Jasmine Baetz (she/her) has made things out of clay from a young age, and it remains her primary tool for making sense of the world. She holds a BA in religious studies from the University of Toronto, a diploma in Fine Arts from Langara College in Vancouver, a BFA in 3D Fine Arts from Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and an MFA in Ceramics from the University of Colorado, Boulder. She was Assistant Professor of Art at Coker University in Hartsville, SC, and Lincoln Visiting Professor in Ceramics at Scripps College and Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, CA.
The materiality and recyclability of clay makes it well suited for her methods of building: addition, experimentation, and revision. Her work includes clay objects that are fired, unfired, on pedestals, under ground, under water, joined with other materials in installation, and implemented in ritual or performance. Using her place in a materially-based craft discipline and community, she seeks to illuminate the systemic problems within it that create and perpetuate colonial, racist, and misogynistic assumptions, discourses, actions, and objects. Defining her work, practice, and teaching against these tendencies, she uses clay to investigate history, belief, and identity.
As an artist who works with clay, her practice has always involved pushing materials to their limit and beyond, soliciting and confronting breakage and breakdown, and engaging in processes of re-imagining and re-formation in response. As she has transitioned to public-facing work, these familiar research methods have adapted under the influence of increased exposure and a shifting interpretive backdrop, as well as the addition of broader social forces related to working in collaboration with communities impacted by racial injustice. Baetz engages complex histories with an interest in re-forming and materializing what has been willfully broken or inadvertently left aside.