Jason Dunn was born in 1978 and grew up in the mountains above Santa Cruz, CA.  After studying ceramics at San Francisco State University he graduated in 2003 along with his future wife, Hue Yang. Jason and Hue lived in Taiwan for a year before moving back to the Bay Area in 2006.  Jason currently teaches ceramics and sculpture at the College of Marin in Kentfield, CA, and ceramics at the ASUC Art Studio on the UC Berkeley campus.

The sculpture I create does not directly reference recognizable objects, yet I hope to envoke some sense of familiarity within the viewer - even if they can’t specify why. I hope to convey a sense of shared experience through the metaphoric attributes of sculptural form. The formal qualities of material, shape and surface are critical to the content of my work, as are the cultural implications of making art objects in today’s world.

Incorporating the marks of the making process is a tactic I often use. Cuts, tears and combing patterns create a rhythm on the surfaces of my vessels and sculpture that directly relate to their overall form. Neatly applied areas of color sometimes contrast with the textural surfaces below and next to them. Often, my work is fired for 8-10 days in a wood-fired kiln which creates a richly layered surface and an interplay with the textured and colored areas of the forms. Wood-firing provides a surface that incorporates the process by which it was created like no other. Beyond formal concerns, I choose this firiring method because it forces me to consider how such a laborious and historically important process can be adapted to contemporary life.

By also working with materials such as wood, plaster, cement, bronze and found objects, I am confronted with similar investigations into how form, material, and objects are seen in a world which, on the surface at least, appears to be becoming more and more virtual. The mystery which can sometimes be evoked from actual objects in physical space is my concern, not because it exists in opposition to our digitized world, but because it will always co-exist with it.

Investigating vessels as sculpture has been undertaken by cultures around the world for millennia. I hope to continue this practice in a contemporary context. I want my work to exist as a record of human interaction with natural materials and culturally developed processes. I think vessels and sculture that references “the void” are significant not only in functional and cultural terms, but also for their metaphoric value.  I return to closed forms and bottle shapes time and again because of the implied mystery created by contained interior space. I believe vessels and sculpture symbolize humans’ complex relationship with both nature and culture and exist as reminders of what everything around us contains.