Undine Brod

Undine Brod (b. 1974) grew up in a trifecta of cities: Los Angeles, Seattle and New York City. She earned an MFA from Ohio State University in 2011 and both a BFA in ceramics and a BA in interdisciplinary art from the University of Washington in 1998. Brod also studied at New York University and at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University.

Brod exhibits in the United States and internationally. She has participated in many artist residencies including Red Lodge Clay Center in Montana; the International Ceramics Studio in Kecskemét, Hungary; Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Maine; the Women’s Studio Workshop in New York; and at the Yingge Ceramics Museum in Taiwan. Brod has received several honors, grants, and awards in recognition for and in support of her work including the New York Art Sprinter’s 2015 Emerging Jewish Artist Award, a 2015 National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts International Residency Grant, and the 2015 Women Studio Workshop’s Ora Schneider Residency Grant for Regional Artists.

Brod’s body of work consists of hand-built clay and mixed-media animal sculptures adorned with nontraditional ceramic surfaces. The composite animals are not individual portraits nor true to one original source; rather, they embody elements from several species into distinct forms. The animals function as representations of emotional states—not fixed to time, place, or specific experiences. They are fractured and dislocated, reflecting her experience of a contemporary culture that isn’t whole. Brod’s animal works are tender, innocent survivors of manipulation and alteration. They call out for attention from their disturbed and overly-loved states. Expressions of distress, suffering, sorrow, despondence, and anguish exist side by side with qualities of being well loved and having lived well. The animal figures represent the point where the innocent become the manipulated, exploited, and sometimes feared. Through her work, Brod suggests that violence and vulnerability are not out in some far-off war zone, but rather at the very heart of our domestic lives’ chaos and disorder.