Speculative Landscapes
Recitation Gallery
University of Delaware
Opening Reception: March 9th, 7:00 p.m.
Artists Talk: March 9th, 6:00 p.m.
March 9th – 27th, 2011
www.udel.edu/art/news-events/calendar.html

The newest of my work, Speculative Landscapes incorporates real, living elements in the form of moss contained in terrariums. Moss is a simple plant, more closely related to algae than to common plants of today, and has survived for approximately 250 million years. Wardian Cases (terrariums) rose to popularity during the 19th century on the heels of the Industrial Revolution and the concentration of people in urban centers. Terrariums served as a means of protection from the polluted air of Victorian cities, and allowed for nature to be brought into the domestic space, fostering a connection to the natural world in an era when the human relationship to their environment changed more rapidly and significantly than at any other point in history. These miniature landscapes, coupled with iconic trees made of raw clay, are situated on a complex system of shelving (both digitally designed and milled) that creates multiple, dislocated horizon lines, which becomes a literal intersection of design, landscape, and technology. Not unlike the Industrial Revolution, the Digital Revolution has further distanced the human relationship to the natural world, ushering in an era of mediated experiences removed from the world of tactility and the physical nature of the body.

Edge of Life: Forest Pathology
January 21st – March 26th, 2011
The Cole Art Center @ The Old Opera House
Ledbetter Gallery
3329 E. Main Street
Nacogdoches, TX
www.forestryart.blogspot.com

The Edge of Life collaboration brings together the fields of forest pathology and art, explores the place they meet, and culminates in a traveling art/science exhibition and book. The exhibition includes artists from Stephen F. Austin State University’s School of Art and ecological artists from across the nation. The The goals are to share sciences’ ability to inspire culture through art, to present a wide range of innovative approaches to making art, and to educate about the field of forest pathology.

Brown, Glen “Chad Curtis: Retooling Technology; Recasting Creativity” Ceramics Art & Perception, Issue 79. 22-27

This article features the developments of my studio practice in the past few years, which Glen Brown refers to as “arguably one of the most important projects to be introduced to ceramic art in this first decade of the 21st century.”

www.ceramicart.com.au/capcurrentissue.shtml