ember beds and create dramatic surfaces with big color palettes. With each wood firing, the surfaces of the pieces record a snapshot in time of unique conditions and are affected by the place, materials and individual collaborators within that universe.

Nathanson started working with clay during his high school years in his home town of Wilmington, North Carolina. In 2018 and 2019 he studied wood firing as a studio assistant under John Dix in Kobe, Japan and Nick Schwartz in Comptche, California. Since his time as an assistant, he has completed residencies at the American Museum of Ceramic Art, the Mendocino Art Center, STARworks, Red Lodge Clay Center, Cider Creek Collective and Sawtooth School for Visual Art. He is currently a long-term resident artist at the Archie Bray Foundation.