{"id":33637,"date":"2016-05-12T00:22:16","date_gmt":"2016-05-12T06:22:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=33637"},"modified":"2025-11-15T09:09:02","modified_gmt":"2025-11-15T16:09:02","slug":"brian-snapp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/brian-snapp\/","title":{"rendered":"Brian Snapp"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Brian Snapp inside his studio at the University of Utah. Photo by Simon Blundell.<\/p><\/div>\n

There are numerous things to consider in ceramic artist Brian Snapp\u2019s work, but one is fundamental: Clay is<\/em> the medium that\u2019s the message, and centuries of archaeological discovery support this.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s 30,000 plus years of the history of ceramics now,\u201d Snapp says. \u201cThey used to talk about 10,000 years, but that was 10,000 years of pottery. We\u2019re finding sculptures that are 30,000 to 60,000 years old: little Venuses, little female icons. So that\u2019s one reason I like to work with clay. It has all of that history that comes with it. It makes it difficult \u2013 that\u2019s a lot of baggage to carry.\u201d
\nAt the same time, he says, \u201cthere\u2019s this constant of civilization within clay. Without clay there would be no civilization. History is written in clay. We know more about ourselves from little shards and bits and pieces of clay than we do from any other medium.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce clay is fired it doesn\u2019t go away,\u201d he maintains. \u201cYou can break it up in little tiny pieces but then archeologists go and dig those pieces up and glue them back together and we discover more about our values, our value systems, our interactions with peoples of the world through clay. You can even make that extension now with the digital age and computer chips and silicon. We\u2019re still documenting ourselves and our actions and our likes, dislikes, wants and desires through clay.\u201d<\/p>\n

Looking around at Snapp\u2019s current show at Finch Lane Gallery \u2014 several are large abstracted architectural works created as a single piece that didn\u2019t quite fit in a 6-foot-high kiln \u2014 one observes that these certainly aren\u2019t teapots. \u201cI have made teapots and I make cups,\u201d Snapp replies, taking a sip of tea from one elegant example. \u201cAnd I teach throwing. That\u2019s what I first learned to do with clay and I\u2019ve been doing that for 40 years. More. I started throwing the summer between middle school and high school [Los Alamitos in California, near Long Beach] in a summer class. In high school all we did was throw pots, surf and play water polo.\u201d He was listening then not to the Beach Boys, but to Bowie, Dylan, Brian Eno and Lou Reed, along with a lot of early jazz and blues.<\/p>\n

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