Katie Jacobs

My name is Katie Jacobs and I am a ceramicist/artist/designer from Melbourne, Australia. I am inspired by various obsessions with popular culture, iconography and the Australian identity. In my artwork, I investigate this creation of cultural, national and social identity through the broad use of the narrative.

I use ceramic and sculptural methods as a process by which to ‘create’/recreate iconic objects, often working from found two-dimensional images of living things to make an original form. My process begins with ceramics as a starting point from which to explore responses to the environment in which I find myself, be it in Australia, Canada, Denmark or the United States.

During my MFA program at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, I experimented with various ephemeral materials, including aluminium foil, ice, wax, light, beer bottle caps, chia seeds and video. These materials related to the feeling of being only temporarily in the US, and the fragility of being away from home, missing family and friends, weddings and funerals. There is also a temporary nature to creating, each work representing itself and recording the moment in which it was created, and therefore discussing the gap between the physical and the metaphysical.