Artist Statement

“I’ve always needed to work building a momentum, day after day, creating an atmosphere in the studio that allows the unexpected to happen, paying attention to the very obvious things before me. Sometimes, seemingly disparate things, when they’re joined, can be utterly convincing.

There is a hierarchy in ceramics, embodied in the history and inherent in the process: unfired vs. fired clay, unglazed vs. glazed ware. There is an order, structure, organization dictated by process. Part of my interest has been to tinker with this hierarchy and to question the process in order to represent more about the material and to be able to exploit its strengths as an expressive medium.

I break almost as much ceramics as I make. By being so focused on an idea I overlook possibilities. Much of the work is made with already fired parts broken, reassembled, re-glazed and re-fired with the addition of wet clay elements. I work the a hammer and chisel, and I think of the fired pieces as being as fluid and malleable as wet clay. A broken shard can be a more potent idea of the object than the object itself and a reminder of how elusive the chase is to find and identify the elements that excite. Any one piece out of context may reveal the work in a new way.

The nature of clay changes so profoundly in the course of working with it, from soft broft muck to a hard and perhaps shiny and usable thing – a real thing in the real world. I want things I make, even though invented, to be as real and believable as any other familiar object in the everyday.

Biography

Annabeth Rosen attended two of the most prestigious American schools for training in the fine arts, receiving her BFA from Alfred University and her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Fine Art. After graduate school, Rosen held short term teaching positions at major northeast art institutions and colleges, Rhode Island School of Art and Design, University of the Arts in Philadelphia and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, while participating in residencies at the Bemis Project in Omaha, Watershed Center in Maine, John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Wisconsin and the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia. From 1993 to 1997 Rosen taught at Bennington College, Vermont. In 1997, Rosen moved to California to teach at UC Davis, where she holds the Robert Arneson Endowed Chair. Rosen has received multiple grants and awards, including six UC Davis Research Grants, a Pew Fellowship and two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships. Rosen has exhibited extensively in solo and group shows in the United States and abroad. Her work is held both private and public collections, here and abroad.