CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 8/26/2015

Crafted: Objects in Flux

South African ceramicist Jonathan Keep has explored the expressive possibilities of pottery since the 1970s. Over the past decade, he has broadened his scope to encompass 3D printing, according to MFA Boston curator of Contemporary Decorative Arts, Emily Zilber. "Keep cites 3-D printing as a 'fourth way' for ceramic artists—on top of three previous dominant ways of making in clay (hand building, throwing and molding)—thus allowing the artist to use techniques such as cloning, distortion and modification to 'generate forms not typically visualized or created by ceramic techniques.' Keep builds forms in a virtual space using Java coding (which he taught to himself) and manipulates them using the open-source program Blender." These glazed 3D-printed porcelain vessels are titled "Sound Surface: Benjamin Britten Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes" (2012-2014).