Adam Shiverdecker: Selected works, 2014-2020
Banquet of Plutus, 2019
Banquet of Plutus, 2019, Basalt Clay, Porcelain, Nickel Chromium wire, steel, Dimensions variable 
Banquet of Plutus, 2019, Basalt Clay, Porcelain, Nickel Chromium wire, steel, Dimensions variable 
Banquet of Plutus (detail, Amphora), 2019, Basalt Clay, Porcelain, Nickel Chromium wire, steel, 16” x 14” x 14” 
Banquet of Plutus (detail, Francoise Vase), 2019, Basalt Clay, Porcelain, Nickel Chromium wire, steel, 28” x 27” x 23”
Photos courtesy of the artist
On a Grecian Urn, 2014
Dystopian Series: Rhyton, 2014, Earthenware, stoneware, nickel chromium wire, underglaze, clay slip, steel, 47” x 36” x 37” 
Fractured Series: Psykter, Lekythos, Kylix, 2014, Stoneware, earthenware, nickel chromium wire, underglaze, Dimensions variable 
Dystopian Series: Amphora, 2014, Stoneware, nickel chromium wire, underglaze, resin, 26” x 22” x 22” 
Dystopian Series: Volute Krater, 2014, Stoneware, nickel chromium wire, underglaze, resin, 27” x 21” x 22” 
On a Grecian Urn, 2014, Solo exhibition at Greenwich House Pottery
Photos by Alan Wiener, courtesy Greenwich House Pottery
Dinera Mugs, 2020
Dinera Mug: Peach/Turquoise/Cedar, 2020, Basalt clay, colored porcelain, nickel chromium alloy, 6.25” x 5” x 4.5” 
Dinera Mug: Peach/Turquoise/Cedar (detail), 2020, Basalt clay, colored porcelain, nickel chromium alloy, 6.25” x 5” x 4.5” 
Dinera Mug: Yellow/Lilac/Blue/Asphalt, 2020, Basalt clay, colored porcelain, nickel chromium alloy, 6.25” x 5” x 4.5” 
Dinera Mug: Yellow/Lilac/Blue/Asphalt (detail), 2020, Basalt clay, colored porcelain, nickel chromium alloy, 6.25” x 5” x 4.5”
Photos courtesy of the artist
My work imagines what would happen if the entire military arsenal were simply pushed into the ocean. I’m a committed pacifist, but I am also drawn to the sleekness, the power, and the materiality of machines of war. My work attempts to represent my ambivalence to icons of military might by taking the forms of fighter jets, submarines, and missiles and denaturing their surfaces. By reforming weapons out of wire, I reference both the practice of children’s war games and modeling, as well as everyday forms of construction like fence-building. I then coat these structures in irregular amounts of clay, allowing for an arbitrary amount of decay. It is this fantasy of decay – of a culture that could regard weapons of war as follies, as disintegrating monuments to an earlier era – which my work tries to trigger.
I also apply this logic to historical forms, specifically Greek ceramic vessels. These vessels represent an ancient culture that both celebrated and venerated conflict and war by depicting scenes of Greek soldiers and gods alongside each other. My process of creating forms from wire and then coating those forms with clay and allowing the clay to fracture over the wire forms, eluding to forces of decay, speak to a culture’s disintegration as this seems to anticipate elements of our own bellicose culture.
