The Los-Angeles based artist Joel Otterson straddles the worlds of art, craft, and design with equal ease. In fact, all these are components of the same world for him. He says he is fascinated as much by ancient Greek design and aesthetics as he is by artifacts from the pre-Columbian Americas, or by masterpieces from 16th- and 17th-century Japan, or the works of Rembrandt Bugatti. His current thought process has led to an investigation of classical Greek vessels, whose forms he considers sublime. In his attempt to metamorphose aesthetics from the past with sensibilities of the present, he gives rise to works that speak equally to what inspired them and to what they have become.
