The facts:
• Daniel Mandelbaum.
• Born 1994.
• Grew up in Westfield, New Jersey.
• BFA from Pratt Institute, 2016.
• Fabrication work for ceramic furniture designer.
• Artist assistant work for artist Bruce Sherman.
• Technician at a community ceramic studio for a few years after college (working in clay, mostly, but also stone, metal, concrete, fabric and wood. A lot of drawings and animations too.)
• Inspirations: Cartoons, Pre-Columbian Ceramics, Outsider Art, Tom Otterness, Henry Moore, Isamu Noguchi.
• Smokes a lot of cigarettes.
• The work isn't too serious. It will make you laugh.
• Studio in Ridgewood.
Mandelbaum has no plan. “A lot of times the goal in mind is to take the lifeless material, clay, and turn it into something animated, like something quasi-animal,” he says about his process. “I like to think that I’m using the clay to generate my ideas instead of pencil and paper, like drawing in three-dimensional space."
"...Sometimes I have to compromise, and then glazing the work is always sort of a dice roll,” he adds. “I’ve gotten into the habit of just letting it go, the sculpture will be whatever it wants to be.”
