History

Artist Statement
I have been working with clay for the past 14 years. Of all the clay bodies out there I love the purity of porcelain as it gives a clean background for the colors that I glaze. Porcelain has its own unique traits that are hard to learn, but are so rewarding when mastered.  
Most of my work is intended to be useful; this is art that is meant to be touched, used, and admired.  I love the sea and perhaps due to early exposure, I generally feel that I am still that eight year old boy playing on the beach, looking in tide pools and irritating the sea life into moving.  My work has been compared to combining functional design with a child's aesthetic interpretation of glazed aquatic nightmares.  They are mostly wheel thrown bowls with handmade sea life augmentation with an occasional representational piece. In short a compromise between functional contemporary ceramicists and a vivid imagination. Color, it is not just what you see but how you feel when you look at that color.  Due to my mother's propensity towards dressing in strange outfits, I have developed an aversion to anything pastel or overly flowery. I gravitate towards solid ceramic color classics or colors reminiscent of blood or black and blue. However, from time to time, I do fall into colorful territory with glaze-glaze combinations that have worked for me in the past.


History

Keith Kostuchowski (Kost) is a ceramic artist currently living and working in Calgary, Alberta.  Keith was trained in ceramics at the University of Utah, where he obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1993.  During his training, Keith was fascinated with the materials, methods and tools used by the Ch'ing and Ming Dynasty potters.  This interest culminated in a collaborative exhibition with the Utah Fine Arts Museum in which Keith created a series of pieces that both illustrated the process by which these masters created their works and demonstrated his ability to build on these processes in his own creations. 
 
With this classical training in place, Keith began to integrate wheel thrown works with sculpture.  Since the earliest times, humans have attempted to shape the world to suit their needs.  Pottery is an excellent example of this.  Works created on the wheel have a symmetry that is both useful and aesthetically pleasing.  Nature is rarely as accommodating.  In his recent work, Keith has integrated the symmetry of the wheel with the eclectic variety found in the natural world.  The creature series is the most recent reflection of this fusion.  Keith still enjoys creating the classic forms reflective of his early career, but now experiments with color blending and texture. 
 
In K Squared Studio you will find a spectrum of ceramic works, from the classic to the fantastic.  Keep checking the space, you never know what will spark Keith’s next creations.