(born October 5, 1950)
Mark Burns is a ceramic artist and educator who creates narrative, personal works with a pop sensibility and sardonic humor. He studied illustration at the School of the Dayton Art Institute in Ohio (BFA, 1972), before he moved to Seattle and completed his MFA under celebrated ceramicists Patti Warashina and Howard Kottler at the University of Washington (1974). Burns often creates works that mimic or reference domestic objects commonly manufactured in clay by carefully splicing together elements of functional and decorative wares to create psychologically loaded tableaux. Simultaneously enticing and unsettling, Burns’ body of work embraces bad taste, strangeness, sex, and politics. His sensibility is often ascribed to his queer identity, and his visibility in the field has reoriented questions of suitable subject matter and created a platform for other artists to explore traditionally taboo content. Burns found early success after completing his graduate studies. He earned a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1976, and he had a solo exhibition at the Helen Drutt Gallery in 1982. Additionally, he has taught at a number of universities and colleges around the country, including stints at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence. Burns joined the faculty at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in 1990, and he ultimately served as head of ceramics and chair of the art department. He was also recently selected as a 2016 – 2018 artist in residence at Harvard University. Throughout his career, Burns has exhibited widely and has been collected by many museums including the Renwick Gallery in Washington, DC, and the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City. Mark Burns was elected a Fellow of the American Craft Council in 2018.