Kelsey Barton

Kelsey Barton is a ceramic artist from Tampa, Florida, currently based in Gainesville, where she is pursuing her MFA at the University of Florida. 

​

Barton’s practice centers nature as a co-creator. She is drawn to atmospheric firings (particularly wood and soda) where fire, ash, and vapor leave unpredictable traces. These processes, like the materials she uses, are granted their own agency. Clay and glaze materials are encouraged to crack, shift, and melt on their own terms. Entropy, decay, imperfection, and change are embraced in her sculptures not as failure, but as evidence of time and transformation. 

​

Barton holds a BA in Studio Art from the University of South Florida. During undergrad, she studied abroad in Japan, studying the influence of Japanese aesthetics on Western design and training in Kyoto ceramics technique. That experience continues to shape her approach, particularly through postwar artists whose tsuchi aji (土味, “clay flavor”) surfaces and use of automatism inspire her tactile, intuitive methods and high regard for unglazed ceramic surfaces. Her appreciation of the raw, unpolished, and elemental is rooted in the wabi sabi aesthetic philosophy of Japanese art.