Jess Wainer
Jess Wainer’s ceramic work combines sculpture, painting and drawing to captivate and challenge viewers. She uses the contours and expressions of the human face to confront viewers with deeply personal emotions and conflicted human experiences. Jess has been working with clay since the age of 10 when her parents set up a small ceramics studio in their home in Ohio. In the following 8 years Jess’s artist expression developed into her primary passion, which lead her to the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) for her undergraduate work, where she studied glassblowing, sculpture, art history, and new media installation.
A major turning point in Jess’s art career occurred in her third year at RISD when she was awarded the Holbrook Scholarship to attend the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. It seemed fated that all the glass classes were full which directed Jess back to ceramics with a wheel throwing class taught by Peter Beasecker. Jess rediscovered the introspective and often cathartic nature of working with clay, which inspired her to continue learning about the medium. Three summers later Jess took a class with figurative porcelain sculptor Sergei Isupov at the Penland School of Crafts, which introduced her to innovative techniques that she incorporates into her current work.