Kelly Rush
Kelly Rush
Kelly Rush is a native Nebraskan born in Axtell, Nebraska. Her art reflects the practicality and simplistic beauty of her rural upbringing. Working in sculpture, she explores the role of objects found in the home, on the farm and in nature. Her goal is to magnify the beauty of those objects while depicting them in a unique way by using clay as her medium.
Kelly works with low-fire red earthenware that she glazes with Terra Sigillata, one of the oldest forms of glazing. Terra Sig is a colored clay that is brushed on the piece before the first firing. Once fired, oxides are used to stain the piece too add more depth and to further the process, mineral washes are added, such as soda ash and Borax.
She also works in the visual arts as a television producer for NET, Nebraska’s PBS station, in Lincoln, Nebraska. She has been recognized nationally and internationally for her television work.
She earned her Bachelor of Science in Broadcasting at the University of Nebraska-Kearney and has studied under ceramists Pete Pinnell and Joe Pintz at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
The mission of my work is to promote the visceral. With my pieces I want you to get a sense of a practical--yet beautiful reality.
My hope is to lure you from across the room. I want you to be seduced into asking questions ranging from the story behind the piece to the aesthetics of it.
I’m interested in making clay into an object intended to deceive the viewer into believing it is the object itself: a greasy oilcan well-worn and stained but has never seen a day’s work.
