About James MArshall
Renowned ceramicist James Marshall has exhibited artwork in dozens of regional and national exhibitions in galleries and museums in Los Angeles, Santa Fe, Boston, Pittsburgh, and Rochester, to name a few. His work also appears in the collections of Kansas City’s Nerman Museum and the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art. Various publications, such as Santa Fean magazine, THE magazine, Fluxus magazine, and Journal North have published pieces about Marshall’s work.
James Marshall’s bold, elegant ceramic forms immediately draw attention with their energetic, saturated colors and monumental presence. The pieces engage the viewer on both a visual and spiritual level, radiating energy as if contemporary sacred monoliths. Marshall explores the austere power and beauty of simple geometry as he seeks to create work from a place where “color, energy, light and form merge into one.” Intense color defines each form’s physicality as richly pigmented glazes reflect light to fuse the interior energy of the object with the exterior energy of the space. This effect produces an organic fluidity that speaks to the artist’s interest in transition and the ephemeral nature of creation. In describing his process, Marshall comments: “As I draw those shapes, and play with them, and work with them, and invite them to transform, they shift into something almost recognizable, yet not quite; geometry relaxes, becomes fluid, organic, sensuous, and the object-to-be emerges.”
Born near Pittsburgh, James Marshall now lives and works in Santa Fe where he is the lead instructor in ceramics at Santa Fe Community College. He received his MFA from the University of Michigan School of Art after completing an undergraduate degree in Pre-Law at Pennsylvania’s Grove City College. He has also studied ceramics at the University of Fredonia in New York State, as well as in Totonicapan, Guatemala. From 1993 to 2000, Marshall owned and operated James Marshall Design Studios, where he produced custom-made objets d’art and furniture in wood, steel, and brass.