Artist Series Post #6: Charles Krafft

Charles Krafft



Charles Krafft is a self-taught painter based in Seattle, Washington USA. His work in the Delft ceramics tradition was inspired by his friendship with American motorcycle and hot rod hero Von Dutch. In the early 1990s, Krafft began a series of natural and socio-political disasters painted on found china plates called Disasterware™, with the logo designed by Von Dutch. In 1995, Krafft traveled to war-ravaged Bosnia Herzegovina with the Slovenian industrial rock band Laibach. Moved by the plight of the besieged residents of Sarajevo, he returned to Central Europe and created an arsenal of Delft weaponry. The Porcelain War Museum Project premiered at the Republic of Slovenia Ministry of Defense headquarters in Ljubljana in 2000, and has subsequently been exhibited in galleries and museums around the world.


Using all the traditional materials of Dutch Delft painting, Charles Krafft brings the art solidly into the 20th century with the creation of art works that reflect our modern realities. Floods, fires, murders, Nazi atrocities and artistic angst rise up from these plates rather than quaint windmills and skaters dressed in ancient costumes. All art should be relevant to our lives and experiences or it will not extend our sense of reality and truth.

From Charles Krafft's lips to your eager eyes and ears:

 

“CHARLES KRAFFT IS MY NAME, AMERICA IS MY NATION, SEATTLE IS MY DWELLING PLACE, AND ART IS MY SALVATION.” For the last 15 years I have been working in ceramics, before that I was a painter. I am considered a pioneer of the "low brow" or Pop Surrealism movement. This is an alternative visual arts scene that has its roots in California custom car culture, surfing culture and in '60s era underground comix. It’s a streetwise aesthetic that has been evolving and spreading out across the globe while remaining almost entirely unnoticed by most mainstream critics, museum curators and art historians. It exists on the Internet and by word of mouth in it's own parallel universe of events, magazines, galleries, shops and studios in America, Europe, Australia and Japan. I’m also the inventor of SPONE - human bone china - or more precisely porcelain made with “cremains.” The word SPONE is a combination of “bone” plus “Spode.” Josiah Spode was the l8th century English inventor of bone china which is actually named for its cow bone ash content, not its white color. Armed with Spode’s old clay recipe I’ve set out to revolutionize the funerary arts by creating custom reliquaries out of human bone ash porcelain from crematoriums. My other work isn't as functional. I use clay to comment on violence, power, capital and catastrophes. I am self-taught. The only art credentials I have are the "astral apprenticeships" I served under the reclusive painter of startled birds, Morris Graves (l910-2001) and the crackerjack Hollywood hot rod hero, Von Dutch (l926-l992). I can get down with any militantly aesthetic easel painter, multi-media maestro or wooly potter, but when it comes to the mechanics of art making I prefer the company of criminals, undertakers and blue haired grannies. Visit my cyber- tarded website: www.antiquesatoz.com/artatoz/krafft/.

 

You see kids, ceramics can be fun too.