For the installation Speculative Landscapes, Chad Curtis incorporated his ceramic work with found objects, live plants and a digitally designed support system of shelving. Live moss encased in terrariums, referencing the Industrial Revolution when these miniature garden landscapes became popular, alluded to Curtis’ interest in the shift in the relationship between humankind and nature that occurred so rapidly in the 19th century. This was combined with multiple clay evergreen trees signifying the artificiality of the ideal landscape, both in the past as well as today. As Curtis stated about the installation “[t]hese miniature landscapes, coupled with iconic trees made of raw clay, are situated on a complex system of shelving (both digitally designed and milled) that creates multiple, dislocated horizon lines, which becomes a literal intersection of design, landscape, and technology. Not unlike the Industrial Revolution, the Digital Revolution has further distanced the human relationship to the natural world, ushering in an era of mediated experiences removed from the world of tactility and the physical nature of the body.”

 

Curtis received an MFA from New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, Alfred, NY. He has taught at Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA, and Pomona College, Claremont, CA. His most recent solo exhibitions have included Speculative Landscape, Recitation Gallery University of Delaware, Newark, DE (2010); Digital in Nature, Urban Institute for Contemporary Art Grand Rapids, MI (Juried National Exhibition, 2010); Drawing Machine, InLiquid Philadelphia, PA (2010); Drawing Machine, Cross Mackenzie Gallery Washington, DC, (2009); digital/analog/analogues, Saint Joseph’s University Gallery Philadelphia, PA (2008); Synthetic, Sloan Fine Arts Gallery Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania, Lock Haven, PA (Juried National Exhibition, 2008); and Portabilities, Garth Clark Project Space Long Island City, NY (2002). In 2011, he received a residency at Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts Helena, MT