User:Carleyholzem/sandbox

Ani Kasten is a full time potter and sculptor who creates utilitarian work. She was raised in Housatonic, Massachusetts but is now living in Shafer, Minnesota.

She got her B.A. from the university of Michigan, and had an apprenticeship with British ceramicist Rupert Spira in the year 2000. She then traveled to Nepal for four years to help develop a stoneware ceramic production facility for artisan potters local to Thimi Nepal. While she was in Nepal she was learning from master potter Santa Kuman Prajapati.

Her work has been published in Home Fort Lauderdale, Home and Design, Ceramic Review, House and Garden, Architectural Digest, and Shelter. She has been in glaries such as SKH Gallery, Flux Gallery, Project 4 Gallery and the Jenco Group, Red Dirt Studio at NCECA, Project 4 Gallery at the Herman Miller National Design Center, Lacoste Gallery, Diane Birdsall Gallery, American Craft Council Baltimore Show, The Katzen Center at American University Museum, The Smithsonian Craft Show, Kobo At Higo, Baltimore Clayworks, Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show, Lacoste Gallery, and Summer Salon.

Kastens makes work that is functional yet sculptural that is inspired by nature. She uses a variety of glazes and textures to create rough surfaces found in nature like rock formations. She wants the user to experience the materiality of the clay made by hand. She makes intentional marks made by hand to contrast with natural broken-off edges. She hand builds and throws to show all the possibilities of clay. She also uses multiple clay bodies such as porcelain, stoneware, found clays, and rocks to show the relationship of them interacting, leaving the change to the clay as it is placed into the kiln. She is interested in showing how things naturally change, shift, and adjust with time as more relationships are formed. Her functional forms are meant to look broken, old and dug up from the ground as if eroding and just recently found. They are broken yet beautiful with the message that change is inevitable. She also works in all sizes ranging from small cups to large baskets and sets of multiples to be exhibited in an interior space. Kasten explains in depth in her artist statement that Influenced from her experience in nepal she integrates the handmade qualities asian cultures use in their work. She also pulls the simplicity and care from British ceramics. As Eutectic Gallery states, /ref> her unconventional experiences with ceramics and cultures enable her to make this interesting body of work.