​Sharon Brush has been a ceramic artist for 40 years. She received her MFA in ceramics from Rhode Island School of Design and her BFA in ceramics from the State University of New York at New Paltz. In 1999 she was awarded an artist residency at the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts in Helena, Montana where she received a one-year Myre Fellowship. 

In addition to her studio work, she has also taught Ceramics and sculpture at numerous institutions including Rhode Island School of Design, the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts, Allan Hancock College, Northland Pioneer College and the University of 
New Mexico/Los Alamos.

Her work has been placed in public collections, including the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts, the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, The Crate and Barrel Corporation in Northbrook, IL, Priority One Services in Alexandria, VA, the Salina Community Art Collection in Salina KS, and the Arrow Electronics Corporation corporate art collection in Denver, CO, as well as in numerous private collections across the U.S.
 
Sharon is currently a full time studio artist living in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

 
I’ve always had a fascination with beautifully crafted, handmade objects. I remember taking numerous books out of the library as a teenager that focused on pre-industrial, pre-mass production cultures from around the globe. I would pour over the photographs, mesmerized by the beauty of the objects, tools, architecture, clothing, jewelry---all made by the very people using them. I saw how there was immense power in something individually crafted with love, care and deep intention.
 
I took my first ceramics class when I was 14 years old and continued taking clay classes throughout junior high and high school. Even at that early age I felt a strong connection to the material and the creative process
 
My fascination with pre-industrial cultures led me to begin college as an Anthropology major, but I soon found that I was spending all my time in the clay studio. I changed my major to Fine Arts and graduated in 1985 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in ceramics. Years later I received my Master of fine Arts degree from Rhode Island School of Design in ceramics as well.
 
I’ve been a professional ceramic artist for 40 years now. A couple of times along the way I’ve experimented with other media, but there’s really no other material that has the versatility of clay. If you develop the skills, you can do anything with it. I go out to my studio every day, still completely excited by the possibilities clay offers me.

In my latest body of work, I use visual metaphor to describe the processes of growth, transformation and the inevitability of change. 
The pieces appear to have lived a life-- and they carry the marks of their experiences. They have twisted, bent, divided and come together as they’ve been altered by the forces they’ve encountered.
 
I work to infuse each piece with rhythm, flow, and reverberation. When finished, I need them to speak to me like a musical composition. 
 
Each piece begins in my mind. A huge part of my creative process involves just lying in bed at night with my eyes closed trying to envision new pieces. 
The next step is sketching. I sketch every day, trying to bring the images conjured up the night before into a more tethered reality.
Finally, I start making the pieces in clay. The sculptures are hand-built using pinch, coil and slab construction methods. After construction they are sanded smooth, sprayed with layers of slip, burnished, and fired to 2200˙f.