Ceramic sculptor Kendra Harvey is on the tail end of a busy year.
In March, Harvey had a solo exhibition at the Homer Bunnell Street Arts Center, and wrapped her most recent show, titled “Inosculation,” at the International Gallery of Contemporary Art in September. She says the collection was a culmination of the last two years worth of work, completed out of her home studio — a five-by-eight-foot shed in her parents’ backyard.
“I let whatever grabs my attention be the muse of what I want to do next,” Harvey said. “I would say my biggest source of inspiration — I read a lot of books, and study narratives. It is hard to explain, but drawing off a character in my head — to see how that would best be expressed through an animal — if that makes sense.”
Born and raised in Anchorage, Harvey graduated with a bachelors of fine arts degree with an emphasis on painting and ceramics in 2018. Initially, she began at the University of Alaska Anchorage in the criminal justice program, which she calls a “complete 180” from what she does now.
After changing her degree from criminal justice to arts, Harvey was required to complete a clay hand-building class. She was dreading it, and says she completely misunderstood what the class was about — thinking she was “never good at pottery.”
“Our first assignment was sculpting animals, I was completely in love with the process and what clay is, and the combination of science and art — because I do have that side to me still, I love more scientific approaches to things,” she said. “And the rest is history.”
Harvey describes her artistic process as “very intuitive,” and says she finds animals to be vessels for human experience and emotion.
“[Animals] have been used as allegories and metaphors since the dawn of time,” Harvey said. “I don’t feel the need to stray from that.”
Harvey’s pieces often combine mediums, including painting and illustrating on her ceramic pieces. She says it takes an extra push to break out of the mindset that artists have to stick with a certain set of tools.
“You can get any sort of surface effect that you want using any kind of medium — I just started introducing wood stains into my ceramics, which has been a smelly but really cool process … I mean, graphite on ceramic surfaces looks really cool,” she said.
Sam Davenport is a writer residing in Anchorage. She's a leo and a plant-person, and loves spending quality time with her dog, Aspen. She is a Real Housewives fan and has been called a Bravo historian.
