Rebecca Hutchinson
Artist Bio Artist Work
Rebecca Hutchinson received her MFA from the University of Georgia (Athens) and her BA from Berea College. An award-winning sculptor, she was one of 12 recipients of the 2015 “Women to Watch” award from the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC. A dedicated educator of over 20 years, she currently serves as full professor at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth teaching undergraduate and graduate ceramics.
Hutchinson’s sculptural work is informed by observations of the natural world, drawing inspiration from what she sees as its resilience and resourcefulness. Ranging in scale from site-installation museum projects to gallery sculpture, the work is a profusion of color harmonies, floral textures and absorbing detail. Found embedded in her work are locally sourced materials—native and natural as well as industrial and domestic cast-offs. The work is attentive to the emerging concerns of the Anthropocene: sustainability as an ethos, hybridity as a strategy, and growth as a set of negotiations. Her current work explores the theme of navigating boundaries both conceptually and aesthetically.
Hutchinson’s work has appeared in prominent national and international venues such as the Taiwan Ceramics Biennale, the Everson Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Craft and Design, the National Museum for Women in the Arts, SOFA (now Intersect Chicago, represented by Duane Reed Gallery), the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, the Vendrell Biennale (Spain), the Danforth Museum of Art, the Lowe Museum of Art, the Canton Museum of Art, and the Fuller Craft Museum, among many others.
Hutchinson’s work has been published in over 80 publications nationally and internationally—notably, Sculpture, Surface Design, Orion, Huffington Post, American Craft, Ceramics Monthly, La Ceramica, Ceramics Ireland, Ceramics Art and Perception, New Ceramics, Korean Ceramic Art Monthly, Women in the Arts, and Revista Ceramica Contemporanea.
She has been awarded numerous grants, fellowships, and awards—notably from the Pollock Krasner Foundation, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Virginia Commission for the Arts, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, as Artist of the Year by the Society of Arts and Crafts in Boston and as Distinguished Artist by the James Renwick Alliance in Washington DC. For teaching and research, Hutchinson is highly-awarded by the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. She has been nominated three years in a row for the Outstanding Educators Award of the International Sculpture Center (Sculpture Magazine).
Prominent collections which hold Hutchinson’s work include: the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Maldives Waldorf Astoria, the Boston Children’s Hospital, the Yingge Museum (Taiwan), the Perlman Museum, the Georgia Museum of Art, and the Canton Museum of Art.
Artist Statement
In nature there are diverse states of existence that I continue to study; the structure of nature, the result of the state of nature by interaction with other forces of nature, the resilience of nature, and the complexity and awe in the engineering of nature. All these states of nature are rooted and formed in the motivation for the need to survive, and provide endless influences for diverse construction and conceptual possibilities for art making. And, more specifically, endless opportunities for metaphor use; speaking to the depth and complexity of living with the hopes of revealing the human condition, the potential of positivity, in visual and sculptural form utilizing traditional and non-traditional ceramic materials and processes.
Within the study of ecology and ethology these states of existence are articulated. As a point of reference for sculptural installation building, I have been utilizing specific structural engineering qualities found in functional growth relationships and dynamics of animal and insect structures always highlighting uniqueness of regional researched information that deserves amplification.
My work focuses on the respect for process. Formally and structurally, my interest is in the details: quality of craft, connections, and structure, and conceptually an understanding of place and all physical parts to the whole. I build site-responsive clay and fibrous sculptural works made from local materials, such as recycled 100% natural fiber clothing and industrial castoff surplus materials, cotton thread from the bedding industry or sisal from the burlap bag industry, all to beat down to pulp and formed into handmade paper sheets to use in construction.
Installation construction is influenced conceptually by specificities from research, but does not replicate nature. I look at the dynamics of the region and search for the untold story or the anomaly that has human metaphorical weight. Like an animal that uses the vernacular from place, I, too, upcycle humble materials and remake into what I hope to be exquisite spacial experiences made up of intricate sculptural forms.
Selected Articles
Articulating Nuances: The Work of Artist Rebecca Hutchinson
Social Distancing Studio Visits with Caroline Kipp
The Jealous Curator “Authenticity Will Never Do You Wrong”
Catalogues
Interviews
UMass Dartmouth Virtual Studio Visit with Rebecca Hutchinson
Clay Doctor Panelist, NCECA, The Potterscast with Paul Blais
Jealous Curator art for your ear Episode 192: Rebecca Hutchinson : authenticity will never do you wrong
Critical Connections in Ceramics and Craft
Wired Ivy Podcast 20: Virtual Speaks Volumes
Gallery Talk at Everson Museum of Art
Tales of a Red Clay Rambler: Podcast Episode 461- Rebecca Hutchinson on Paper, Clay, and Regeneration