Artist-in-Residence Blurs Boundary Between Craft and Art

The 2023 Class of 1957 Artist-in-Residence Kevin Snipes, whose primary medium is ceramics and drawing, blurs the boundary between craft and art. He combines techniques of narrative figure drawing, text, and hand-formed porcelain constructions to create objects that can be seen as multi-layered objects of storytelling. As our Artist-in-Residence, he is visiting SCH this week to speak with students about his craft and career, as well as lead classes across divisions. His visit will culminate with a lunch during Alumni Weekend with the Class of 1957. 

Snipes, an American artist who was born in Philadelphia and raised in Cleveland, OH, has garnered a number of awards and artist residencies including fellowships at The Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences in Rabun Gap, GA; The American Museum of Ceramic Art, Pomona, CA; Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts in New Castle, ME; A.I.R. in Vallauris, France, and C.R.E.T.A., Rome. He also received a Taunt Fellowship from the Archie Bray Foundation in Montana in 2008 and a McKnight Residency award from Northern Clay Center in Minneapolis, MN, in 2011. In 2014, he was the inaugural Artist in Residence at the Art Students League of Denver in 2021. Other awards include a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant, an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council in Columbus, and a Marie P. Cowen Fellowship in ceramics from Worcester Center for Crafts in MA. He has exhibited both nationally and internationally and has work included in numerous collections, including the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY, Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, Cedar Rapids, IA, and Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA.

Snipes received a BFA in ceramics and drawing from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 1994 (see a video of him by the school here) and concluded graduate studies at the University of Florida in 2003, though much of his art education came about outside of traditional degree programs.

He has joined the artist residency program at Clay Studio in Philadelphia, where he is developing a “rooted sense of self through community as well as studio practice.”

See our divisional photos from Snipe's visit this week...