WILD THINGS
Chris Gustin
September 13 - October 12, 2025
Opening Reception: September 13, 5 - 7 pm
Artist Talk with Documentary Filmmaker Coleman Weimer: September 14, 2 pm
Lucy Lacoste Gallery is delighted to present Chris Gustin: Wild Things, September 13- October 12, 2025, an exhibition of closed form abstract ceramic sculpture. This show is monumental in both scope and scale, displaying all new work from the artist’s Cloud and Spirit Series. Gustin, a visionary force in the field of abstract ceramics, uses melting wood ash from his firings to reveal form, creating works that are anthropomorphic, landscape and cloudlike, galactic and otherworldly. Gustin’s work seeks deeply personal recollections for its viewers, “connecting them to their own history, their own sense of imagination.”
Wild Things uses sensitive forms to kindle moments of personal transcendence for viewers. These energetic and emotive sculptures emerge from the artist’s intuitive practice. Each work begins as an oval, then is built upon iteratively and improvisationally until it reaches completion. The finished forms are singular and striking, often over 48” tall.
Each sculpture’s shape “evokes humility, generosity, sensuality, and fullness.” Gustin describes his pieces as enclosing and shaping air, as if they were holding their breath. This responsiveness is clear in Spirit Series #2503, a tall, tender piece whose curves modulate gently down its length.
The glazing of sculptures in Wild Things evidences Gustin’s technical mastery and instinctual prowess. His work acquires its signature surface treatment when ash rises and settles atop pieces in the kiln, melting and revealing their forms as they fire. The resulting effect is akin to water flowing over a landscape. On each sculpture bright waves of melted ash drip downward, each composition a present bestowed by firing. His palette resembles the aftermath of a rainstorm, when the whole world’s saturation turns up a tick. Gold deepens, green shines, copper glints as it oozes over curves.
Spirit Series #2420 is a powerful example of Gustin’s ash technique. Splashed with sun and bronzed at the apex of its curves, #2420’s volumes and surfaces glow. Its singular drip of dark ash becomes a dramatic focal point—a gift from the kiln gods.
Gustin was born in California to parents who ran pottery factories in LA. This influence led him to UC Irvine, where he studied under the legendary post-WWII ceramic sculptor John Mason. Gustin took a two-year break from college to work as a foreman at Wildwood Ceramics, his family business. He completed his BFA at Kansas City Art Institute, a university known for its strong ceramics department. Three years later, Gustin received his MFA from Alfred University in New York, the most prestigious ceramics program in the country. Gustin then received funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. His career continued to grow as he relocated to the East coast, teaching at Parsons School of Design, Boston University in its program in Artisanry, and UMass Dartmouth.
Gustin has become one of the most accomplished living abstract ceramic sculptors with work in numerous esteemed cultural institutions and large corporate collections. His innovative approaches and technical genius are on full display in this exciting new work. It is a great honor to bring Wild Things to the people of Massachusetts, Gustin’s chosen home for over 40 years.
CATALOGUE ESSAY
‘Wild Things’ An exhibition of the work of Chris Gustin - Judith S. Schwartz, Ph.D., Professor Emerita, Curator, Critic, and Writer
Few match Gustin's spirituality and technical skill handling large-scale forms. Slowly, year by year, he has evolved a technique and achieved a level of skill that is unmatched. His monumental forms are sensuous, robust and infused with life as he seems to breathe air into the spaces holding the walls of his "forms" and then, magically, covers these ‘forms’ with glazes that are equally life-affirming. He is a master of the glazed surface, with nuances of color and texture that visually excite. His work takes the viewer into a world of imagination and awareness of color and form that has seldom has been seen with such a high level of integration.
Gustin was born into a family ceramic business; ceramic art has always been a big part of his life. He began college-level teaching in the 70's and has nurtured countless students in a variety of higher education settings. Later, he switched to the full-time studio environment to perfect his art.
His skill set is unequalled, his manner as a mentor to many is quiet, and his vision vast. The sharing of his Anagama kiln, and the weeklong firings are legendary, and artists come to be part of the experience. Moreover, his dedication to nurturing artists became the backdrop for his co-founding of the Watershed residency - an invaluable retreat for artists who need to the find time and space to work in clay.
His latest show title focuses on Spirits and Clouds that he identifies as “Wild Things.” What might at first seem intangible or fleeting is reframed as vital, unpredictable, and alive. To extend wildness into the immaterial and atmospheric is to question the limits we place on what counts as nature — suggesting that the unseen, like the visible, possesses its own agency and force.
Naming clouds and spirits as wild is both playful and reverent. It calls to mind myth-making traditions that animate the natural world while also echoing childhood imaginings where the wild is everywhere, unbounded. This also recalls the book Where the Wild Things Are — a childlike, playful reimagining of what’s feared or untamed, hinting at imagination as a form of liberation. Spirits and clouds can also be metaphors for the psyche — fleeting moods, shifting thoughts, or hidden forces within the self.
Gustin works within the traditions of the Surrealists and Abstract Expressionists that have used amorphous forms to explore meaning, often drawing from psychology, biology, and the spiritual world. At its core, Gustin’s personal expressions create a pathway for the viewer to encounter similar experiences, emotions, memories, and perspectives where one can bring personal interpretations, feelings, and histories into his forms. In this exchange, “Wild Things” becomes a conversation that makes private truths a communal experience.
He creates visual worlds that don’t just mirror reality but expand it - spaces that invite us to reimagine the familiar. Wild Things sparks curiosity, reshapes perception, and encourages us to see connections between our shared experiences. These imagined worlds are not escapism but rather a way of deepening awareness, nudging us to question and rediscover the significance of what surrounds us daily.