About:
Wesley Barnes is a ceramic artist working out of Fort Collins, CO. While his ceramics classes were initially just a distraction from his pursuit of a creative writing degree, he eventually grew to love pottery as a means of answering some of the same questions he wrestled with in writing.
Statement:
In an information obsessed world, I am an information obsessed person.
What first attracted me to ceramics, beyond clay’s tactility, was the history of the medium. Ceramic objects, long broken and buried, contain an exact record of a potters hands on the clay at the moment it was created. The pitch of a handle, or the shape of a lip, tells you in what context a cup was used, what culture it came from. Each vessel becomes a catalog of specific movements and ideas, intrinsically locked inside the object.
A tree’s rings can be read to determine its age and the quality of its years: the story of a season of heavy rain when it was a sapling told by a thick ring of pale spring wood near its center.
Within our language, words contain vestigial elements linking their present use to their past lives. A columbarium, now commonly understood to be a place where urns are stored, was once a large scale birdhouse where pigeons and doves (members of the family Columbidae) were kept.
To seek clarity in today’s information age is to map an ever changing landscape. Navigating by a loose collection of acquired symbols organized into a constellation.
The practice of pottery lends itself to a similarly futile sort of optimism. At it’s center, a faith that the pursuit of sublime form, can lead me somewhere true.
CV:
EDUCATION
BFA • Southern Illinois University Edwardsville • 2023
EXPERIENCE
CERAMICS INSTRUCTOR
Edwardsville Art Center, Edwardsville, IL • March 2024 - Present
PRODUCTION POTTER
Mississippi Mud Pottery • May 2024 - Present
WAGNER POTTERY ASSOCIATION TREASURER
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, Edwardsville, IL • Fall Semester 2023
ASPN RESIDENT
Red Lodge Clay Center, Red Lodge, MT • August 2021
Summer resident and mentorship with Julia Galloway
STUDIO TECH • Southern Illinois University Edwardsville • August 2019 - January 2022
INSTALLATION ASSISTANT
University Of Wisconsin Oshkosh• August 2019
Edwardsville Art Center, Edwardsville IL • October 2021
Assisted Professor Joe Page in installing “Flow Chart”
EXHIBITIONS AND AWARDS
"DON'T BE CAREFUL WITH ME I'M NORMAL" GROUP SHOW
Signed and Numbered, Salt Lake City, UT • March 2025
LITTLE BROWN JUG SHOW
Arts Center of the Capital Region, Troy, NY • September -November 2024
NCECA STUDENT JURIED EXHIBITION 2024
Visual Arts Center of Richmond, Richmond, VA • March 2024
"SOUND AND VISION" SOLO EXHIBITION
Edwardsville Art Center, Edwardsville, IL • July - August 2023
“A RECORD OF THE TIME” BFA SENIOR EXHIBITION
SIUe Art Gallery• December 2022
RED LODGE FEATURED ARTIST
Red Lodge Clay Center, Red Lodge MT • May 2021
SMALL FAVORS 2020
The Clay Studio, Philadelphia, PA • March – August 2020
NCECA STUDENT JURIED EXHIBITION 2023
DAAP Galleries, Cincinatti, OH • March 2023
SIUE STUDENT JURIED EXHIBITION
Southern Illinois Universtity Edwardsville
- Best in Show 2022
- Bucher-Lowenstein Award 2021
- WPA Award 2020
JEFFREY KLECKNER MEMORIAL SCHOLARSHIP IN POTTERY
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville • January 2021