Kenneth baskin

Bio

Kenneth Baskin received his BFA from College for Creative Studies in Detroit, Michigan and earned his MFA from University of South Carolina.  Presently he holds the position of Professor of Art/Ceramics at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

In 2007 Baskin was honored as one of the recipients of one of the National Council on Education in the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) Emerging Artist Awards.  Recently he was honored by being selected for a solo exhibition of his ceramic sculptures at the Taipei County Yingge Ceramics Museum, Taipei, Taiwan; in conjunction with this exhibition, he was also invited as a visiting artist, workshop instructor and lecturer at: Tainan National University of the Arts in Tainan, Taiwan and National Taiwan University of the Arts in Taipei.  Baskin’s work has also been included in numerous group and solo exhibitions both nationally and internationally.

Artist Statement

An artifact is defined as an object that is created through human ingenuity. And that object, as artifact, is inherent within a cultural or historical context.  

The investigative properties of the Artifact series are focused upon the mechanical objects or artifacts derived from the advent of the industrial revolution. Through our capacity for invention the anatomy of the machine, laying bare its individual yet integrated mechanical components, became the means of mass production and an accelerant in the performance of human tasks. This interdependence of humans and machines altered cultural conceptions and the two became intimately conjoined.

Within this current body of work I am exploring the integration of actual and abstracted machine parts into homologous interrelationships. Metaphorically, my sculptures reflect aspects of these interrelations through: balance and instability, domination and submission, tension and ease, opposition and compromise. It is through this dynamic of push and pull, give and take, that the spontaneity and structuring of these interactions takes place.