Ceramic Artist Ehren Tool Featured in PBS Documentary
Artist Ehren Tool, who runs the ceramics studio at the UC Berkeley Department of Art Practice, is featured in PBS’s Peabody-Award-winning series Craft in America, which documents the vitality, history, and significance of the craft movement.
The new episode, DEMOCRACY, explores how craft is intertwined with our nation’s defining principles:
Ehren Tool is a ceramic artist and Senior Laboratory Mechanician at the Ceramic Department at University of California, Berkeley, and Marine Veteran of the 1991 Gulf War.
Tool was greatly influenced by American expressionist ceramic sculptor, Peter Voulkos. Tool says of his own work, “The images on the cups are often graphic and hard to look at. You may be for or against a particular war but I think it is too easy for us to look away. I think we as a country and as humans should look at what is actually going on… I would like my work to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the world. That is a lot to ask of a cup…”
“I hope that some of the cups can be starting points for conversations about unspeakable things. I hope conversations flourish between veterans and the people who are close to them. I also hope that some honest conversation can happen about war and its causes.”
Ehren Tool, Cup, 2014. Wheelthrown and altered clay. Madison Metro photograph
Tool received his MFA from the University of California, Berkeley and BFA from the University of Southern California and has exhibited his vessels at the Oakland Museum of California, the Craft and Folk Art Museum, the Berkeley Art Center, the Bellevue Arts Museum, and The Clay Studio among others.
Additionally, Tool’s work is included in a related exhibition, DEMOCRACY 2020: CRAFT & THE ELECTION at Craft in America Center.
The dynamic objects in this virtual exhibition address key issues underlying the 2020 election and the American political landscape. Employing glass, fiber, ceramics, metal, wood and various other craft-based materials of everyday life, these 21 artists from across the U.S. use their media to voice concerns, point out injustice and inequity, and potentially instill hope for a better future.
Ehren Tool says the following about his work:
“I originally made the cups to be touchstones about unspeakable things. To connect people who have experienced war with people who have experienced war first hand. To connect Vets and refugees with their own families.”
“Things have devolved so far in our political system we can not agree on facts and science. It seems now the cups could be a touchstone to connect folks of different political views. I’m not super optimistic about the power of a cup. I think sharing a beverage and listening to each other could be a small step.”
This Youtube link is another video produced about Ehren in 2014:
For more about Ehren Tool and his work, see: The Price of This Artist’s Work? A Conversation, The New York Times, May 1, 2019