Erica Iman

Bio

Erica Iman received her BFA in Ceramics and BSE in Art from the University of Missouri, Columbia in 2005 and obtained her MFA in Ceramics from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville in 2012. Between earning her degrees, she served 2 years in the U.S. Peace Corps on the Eastern Steppe of Mongolia, teaching English and Gardening while exploring the Gobi Desert and Altai Mountains.  In 2007, she was selected as a participant in the International Workshop for Ceramic Arts in Tokoname (IWCAT) Japan program, spending the summer studying contemporary and ancient Japanese pottery and culture.   

Erica works from her studio in the north hills of Lawrence, KS, and was a founding member of the KC Urban Potters and an Artist Inc. facilitator.  She has taught in various schools and art centers and has won awards across the country for both her ceramics and paintings. received an honorable mention in the 10th International Ceramics Competition, Mino, Japan, as well as a sculpture purchased by the San Angelo Museum of Fine Art.

Artist’s Statement

I am a sculptor and painter working primarily in clay and raw earth materials. References to landscape and natural phenomena are often evident in my forms and working processes.  The forms are abstracted yet resemble the geological features of their origin, such as glacial ice or weathered rock.  By creating work using the material’s inherent properties and mimicking processes from nature, I am searching for the essence of the material’s structure and the qualities it naturally possesses.

An inner, centering emotion plays a large role during the creation of my work.  I push back and forth between masculine and feminine, raw and refined; the exuberance of traveling to a foreign land and the inner clarity and resonance of simply being.

I am drawn to a sense of timelessness, the origin story of a stone, a glacier, or cracked desert earth - something that roots us in our existence beyond what humans have constructed.

My work helps locate and orient me in the world.  They are way posts, markers, guides, fragments, or cairns for exploring the essence of our physical and inner landscapes.

Exhibitions: