Manson’s work stretches the limits of ceramics, challenging preconceived notions regarding fragility. “My work uses ceramics as a metaphor for the individual and societal body,” says Manson. “This sculpture was informed by the process of working with clay, a nature that wants to collapse. For me, ceramics is tied to personal resilience and rebuilding in the face of adversity.”

Through hand building and glaze she explores the body’s connective yet testing relationship to landscape. Her work often incorporates tiny porcelain sculptures, each an intimate, bone-like shape, adhered and supported by elaborate systems made of metal and epoxy. Comprised of innumerable parts which on their own may appear insignificant, the structures celebrate the idea that small things together amount to something impactful. Her spherical works serve to memorialize collective consciousness.

Rebecca Manson graduated with a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design in 2011. She received a Windgate Project Grant in 2016 and a Windgate Fellowship Award in 2011 from The Windgate Foundation and the Center for Craft Creativity and Design in Asheville, NC. She served as artist-in-residence at Zentrum Fur Keramik (Berlin, Germany) and California State University (Long Beach, CA). Manson has exhibited at galleries and institutions including Hard and Soft at ACME Gallery, Line Describing a Cone at the Katonah Museum of Art and Fun House at 520 W. 28th by Zaha Hadid Architects. Her first exhibition of public art, “Come Closer and the View Gets Wider” is currently on display in Tribeca Park in New York City. Manson lives and works in Brooklyn.