About Bryan Hopkins

• LOCATED: Buffalo, NY
• MATERIALS: White and Black Porcelains
• SURFACE: Gold luster, Glaze
• PROCESS: Slip cast using a non-keyed modular mold system. Fired to Cone11 in reduction in a gas kiln.

I am interested in ideas of structure, architecture, containment, and permanence. My work takes those interests and applies them to porcelain vessels, adding to the continuum of expressive ceramic containers. Porcelain is my drug of choice. It satisfies and frustrates and I am fully addicted.

Porcelain is associated with the upper class, and is seen as fragile and pure. My use of industrial textures questions those assumptions: the textures and designs bring my working class roots to porcelain vessels. I thoroughly enjoy the effects of luster- it’s shiny and hints at value and is a cultural signifier of worth. My urban environment, artists Gordon Matta Clark and DeChirico and Serra, Brutalist architecture, backyard forts, model cars, 19th century European porcelain, Song Dynasty porcelain, and Modernism all inform and affect the work.