Trent Burkett – Redux

Trent Burkett is an artist working across disciplines from mixed media sculpture, functional ceramics, and public art. He is the former Full Professor of Ceramics and Sculpture and Chair of the Department of Visual Art at University of the Pacific in Stockton, CA. Burkett started teaching at Pacific in 2000 and resigned from the academic setting in 2014 to focus on his professional art practice and continue to teach privately through his business, City Art Plant Studio located near San Louis Obispo. This one- person exhibit will highlight his diverse approach to materials and the repurposing of objects to make sculptural narratives. Using recycled wood, rock, steel and marble, he has conceived several column-like pieces, with stratified layers of historic references, familiar and exotic. Burkett is an artist who could devote his entire career to the design and production of ceramic vessels, and be completely interesting. However, in recent years his history with wood has resurfaced, and has become a favorite medium. Many of these pieces are dipped in white paint, a process he is also very attracted to, that brings a calm and unification to the structures.

Burkett received his BA and MA from CSU Sacramento, and his MFA from the well- regarded Ceramics program at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. He now lives and maintains his studio in the San Louis Obispo area at Grover Beach.