Lunch on Fridays: Seth Nagelberg

"Crystallization" by Seth Nagelberg

Spend your lunch hour hearing from CIA Craft + Design associate professor Seth Nagelberg, an artist and designer who works in clay, as he discusses work completed during his recent sabbatical during Lunch on Fridays at 12:15pm Friday, October 27 in CIA's Peter B. Lewis Theater.

The ideas that inform Nagelberg's work include INFINITY, UNITY, SYSTEMS, PERCEPTION, HUMOR and PLAY. He applies these ideas to sculpture and objects of utility. INFINITY includes ideas of vastness and things beyond our grasp. He uses repetition to imply that there are systems at work that are too large to see. Entropy is disorder or randomness. He demonstrates these ideas by assembling modules, making patterns and working in series. The forms he makes are a mix of hard-lined geometries and organic shapes. This strategy combines both our natural world and built environment. He is equally inspired by mathematics and natural systems; the number of petals on a flower, the concentric rings formed by a splash of water, the randomness of sea foam. Is this chaos or order?

Nagelberg strives to close the gap between craft and design. He says, “I strive to create a cohesive language of forms that inform and inspire new designs. My exploration of manufacturing techniques and technology enables me to connect the past and future of ceramics.” He earned a BFA from the University of Hartford in Connecticut and MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. In 2015, Nagelberg published his first book, Batch Manufacturing for Ceramics: Models and Molds, Process to Product.

Parking: Lunch on Fridays attendees may park in any of CIA's parking lots: Lot 73, Lot 74 and the Annex Lot, all of which surround our campus. Please note that signs posted around those lots correctly state that parking typically requires a CIA permit or visitor pass and that violators will be ticketed. However, to accommodate our valued Lunch on Fridays attendees, that policy won't be enforced during the program. Have questions? Please contact Reinberger Gallery at reinbergergallery@cia.edu or 216.421.7407.

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