About the Artist
BIO
Raised in the woods of rural Alaska, Milo Berezin moved to Pittsburgh in 2004 to study sculpture and printmaking at Carnegie Mellon University, followed by a Masters of Teaching at Chatham University. The son of a production potter, he rediscovered the joy of clay while working as an arts administrator and teaching artist at a community ceramics nonprofit. Today, he blends his interest in both 2D and 3D design on playfully illustrated ceramic forms inspired by wildlife and his love of nature.
ARTIST STATEMENT
I've always been equally interested in both image and object, and I’ve found joy in ceramics by blending the two — approaching the ceramic form as a canvas that can be drawn upon, brushed, incised, printed, layered, and stamped. I love that images on pottery are only fully experienced when they are explored closely and deeply, and I like to make pots that reveal their surfaces in new and sometimes surprising ways as each piece is held and used — inside and out, top and bottom, front and back — more intimately than a painting on the wall.
I illustrate my pots with translucent layers of brightly painted and carved images of plants and animals, juxtaposed with text dialogue that is sometimes playful, vulnerable, aggressive, philosophical, or encouraging. These anthropomorphized animal narratives can be windows into my own thoughts at a given moment, and serve as reminders that it’s okay to feel our feelings and embrace the full range of human experience.
My forms are relatively simple to allow illustrations to take the focus. My work is all hand-built, and as a person with a tendency toward perfectionism, hand-building has led me to celebrate the irregularities and variability often inherent — the pinch marks, creases, asymmetry, and undulations that serve as a record of the artist’s hand. I’ve come to embrace and invite these “imperfections” as another way of allowing myself to be vulnerable and visible in the work.