About

Artist Statement:

Alex Downs’ large, organic, wooden vessels are distinct, turned forms, radiating linear concentric swells, and moments of negative space. Downs developed a hybrid process of turning wooden vessels on a potter’s wheel and carving them with an angle grinder. The process itself is loud, aggressive, almost violent, but cathartic and meditative. The works are intended to serve as mandalas, prayer wheels, or visual mantras; imperfect symbols meant for clarity and calm.

Bio:

Alex Downs was born and raised in Decorah, Iowa, at the doorstep of a small liberal arts college. There he would find inspiration in the outdoor sculptures, science exhibits, and art facilities. After exhausting the art classes available at the local high school, he took wheel thrown ceramics classes at the college, which led to a job with a local ceramicist, where he honed his craft and earned the money to purchase a potter’s wheel. Soon after, he was accepted to the Kansas City Art Institute, where he studied ceramics before eventually gravitating towards woodworking. He graduated with a degree in Interdisciplinary Arts in 2005. After school, Alex moved to New York City and found work with artist Dennis Oppenheim, fabricating large scale outdoor sculptures. Around this time, Alex’s mother reunited him with his old potter’s wheel, bringing it with her on a charter bus to NYC. Since wood had become his preferred medium, and he had no kiln to fire clay pots, he developed a method of  wood carving that involved spinning stacks of wood on his wheel and shaping them with a chainsaw blade on an angle grinder.

In 2015 Alex purchased a small house on the Hudson river, where he continues to work and live.