Building On Creativity

Ben Anderson is an associate professor of three-dimensional art and sculpture in URI’s Department of Art and Art History. An award-winning artist, he has taught at colleges and universities throughout the United States. Initially reluctant to teach, Anderson ultimately found it uniquely satisfying. “What I find stimulating,” he says, “is the constant experimentation that can occur—where one student tries something and then another builds upon that, it’s an infectious state of creativity.”

In his own work, Anderson is interested in materials and object-making. He draws inspiration from the natural world and is building his library of ceramic molds representing local sea life, developing new glaze formulas, and exploring alternate firing techniques through an NSF EPSCoR grant.

This piece, Baptismal, was not a planned project; rather, says Anderson, “It grew spontaneously from a mound of freshly processed clay.” He was showing some of his molds to his students to explain how they worked. Together, they ended up building this piece from those molds, working collaboratively on what became the finished piece. •

—Barbara Caron