Ryan Fletcher is an artist, entrepreneur, sales professional, husband and father living and working in Jacksonville, FL. In 2010 Ryan graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Ceramics from the Kansas City Art Institute in Missouri. At KCAI, Ryan studied under various artists such as Paul Donnelly, Cary Esser, George Timmok, Misty Gamble and Christa Assad becoming proficient in various ceramic techniques including wheel throwing, slip casting, hand-building, and large-scale sculpture. While there, Ryan spent a summer abroad studying with artist Marek Cecula in Kielce, Poland, which began a lasting obsession with slip casting, minimalism and industrial design.

After graduation, Ryan spent four years as a resident artist at the Belger Arts Center in Kansas City. There, he worked in various roles, teaching, assisting with gallery exhibitions and sales. He also worked at Crane Yard Clay Supply in wholesale and retail ceramics sales and developing proprietary clay bodies for the business. During this time, Ryan was invited to two successive residencies in Warclaw, Poland in 2011 & 2012 where he worked in porcelain factories with artists from around the world. He was also invited as a short-term resident and was awarded a McKnight Fellowship at the Northern Clay Center in Minneapolis, MN.

Fascinated by the restaurant industry from a very young age, Ryan began collaborating with chefs in an effort to explore what it meant to display his work in use. “Tapas Micros” was the first of these projects. Obsessed with progressive food culture of Spain, Ryan set out to design a set of dinnerware to accommodate a tasting menu; a dining experience designed entirely by the chef as a creative expression in itself. His second project “Paper Plates” was created in the same vein, only this time with a bit of humor, playing off the idea that a fine dining establishment would serve their guests on paper plates.

During the last two years of his residency at the Belger Arts Center, Ryan focused his attention on stretching the boundaries of his materials and concept. The result was “Pierogi Variations”. Both projects explored the use of found objects to create unique sculptural vessel forms. The process was developed in response to the limitations of short-term residencies he was attending. Slip casting is a tedious, multi-step process which makes the journey from prototype to finished product much slower and less conducive to a one month residency. This new process became a way for him to ‘sketch’ an idea in the form of a mold and see the product of that mold very quickly.

Ryan’s work displays a wide variety of techniques including slip casting, wheel throwing, hand-building, CNC, and found object/multi-media. His concepts surround the vessel, mostly, but often stray in order to comment on the banality of the modern gallery setting, industrial design processes, or the nobility of the construction industry.