Michael Swierz

Michael Swierz is a Chicago-based ceramicist, interdisciplinary artist, and poet, whose work synthesizes aspects of poetry, visual art, translation, subsistence, earth repair, and interspecies communication.

His works have been shown internationally at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) in Berlin, Germany, the Weinberg/Newton Gallery in Chicago, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, at the Q.arma Building, at the University Museum in Carbondale, Illinois, and in the Deutsches Museum’s Forum of the Future in Munich, Germany, among other locations.

Michael's works draws inspiration from the geological and biological forces at play around us, and the possibilities for human beings to connect with the living world in embodied ways that foster intimacy between people and rocks, soil, sand, and the plants and animals of the tallgrass prairie.
Ceramic surfaces are adorned with glazes, washes, and slips mixed from foraged materials, including locally gathered wild clays, dolomite rock, plant ashes, beachcombed materials, and processed sand, often following classic glaze formulations used historically in ceramics
production. The iconography for these pieces depicts native tallgrass prairie flora and fauna.
He is interested in the ways that ceramic objects can hold a conversation with the local earthen environment, in ways that increase ecological kinship and oƯer alternative production modes to large scale mining and quarrying processes, from which ceramic and glaze materials are most often
sourced. Because of this process, each work is one-of-a-kind.

The clay bodies for these works are either vitreous, reduction-fired porcelain or pit-fired earthenware, with surface decorations of wild-gathered materials.