Emily Counts

Emily Counts (°1976) was born in Seattle, WA, where she currently lives and works. She creates ceramic and mixed media sculptures that engage with craft traditions and explore connectivity, identity, and relationships to nature. This work is personal, rooted in a habit of combing through memories, but ultimately suggesting open-ended narratives and creating space for the viewer’s own stories and meaning. Electricity, illumination, and translucent materials are often incorporated into ceramic pieces as she aims to aesthetically merge a sense of the past with the futuristic.

Her work has been exhibited nationally in institutions including the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, the Torrance Art Museum in California, Oregon Contemporary in Portland, OR, and in Washington at the Bellevue Arts Museum. She received her BFA from the California College of the Arts and has received grants from Artist Trust, the Oregon Arts Commission, the Regional Arts & Culture Council, and The Ford Family Foundation. She was an artist in residence at Raid Projects in Los Angeles, Plane Space in New York, and at the Varda Artists Residency Program in Sausalito, CA. Counts is currently represented in Oregon by National and in Washington by studio e gallery.