ST. LOUIS, MO.- Craft Alliance is presenting Other Ways of Knowing, a solo exhibition with Kansas City-based ceramic artist Casey Whittier. The exhibition runs in the Staenberg Gallery, April 8-May 21, 2022 with a closing reception on Friday, May 20, 2022.

Like so many of us, during the pandemic Whittier spent a great deal of time at home. Objects from home began to collide with objects from work; domestic spaces altered; and so did her relationship with those objects. Other Ways of Knowing considers these household objects and their importance in our lives, as carries of memories and metaphors for the human experience. The exhibition was designed especially for the space at Craft Alliance to recreate the interior of a house, but one that is just a little bit strange. Towels, t-shirts, and brooms have been meticulously recreated in ceramics and glass as though they have fossilized.

Whittier writes about the objects in her exhibition, “Employing a variety of craft processes executed primarily in clay and glass, each work calls attention to its physical and material properties as well as its making; they call attention to the ‘other ways of knowing’ or other ways of seeing that shape my sense of self, sense of belonging, sense of other.”

She notes that her time-intensive process—one bath towel is composed of over 23,000 tiny handcrafted beads!—allows her to think through the complicated ideas and memories that these piece conjure up.

One beaded bouquet in the exhibition called “Half of Living is Mourning” was created in memory of all of the victims of the pandemic. Other Ways of Knowing is a tribute to the importance of the objects around us and the ways that they remind us of time past and of people we care about.

Casey Whittier received her BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and MFA from the University of Colorado at Boulder. She is interested in the metaphorical and philosophical power of visual art and the ways in which the ceramic and material creates direct connections between the geology of the earth, basic human needs, and complex metaphysical desires. Repetitive processes and systems of reliance are often used as metaphors for our interconnectedness.

Whittier teaches ceramics and social practice at the Kansas City Art Institute and works from her home studio. Whittier works with The Land Institute through their Ecosphere Studies Program cohort and as a participant in their Silphium Civic Science Community, where research into new perennial and sustainable food and oil seed production is ongoing.

Whittier was named a 2020 Emerging Artist by Ceramics Monthly Magazine.