Vince Palacios

bio

Vince Palacios serves as Professor of the Ceramics Department at El Camino College in Torrance California. He came to El Camino College in 2011 after teaching for six years at Western Illinois University and ten years before that at California State University, Long Beach. Palacios received his Masters of Ceramic Art from Alfred University and his BFA in ceramics at California State University at Long Beach.  He has shown his work nationally and internationally and is included in a number of important private collections as well as prominent museum collections. Palacios continues to exhibit his work and has developed a unique approach to the use of ceramic decals and narrative story telling. Palacios currently resides in Long Beach California with his wife and mostly grown four children, Dog Olive, and Cat Gimli.

artist statement

“I have been working with ceramic decals for many years. It has always been a wrestling match between surface and form. I want to tell stories and convey ideas and information. The challenge is bringing surface, storytelling, and form together in a way that works. I began with very simple cylinder forms. I love the reference to science and alchemy. Getting lost on one of these blank, dimensional surfaces is intoxicating. I am most drawn to an extemporaneous way of just beginning with an image, then allowing the story to emerge and unfold through collaging image upon image. I also work on flat or tile surfaces. These are interesting, but don’t answer my need to address three-dimensional form. In this latest work, I am attempting to blow up the surface. I want to lift the images off the surface I am working on and cause them to float. I want the image to be a sculptural component. I want it to occupy space in different ways, so that light can affect it in the same way it affects a sculptural element. In the end I am trying to sculpt with imagery, rather than putting imagery on sculpture.”