United States, 1996
Nathan Goff is a self-taught ceramic artist based in the United States. The figure has been at the center of his practice since he began working seriously in clay. He builds figurative reliefs across grids of stoneware tile, fired to cone 6 oxidation, using carved cuenca lines on some pieces and layered glaze on others.
His work has been shown in juried exhibitions in the United States. A West Point graduate and former U.S. Army officer, he came to art after years in other work, and that late and deliberate turn shapes how he approaches it.
He works in two methods. In cuenca, a carved ridge holds each glaze within its own boundary. In his layered pieces, the figure is built directly in glaze, two colors worked against each other to find the values and composition. Both depend on the kiln, which he treats as a collaborator rather than a tool.