Biography
Andrew Kellner received a Diploma from Sheridan College (2003) BFA (2005) from Alberta College of Art and Design, and a MFA (2017) from West Virginia University. Since moving to Hamilton, Andrew keeps a home studio practice, and continues to contribute to the ceramics community by teaching ceramic classes. In 2018, Kellner and business partner Heather Smit, started an annual invitational Ceramic show called Ash + Barrel. Which celebrates southern Ontario’s contemporary ceramics community. In early 2024 Kellner has started mixing Hamilton’s local clay in his work and built a small urban wood kiln beside his garage studio which he fires to cone 1.

 
Artist Statement
I make pots to share my love of material and the importance of beauty in the home and mark’s the beginning of a relationship that unfolds over years. 

I am enamored by clay’s plasticity and tactility. It’s the quick squishy responsive nature of the material itself that draws me in. As a kid I would play with bricks and mortar, building small walls or stacks when I would visit construction sites with my father. The physical weight of the brick carries sentiments of strength, home, and safety. These ideas are imbedded in my pottery. I chase after a personal expression of beauty, a casual confidence, pots that are full of quick and energetic throwing. Creating qualities of spontaneity, roughness, and heft that highlight the raw beauty of ceramics.

I trim back into the clay to expose the rough groggy inner quality similar to the gritty texture of early wet struck bricks. I use a reductive process to highlight subtle transitions in form. Creating edges for the slip and glaze to break, pool, and cascade over, accentuating the swelling forms of jars and pitchers. I want my pots to disappear into private and personal activities. To let particular moments take centre stage. 

For me, pottery only becomes active when we commit them into service. The pots I make are emblematic of more than a container of food. They’re a visual representation of time, memory, and history. Which is actively added to and transported with the experiences of use. 

Pottery, when used in the domestic setting eventually break down, it stains, glazes dull, and chipped edges form. These are the battle scars of utilitarian ware, of a well-loved piece of pottery. These marks are to be admired and help in the brief instances of small pleasure on a daily basis. Creating moments of experiential sympathy between the participant maker and the pot. These moments can't be codified or appropriated but have the immediate enjoyment of everydayness.