Jason Green received his MFA in Ceramics from Alfred University in 1998. He returned to Alfred in 2009 to live and work after teaching Ceramics and Sculpture at Walnut Hill School for the Arts for 11 years. Green currently teaches Tile, Digital Fabrication and Make:Lab Workshop in the Division of Ceramics and Freshman Foundation. He has taught mold making and tile making workshops nationally. Most recently, he taught a workshop at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts titled Form and Surface: Strategies, Tools and New Technologies. Green is interested in exploring the intersections and opportunities that can be found between traditional methods of making and digital design and fabrication technologies. Recently, his work has been published in: Electric Kiln Ceramics, Glaze: The Ultimate Ceramic Artists Guide to Glaze and Color, Tile Envy and Ceramics Monthly. For the last two years he has been a collaborator and participant in the Architectural Ceramics Assemblies Workshop. At ACAW artists, architects and façade engineers research, develop and explore the use of terra cotta in high-performance façade design.
My current work evolved from my experience as a builder, renovator and maker of temporary architectural installations that were lined with decorative unfired clay surfaces. I am interested in remnants, the evidence of what once was and the fluctuating relationships between physical space, the body, time and memory. Forms, patterns and surfaces question, investigate and aim to reveal ideas dealing with perception, decoration, decay, construction and reconstruction. Investigation of art, architecture and ceramics have continued to expand while traveling and living internationally. Discovery of themes, ideas and motifs that are shared between different cultures and different time periods act as catalysts for process and further inquiry.
The artwork alludes to the past and calls attention to the fluxing character of immediacy, presence and perception. Digital tools I use to design forms and surfaces are combined with processes that are adapted from traditional methods of hand-making. Many forms I make are created by hand-pressing clay into molds made from plaster and wood while others use molds derived from both studio and industrial production.
The series titled “Persistence of Illusion” and “Recovered Geometries” investigate the ambiguity of visual perception and reveal our mutable understanding of space and objectness. Much of my work employs pattern that is found during research or encountered in situ.
Often, my work stands as a suggestive fragment that aims to remind viewers of more intimate personal and architectural spaces. Decorative patterns lifted from history recall how layers build up over time, each having given a contribution to the memory and story of the space. The overlapping of patterned and transparent layers on my work both hides and reveals form while also suggesting the effects of environment, time and erosion on historic surfaces. My work and process embrace the polarities of interior and exterior, fluid and static, fragment and whole, new and old. These polarities are amplified by a vocabulary of form, color, texture and pattern that is familiar - but in a new combination. The work prompts attention to our own sense of perception and to the immediate and extended environment while cultivating relationships between geologic and personal measurements of time.