COREY PEMBERTON •   LOS ANGELES, CA

Corey (American b. Reston, VA 1990) received his BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2012. He has completed residencies at The Pittsburgh Glass Center (PA), Bruket (Bodø, NO), Alfred University (NY), as well as a Core Fellowship at the Penland School of Crafts (NC). He has exhibited work at the Robert and Frances Fullerton Museum of Art (CA), The Contemporary Museum of Art in Raleigh (NC), and has work in the permanent collections of The Museum of Art and Design (NY), The Boston Museum of Fine Art (MA), and The Chrysler Museum of Art (VA). 

Pemberton currently resides in Los Angeles, California where he splits his time between the nonprofit arts organization Crafting the Future, painting, and his glass practice. He strives to bring together people of all backgrounds and identities, breaking down stereotypes and building bridges; not only through his work with Crafting The Future but with his personal artistic practice as well. 

“The ‘other’ is not often granted time and space to just be. To just be ordinary. To just be in a state of relaxation. To just be flying below the radar. I aim to capture such moments while simultaneously celebrating friends and family whose bodies fall outside the traditional confines of the ordinary. Black, queer, female, and nonbinary sitters enjoy rest in seemingly mundane scenes created with house paint, photo collage, and found materials on canvas and panel. I often zoom out from the subject or in to their belongings to consider the spaces we inhabit and the objects we surround ourselves with. Manufactured or handmade, cherished or discarded, each object is charged with content by the people who have lived with and/or created them. In this particular series, the face jug connects me as a maker and descendent of enslaved African Americans to all the unsung crafts people who came before me. The decision to create a surface with house paint rather than the more common Italian patterning techniques adopted my American studio glass artists speaks to a deliberate unlearning of technique. Pattern serves as an anchor as I oscillate between media, calling into question the importance of objects and the communities that covet them through material translation.”

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Opening Reception: July 7th (5-7pm)

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