The living sculptures of Jeremy Anderson
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“All of this is a kind of therapy, playing with inanimate objects and creating a community,” says artist-designer Jeremy Anderson, sliding the barn door that divides his parlour-like showroom from the studio: a large workshop in Red Hook, Brooklyn, populated by stoneware vessels and 22-carat-gold-lustre lamps. “These objects live in a utopian fantasy. To me, they are people of different shapes, sizes and colours — and everybody is getting along.”
On tables and shelves, freshly thrown pieces (every one by Anderson’s own hand), await the kiln, which is positioned close to his wheel. Others are bisque-fired or already partially glazed, while a set of giant light fixtures hand-painted with Anderson’s signature two-tone stripes (and with gilded interiors) currently hangs in the entryway.
Inspired by indigenous artists and their contoured patterns and carved lines, Anderson celebrates imperfection in his own painstaking process. He points to a pair of clay lamp shades that took him six hours to paint. “Obviously, this is something that could be taped on and really perfect,” he explains. “But I like the variation and the clay body between the different lines.”
The more he has painted his lines on three-dimensional surfaces, the more they have anthropomorphised. “My vessels started to look like they had hips,” he says of his first artworks as a full-time ceramicist. “Then there was a backside to them. I love the idea of creating sculptures that emulate something that is alive. As soon as I made my first little gold lamp, I thought to myself, ‘Oh my god, it looks like it could walk off the table.’”
The pendants are part of a new series that debuted in December at Gallery Fumi’s Design Miami showcase. Dubbed Space Relics by Anderson, the cylinders and spheres exude a futuristic, humanoid vibe. Up close, however, the LED strips, hidden behind tinted borosilicate glass and beaded fringe accents, reveal a more seductive, retro-modernist edge.
An artistic kid raised in suburban Minnesota in what he calls a typical middle-class, conservative family, Anderson recalls being made fun of in his early years. “I didn’t even know being gay was a thing. I was pretty isolated and didn’t have a lot of friends, but I was allowed to choose an art elective,” he remembers. “Going to the pottery studio was a refuge [in high school]. It had eight to 10 kick wheels — it was my safe space.”
Even today his process remains a restorative act of make-believe. “My pieces are like characters that I’m dressing. I see little hats and skirts and dangly bits that could be earrings,” he says of the lamps and earthenware pieces, which are affectionately named Piccolos in honour of a former boyfriend. Anderson’s friend had a deep impact on his personal growth but died in a car accident in 2001. Piccolo was the Italian term of endearment that he had for Anderson. “I envision the ceiling lights as the environment that these Piccolos live in — or as vines hanging in this space forest,” he adds. “The beads around various light sources are like the fully opened flower on the vine.”
Although he discovered his medium in adolescence and pursued ceramics as a hobby, Anderson’s professional path was circuitous. He worked for a media research company for 13 years, with stints in Boston, New York and Los Angeles, joining a pottery studio if he needed a creative break. In 2010, he met his now ex-husband, Gabriel Hendifar, and together they co-founded the cult lighting brand Apparatus, which currently has outposts in New York, Los Angeles and, most recently, London. “I had been making a lot of functional, traditional pottery,” he says. “But, around 2017, I wanted to do something more sculptural and decided to explore different vessel shapes.”
Anderson credits photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher — the mid-century German husband-and-wife artist duo — as a pivotal aesthetic influence. Given his Midwestern roots, he was mesmerised by the photographers’ ability to enliven industrial architecture such as grain elevators and water towers. “That inspired me to throw different components and cut them apart and assemble them. At one point, I cut the opening of a vessel, which was off-centre, and as soon as I did, it became alive to me.” His first group show at collectable-design emporium The Future Perfect in 2019 soon followed, as did solo exhibitions and appearances at art fairs.
Nearly 18 months ago, and post his break-up with Hendifar, Anderson relocated his studio from their shared home in upstate New York to Brooklyn, hiring Manhattan-based interior designer and friend Casey Kenyon to functionalise — and zhuzh up — the sprawling digs. “This is more square footage than I’d have needed,” he admits. “So I wanted to have an area where I could showcase finished work, and have a little kitchenette, as well as the kiln and tools.”
Anderson wanted the multi-use space “to feel snuggly”. Hence, in the front showroom, guests commune on a charred pine platform and prospective buyers experience a parade of Piccolo pots and multicoloured table lamps. Kenyon dropped the ceiling using linen panels, which the two friends put up together. Amping the rustic meets Zen patina, he transformed a set of barn doors into shoji-like sliding screens.
The extra square footage has been well-used in what has been a productive winter. In February, Anderson displayed nine new works, including a large-scale Space Relics installation, at Gallery FUMI’s first major US show in LA’s Melrose Hill (prices from $10,000). This month he unveils site-specific lighting for scenic and costume designer Tom Scutt: a series of special pieces designed to create an immersive mood in the bar areas leading into the show Cabaret at Broadway’s August Wilson Theatre — Scutt wanted his aesthetic vision to segue from theatre to stage.
“I connected immediately with his aesthetic. I felt a very close pairing with what I had been imagining for the space,” says Scutt. “Jeremy’s work defies categorisation but gives a sense of so many little touches and flourishes throughout the past 100 years.” Anderson is a fan: “Tom sent a DM on Instagram. He told me they were pretty far along in the set ideas [the show opens this month]. ‘But I think your stuff needs to fit into this world somehow.’ It’s being directed by Rebecca Frecknall, opening with Eddie Redmayne and Gayle Rankin. To be part of this is just pretty mind-blowing.”
As I gather my things to depart, Anderson runs ahead of me. “I’m going to plug in this blue lamp for you,” he says, beaming. “I call her Bluebelle. I like these vessels having conversations with each other. The pieces are talking, and so I love when people get more than one and have them interact.”
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