| Chris Gustin | ||
| Birth Date: 1952 |
||
Artist Gallery |
||
| Chris Gustin was born in Chicago, Illinois and grew up in Los Angeles, where I was surrounded by ceramics from an early age. My family was part owners of several commercial whiteware manufacturing companies and I spent my childhood around ceramic factories; it was an obvious choice for me to work in the family business.
Gustin took pottery classes at a local clay studio while in high school - then he went to the University of California where he studied biology and sociology. Since he had an interest in clay it seemed natural that he would take an introductory studio ceramic course which the instructor ended up being John Mason. After a semester of college, he took a summer job at one of his father’s factories and decided that he wanted to continue working in the family business. He quit school and became the factory foreman and manager at Wildwood Ceramics.
During his time at Wildwood, he still worked on the wheel and finally decided in 1972 that he still liked to create work in the studio and he left the factory to attend the Kansas City Art Institute. He then went on to graduate school at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University and received his MFA.
In 1994 he became interested in the production of tile, when he and his wife began to design their new home. Gustin ended up making all of the tile for his new home and started another company from this experience called Gustin Ceramics Tile Production in 1996. In 1999, after twenty years of teaching and working with hundreds of undergraduate and graduate students he retired to devote his full time and energies to his studio work and the tile production company.
|
||