David Furman
Artist Biography:
David Furman, a ceramic artist, was born in Seattle, Washington, in 1945. Furman was the former director of the Studio Arts program at Pitzer College in Claremont, California, as well as professor of art at Claremont Graduate School.
Furman is an internationally recognized ceramicist and artist. His work emerges from not material, but ideas, which grow out of his personal experiences and explorations of the people and world around him. He has received numerous fellowships and honors, including three National Endowment for the Arts awards, and three Fulbright fellowships. He has also served as the U.S. State Department's cultural envoy to Honduras.
He has had over 40 one-person shows, and his work has been included in exhibitions at the Whitney Museum in New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC among others. Furman's art work has been exhibited in over 500 invitational and group exhibitions and he has presented in over 150 public lectures and workshops internationally.
Creative Concept:

These ceramic sculptures make use of the iconic image of the wooden art mannequin to reveal the width and breadth of the human condition. This is done through the vehicle of the situational narrative. In the ordinary context these figures, normally used to teach proportion and position in drawing/painting exercises, are devoid of human emotion. In this new context they become players in emotionally charged venues. While the particulars of my stories are obscured, the figures reveal a wide range of emotion through body gesture, touch, posture, nuance and proximity.

These recent ceramic "tin can" sculptures mirror some of the actual art-making materials that exist in my studio. These pencils, paintbrushes, chalk, and crayons readily found on my worktables become fair game for subject matter, as I work in the realist idiom. In a strange way, this artwork is "as American as apple pie"; what parent or guardian hasn't taken an empty tin can, peeled the label from it and transformed it into a pencil holder for their child?

This ceramic "tool box," A Hard Day's Work, is an homage to my artist grandfather, Jacob, from whom I undoubtedly inherited his craftsman's gene, and probably my obsessive tendencies. On any given day, what garage, studio or workshop does not have a pile of well used tools on the workbench, waiting to be used or put away? As such, my realistic ceramic sculpture "fools the eye!"