Chris Gustin (b. 1952, Chicago, Illinois) is a ceramic artist and educator based in South Dartmouth, Massachusetts. He grew up in Los Angeles, California, where he was introduced to ceramics through his family’s whiteware manufacturing businesses. Surrounded by clay and factory life from a young age, he developed a deep familiarity with ceramics that would shape the course of his career.
In 1970, after taking a pottery class in high school and enrolling at the University of California, Irvine, Gustin left school to work full-time at his father’s factory, Wildwood Ceramics, where he became foreman and manager. After two formative years in commercial production, he turned his attention to studio ceramics, earning a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1975 and an MFA from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 1977.
That same year, Gustin co-founded a studio in Guilford, Connecticut, with his sister-in-law Jane Gustin, producing both functional and sculptural pottery. He began teaching soon after, with appointments at Parsons School of Design (1978–1980), Boston University (1980–1985), and later as Associate Professor and head of ceramics at the Swain School of Design, which later became the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. During his twenty-year academic career, he mentored hundreds of undergraduate and graduate students while continuing his studio practice.
In 1982, Gustin moved his studio to South Dartmouth, converting an old 8,000-square-foot chicken farm into a live-work space. In 1986, he co-founded the Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts in Newcastle, Maine, an artist residency that continues to serve as a vital hub for the ceramics community.
His interest in architectural ceramics led him to establish Gustin Ceramics Tile Production in 1996 after designing all the tiles for his own home. The company has since grown to serve architects, designers, and showrooms nationwide.
Since retiring from academia in 1999, Chris Gustin has dedicated himself fully to his studio work and tile production, contributing significantly to the evolution of contemporary ceramics in the United States.
Chris Gustin’s show, Ascension, is on view between May 7 and June 5, 2025, at Donzella Project Space, New York.
Visit Chris Gustin’s website and Instagram page.
Featured work
Selected works, 2021-2024
I am interested in pottery that makes connections to the human figure. The figurative analogies used to describe pots throughout history all invite touch in some way. The pots that I respond to all speak of a clear, direct sense of the hand. The hand is celebrated in the work by its maker, whether it is that of a fifteenth-century rural potter or a nineteenth-century court artisan. And it becomes a necessary tool for the user in understanding the relationship of the object to its function, and subsequently, to how that object informs one’s life.
Though most of my work only alludes to function, I use the pot context because of its immense possibilities for abstraction. The skin of the clay holds the invisible interior of the vessel. How I manipulate my forms “around” that air, constraining it, enclosing it, or letting it expand and swell, can allow analogy and metaphor to enter into the work.
I want my work to provoke image to the viewer, to suggest something that is just on the other side of consciousness. I don’t want my pots to conjure up a singular recollection, but ones that change with each glance, with each change of light. I use surfaces that purposely encourage touch, and by inviting the hand to explore the forms as well as the eye, I hope to provoke numerous memories, recollections that have the potential to change from moment to moment.
