Tyler Lotz

Summer Resident Artist, 2017
Hometown: Bloomington, Illinois

Using both casting and hand forming techniques, Tyler Lotz makes ceramic sculptures that are influenced by both natural and mediated landscapes. His sculptures are about abstraction and a longing for wilderness and can elicit a single place and time, or an amalgam of time, experiences and desires. He uses the attributes of ceramic glaze—including color, gloss and opacity—in combination with a variety of application techniques to alter the viewer’s perception of the otherwise angular and organic ceramic forms. The sculptures have the sensibility of synthetic, fabricated and built objects and environments.

Tyler earned an MFA in ceramic art from Alfred University in New York, in 2000, and his BFA in ceramic art from Penn State University in Pennsylvania, in 1998. He is currently a professor of ceramics at Illinois State University and has completed residencies at Red Lodge Clay Center in Montana, The Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts in Maine, the Archie Bray Foundation and the International Ceramics Symposium in Poland. He returns to the Bray this year as a 2017 Windgate Scholar. 

To view more work by tyler visit his website at tylerlotz.com.