MIKE STUMBRAS

Stumbras was born in Chicago, Illinois. He received a BFA in studio art and a BS in biology in from St Olaf College in 2007. He has completed residencies across the country. Stumbras received an MFA in Ceramics from Louisiana State University in 2017. Stumbras has exhibited work nationally and internationally. He is currently an Assistant Professor at Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville, Illinois.

"My work explores the beauty and horror of existential uncertainty. The work addresses design elements of 18th and 19th-century European production ceramics, but it is created with the immediacy and individuality of wheel-throwing and hand-building processes. My work seeks to provoke thoughts about the enduring impact of material culture on societal, artistic, and craft-oriented structures. The historical work that I emulate bears the imprint of class distinctions and presents a criterion for beauty that seems empty in regard to contemporary considerations about the human condition. I embrace the errors of the hand and artifacts of the intense heat from firing to highlight the absurd and the futile. I place an emphasis on making ceremonial vessels that speak to the passage of time and the propensity for ceramic vessels to be heirloom objects. The work seems to suggest that it bears witness to the ebb and flow of civilizations, of ideas, and of people. It is both a liberating comfort and a savage terror that the dead do not return, except in stories and dreams."