Kathy Erteman is a New York–based ceramic artist who works between studios in New York City and the Hudson Valley. With a studio practice spanning more than four decades, she creates vessels, wall-mounted works, and installations. Her work combines technical precision with a modernist sensibility, using a reductive formal language activated by abstract surface imagery and textured, energetic finishes.
Erteman is a full-time studio artist represented by Hostler Burrows Gallery. Her work has been exhibited widely in the United States and internationally, and is held in public and private collections including the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Taipei Museum of Fine Arts, and the Icheon World Ceramic Museum. She has also undertaken design commissions for companies including Tiffany and Crate & Barrel.
She has taught ceramics at Greenwich House Pottery in New York City since 1996 and has been involved in long-term cultural exchange and design consultancy projects in Yunnan, China, working with Nixi Tibetan potters through programs supported by Aid to Artisans, the U.S. Department of State, and the Fulbright Professional Fellows Exchange Program.
Erteman received her BFA in ceramics from California State University, Long Beach, and completed undergraduate studies at UCLA. Early in her career, she worked with Judy Chicago on The Dinner Party, an experience that remains a formative point in her professional trajectory.
Visit Kathy Erteman’s website and Instagram page.
Featured work
Selected works, 2011-2025
There are many ways to approach art making with clay. I adhere to traditional ceramic practices in making sculptural vessels and works for the wall. The study of early 20th-century architecture and design by international modernists contribute to my attitude about form. European ceramists Gertrude and Otto Natzler, Lucie Rie and Hans Coper were my earliest influences.
The essence of my work is minimal form activated by its surface treatment. I embrace a modernist aesthetic and employ a reductive approach to formal composition, aiming to eliminate unnecessary details to arrive at an articulate vessel form, one that could work at any scale, and allows for texture and color to become integrated within.
Abstract painting with bold texture and complex color informs my fired surface treatments. Albers’ rich muted palette, and that of Mark Rothko and works of various contemporary painters find their way into my work with ceramic materials.
My relationship with the materials is key as I aim for a balance between restraint and spontaneity in both form and surface. The vessel form is both the canvas and the subject, propelled by color and texture exploration. Emotion and gesture quietly find their way into the work.
As my craftsmanship skill increases, my desire to control the process lessens. Control versus chance currently plays a larger role in my work as I surrender to the process and allow the clay to speak more freely.
