Ceramicist Scott Onsager is VIVA’s Guest Artist for October!

Artist Statement

 I make pottery with the idea that it could have come from another time. I’m interested in the fact that our lives are temporary, while fired clay can survive for thousands of years. Long after people and cultures are gone, the objects they made can remain.

I look at ancient pottery, including Ho-Chunk pottery, ritual objects, Chinese bronzes, Jōmon pottery, and other artifacts, and wonder about the people who made them. I notice fingerprints, tool marks, uneven surfaces, and other signs of the maker’s hand. Those details are important to me because they remind us that a real person once held that object and made it.

I make my own pieces using some of the same basic methods people have used for thousands of years. I give them the appearance of having a history, even though that history never existed. I like the idea that someone might someday find one of these objects and try to figure out what it was for. They might create an entire story around it and be completely wrong—just as we may sometimes be wrong about objects we find from the past.

In the end, I know that I will disappear, but something I made may remain. Maybe someday someone will hold a broken piece of one of my pots and wonder who made it.

Scott’s Bio

Scott J. Onsager is a Wisconsin artist whose work includes ceramics, painting, and drawing. He earned a BFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and later received certification in K–12 art education.

In recent years, Onsager’s work has focused primarily on hand-built ceramics. Using coiling and other traditional methods, he creates vessels and sculptural objects influenced by ancient pottery, Ho-Chunk pottery, Jōmon pottery, Chinese bronzes, ritual objects, and archaeological artifacts. His work reflects his interest in history, the evidence left by the maker’s hand, and the ability of fired clay to survive long after its maker is gone.

Onsager lives and works in La Crosse, Wisconsin, where he is Gallery Curator and Art Studio Manager at the Pump House Regional Arts Center.