Lobby Case
December 12, 2025 – February 21, 2026
Artist talk: 5:30 PM, Thursday, February 12th, 2026
If there were an equivalent to the genre of industrial music in the ceramics world, it would be populated by Jeff Campana’s Assemblage and Shadow Vessels. This body of work, which began in 2018, explores what becomes possible in ceramics when we move beyond the limits of the human hand. Each object is a unique output of a modular library of mold parts created with the precision of computer design and CNC milling. Pieced together à la Frankenstein, these architectural forms proudly display their seams as evidence of process-driven construction. A testament to creative transformation, the vessels suggest a multitude of possible configurations.
Each round of castings provides new information about the modular system, informing its future direction. That feedback is used to generate additional modules. As Campana works through these cycles, the vessel forms become artifacts of moments of exploration.
Conveying monumentality on a modest scale, these works echo grand structures like the Empire State Building as well as imagined ones from science fiction films such as Metropolis and Star Wars. Their seductive surfaces—whether soda-fired or diamond-polished to a soft sheen—offer a velvety counterpoint to their weighty forms. Campana’s embrace of new technologies, combined with his singular vision, results in ceramic compositions that challenge traditional notions of the material and propel it in new directions.
Campana is a ceramics artist, designer, and Associate Professor of Art at Kennesaw State University. He holds an MFA in Ceramics from Indiana University Bloomington and a BFA in Art with a concentration in Ceramics from the University of Wisconsin–Whitewater. Campana has been an Artist in Residence at the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts, Red Lodge Clay Center, Studio 740 in Helena, Montana, and The Clay Corner in Seattle. He has taught at Indiana University Southeast, the University of Louisville, and Bennington College in Vermont. His work has been exhibited and published nationally across several ongoing bodies of work. His research focuses on glaze formulation and process innovation, and his artworks have been featured in numerous books and magazines.